For the third year running, Valeo has taken first place in France’s INPI industrial property institute rankings, with 1,355 patents published in 2018, versus 1,110 in 2017, confirming its position as the most innovative company in France.
Jacques Aschenbroich, Valeo’s chairman and CEO, commented, “This ranking fully reflects the importance of R&D in the Group’s strategy and our teams’ ability to constantly innovate and create new technologies that are essential to the development of electric, autonomous and connected vehicles – fields in which we are a pioneer and world leader. I would like to thank all of our teams for their commitment and passion for innovation.”
For the third year running, Valeo also was named the top French patent-filer with the European Patent Office (EPO), with 784 patents published in 2018 (18th worldwide). These two rankings underline Valeo’s commitment to protecting the cornerstone of its strategy: innovation.
In 2018, Valeo’s Research and Development expenditure amounted to almost 13 percent of the Group’s original equipment sales. Valeo has 35 R&D centers worldwide and approximately 20,000 R&D engineers among its 113,000 employees. “Innovation is without a doubt the driving force behind the Group’s growth,” the company noted in a news release, with innovative products that didn’t exist three years ago representing 53% of total order intake in 2018.
Valeo-designed, Valeo-made high-tech products are at the epicenter of the three revolutions that are deeply transforming today’s automotive industry more than ever before: vehicle electrification, autonomous vehicles and digital mobility.
One-in-three vehicles worldwide are fitted with a Valeo electrical system that reduces CO2 emissions. Valeo also is a world leader in driving assistance sensors and boasts the market’s most extensive portfolio of sensors (ultrasonic sensors, cameras, radars and laser scanners), including the SCALA, currently the only automotive LiDAR scanner in series production. Valeo has recorded a number of world-firsts with its autonomous vehicle demonstrators, including the first test drive of an autonomous car, fitted exclusively with ultrasonic sensors, on the streets of Paris last fall, as well as road trips around Europe, the United States and Japan prior to that.
