Jacques Aschenbroich is one of the CEOs of Valeo and the board of directors of Valeo. He was in office in the French government and was elected technical adviser to President Jacques Chirac in 1987. Since 2009, he has been the chief executive officer of the company. Valeo is one of the industry's leading suppliers of auto parts, with sales of 11.8 billion euros in 2012.

Today, automakers are keen to work with IT, the Internet, and communications companies to drive the intelligence of their cars and dilute their collaboration with traditional component suppliers. The emergence of new technologies has brought new challenges to the future development of component suppliers. For example, some people began to speculate that the emergence of 3D printing, is not a sign that the auto companies rely on the possibility of reduced parts suppliers, the future parts suppliers will be "abandoned"? Jacques Aschenbroich, Chief Executive Officer of Valeo, has expressed his views on First Financial Weekly. He believes that only to increase R & D investment, technological innovation, to keep up with the pace of development of the industry. In the long run, only the most innovative companies can survive in harsh market conditions, both for component suppliers and for vehicle manufacturers.

C: Not long ago, a US company did not rely on parts suppliers, with 3D printing technology to print a car, parts suppliers how to deal with the challenges of innovative technology?

A: This question is very interesting. 3D printing is now a very new technology, at least in recent years, it is very expensive, is unlikely to be used for large-scale production, especially for the automotive industry. Because the production of cars to use some casting or injection mold, and as our company every day to produce 6 million pieces of auto parts, which use 3D printing to do not realistic. However, in the parts of the design process, the sample trial is also very important. Samples must ensure that the products developed by the production can be applied to the vehicle, but also to meet the vehicle manufacturers on the overall concept of the model. Although we can draw through the CAD, but still to develop a lot of mold, through the casting mill to sample. And the cost of the sample production is very expensive, so we are currently studying is not possible through the 3D printing technology to produce samples, reduce the cost of production samples.

C: With the continuous emergence of new technology, the future parts suppliers will be "abandoned" it?

A: In the long run, we believe that only the most innovative companies can survive in a harsh market environment, both for component suppliers and for vehicle manufacturers. We all know that in 2009 the global financial crisis, the automotive industry is also suffering. We in the crisis but increased the R & D investment, research and development costs accounted for 10% of total sales, this year will be on the basis of the existing increase of 10%. From our point of view the innovation space is still great. For example, we now focus on two areas of technological innovation: one is carbon dioxide emissions, and the other is on how to provide in the urban environment, auxiliary driving technology, such as automatic parking system. There are several areas that are also the direction of the effort: automatic start and stop function, gearbox, hybrid and included in the plug-in hybrids, as well as pure electric vehicles and so on.

C: Now car manufacturers are keen to promote the automotive intelligent, R & D car networking technology, parts suppliers can play what role?

A: First of all, there is a clear definition of the car network, I think it means that the network of cars, that is, the car and the outside world, for example, and your smart phone and network together. The speed of innovation in both the automotive and telecommunications industries is inconsistent. In general, the smart phone can be replaced several times a year, but a car is always to open three or five years. Now, including smart phones, computers, iPads, we already have their own familiar system, but if your car system and your current system is completely different, then you will be very suited to. Component suppliers need to provide some solutions for this, so that drivers can use their own common information system transplanted to his car used. For example, you can put the phone into the car, into a car GPS, it is often faster than the original update in the car much faster.

Just said smart car, I guess it means unmanned vehicles. I think a prerequisite for unmanned vehicles is to be able to identify the surrounding environment and analyze the information received. For example, there should be a radar-like detector in an unmanned vehicle. When the front of the road suddenly detected a ball in the middle, the intelligent device to be able to automatically determine the back of the ball may follow a child, and immediately let the vehicle brake. To give this example I would like to say that if you can not produce a very sophisticated way to collect information, explain the information, read the information products, then unmanned can not be achieved.

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