I visit the French R&D office of Marelli Automotive Lighting last month with the Stellantis design team, to give them the DVN Best Rear Lamp Design award for the Citroën C5 Aircross. This is a team I know quite well; I started to develop lamps with them 25 years ago for a Renault project – the Megane 4-door with rear lamps developed by Marelli France and produced in Turkiye by AL-Mako. So, I started my learning curve in vehicle lighting with them, supported by my technical leader Hervé Sanchez, who is still at Renault. We kept in close contact with Arnaud Mouchon, Dacia Duster project leader at the time, who now leads the R&D team.
It was a great pleasure to be back. I like the proximity of this R&D team with French OEMs just 10 kilometres away. Proximity and close relation are crucial to compete in a difficult environment. The C5 Aircross development is a good example of the fruits of close collaboration. It is often not easy to develop at a distance; we need proximity between designers and engineers. Have a look of what is happening in China and how efficient they can be; one factor is proximity between OEMs, tier-1s, and tier-2s. It is also what I saw last week in Detroit, visiting OEMs, tier-1s, and tier-2s all in the same city! This still exists in France and throughout Europe, and there are opportunities to gain this same advantage with other lamp makers including plants and R&D like Valeo, Antolin (CML), and Luxor.
