WedoLow, winner of the GPACF Autotech 2023 Pioneer Award
WedoLow, a startup based in Rennes (France) and software editor that promotes the eco-design of digital services, is one of the two winners of the 2023 edition of the Grand Prix de l’Automobile Club de France Autotech 2023 (GPACF) for the Pioneer Prize, an international startup competition supported by industry leaders such as Renault Group, Forvia, Motul and Plastic Omnium.
WedoLow – Winner of the 2023 Pioneer Award
The Grand Prix Automobile Club de France Autotech is now a key event in the startup ecosystem dedicated to the vehicle and mobility industry. Last Thursday, April 20, the last round of the 2023 edition was held with the Pitch session of the 6 finalists divided into 2 categories.
After applying in December and going through the selection process and semi-finals in January, WedoLow, a startup from Rennes (France) founded in April 2022 and offering a solution for optimizing embedded and hosted applications that promotes software eco-design, was awarded the 2023 Pioneer Prize by a jury of 19 prestigious members including directors and managers from Renault Group, Forvia, Plastic Omnium, Dassault Systèmes and Motul.
The automotive industry in the middle of a software revolution
Nowadays, a car contains 200 million lines of code. By 2025, it will be 600 million. Manufacturers are now talking about “software-defined vehicles”. Software is what drives the car, adds value, and helps disrupt the business models of the major groups, based on the dynamics initiated by Tesla. Volkswagen and Stellantis now present themselves as “software companies”. The reason is simple: 60% of the value of a vehicle in 2030 will come from software.
This increase in the number of lines of code, beyond its functionality and added value, also has an important impact in terms of energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Even more so with the electrification of the vehicle fleet.
This is where WedoLow comes in. Its expertise in algorithmic optimization (=computations) of embedded software in vehicles allows it to reduce their size, improve their performance and execution speed and generate savings in energy consumption.
A solution to the challenges faced by vehicle manufacturers.
By enabling software engineers and developers to design optimized applications to meet their needs, WedoLow gives them the power to act at all stages of their development to correct and improve them. An opportunity to provide a better designed final product before its commercialization, to reduce the interventions afterwards and to reduce the time-to-market.
For the automotive industry, these are key assets to meet its challenges, including:
– guarantee controlled release times for new models because they are not impacted by software flaws in terms of performance and efficiency.
– guarantee a good battery system management and a better autonomy.
– allow easier and faster upgrades.
– reduce costs during the development phase and generate new gains by adding new functionalities or applications, on the same model as smartphones.
– provide a better experience for drivers (autonomy, charging speed, new features).
In naming WedoLow winner of the GPACF Autotech Pioneer 2023 Award, the jury members recognized its technological and scientific innovation and the added value of its expertise, as well as its ability to contribute, alongside manufacturers, to this ongoing revolution towards a “software-defined and sustainable vehicle“.
Watch Justine Bonnot’s winning pitch and the Q&A with the jury: