On 6th December 2019, the Board of Directors appointed Tony Jaux as President of VEDECOM. He takes up this position on 1st April 2020 for a three-year period that may be extended. The vice president in charge of cockpit electronic R&D, infotainment, and connectivity in the PSA Group as well as manager of the connected vehicles programme at PFA, Tony Jaux succeeds Rémi Bastien from Groupe Renault.
“My arrival is in line with the continued support of industrial actors for the VEDECOM Institute since its creation in 2014 to help meet the automotive sector’s applied research needs. What the automotive sector needs now more than ever is to combine R&D efforts and increase their ability to compete with increasingly numerous and diverse actors in mobility sectors around the globe.
Working closely with public authorities, our institutional partners like the ANR, and the entire French mobility ecosystem, I will double down on our strategy to lead European-wide projects to boost the Institutes’s leadership and give it a multidisciplinary view of issues such as connected and autonomous vehicles, electrification, and new mobility and energy solutions.
I will also endeavour to supplement VEDECOM’s innovation tools to showcase its multidisciplinary excellence through open innovation, support for entrepreneurship, and commercialisation of technological building blocks and services that result from VEDECOM’s efforts”, states Tony Jaux, the president of the VEDECOM Institute.
After graduating from Supélec, a top-tier graduate school for engineering, Tony Jaux began his career in 1984 as a development engineer for Philips and later for Centaure-UP Systems. He then continued his career in the automotive sector when he was hired by Magnetti Marelli before working for the equipment manufacturer Johnson Controls between 2004 and 2011, where he notably worked in the electronics division as Engineering Director for Europe.
In 2011, he joined the PSA Group as vice president. He oversaw the development of powertrain computers and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and until recently he was in charge of infotainment development as well as being the manager of the connected vehicle programme at the Plateforme Française de l’Automobile (PFA).
His career path, which combines R&D, industry, and automotive experience, will help him rise to the challenges unique to the VEDECOM Institute, such as: promoting trust and cooperation; laying the groundwork for rolling out and accrediting self-driving vehicles; organising powerful, sustainable mobility with electric vehicles, smart charging, and smart grids; developing multi-modal mobility with artificial intelligence; and working on urban design and mobility options of the future, all while ensuring that people remain at the heart of all innovation efforts.
In additional to his technical skills, Tony Jaux brings to the table his knowledge of international industrial project management to support the development of research efforts and experiments conducted by VEDECOM in Europe and around the world.