Market Info

Is France becoming the world champion for automotive technologies?

France is one of the main recipient of the investments made in new mobilities over the period 2017 -mid 2018. Estonia performs surprisingly well too!

“There has never been a better time to invest in France!” This recent quote of the Financial Times seems to be true, including in the automotive technology sector.

The amount of transactions, direct funding and M&A in the automotive technology sector, has been quite high in France over the period 2017 -mid 2018, according to a study on The State of European Autotech produced by Tech.eu and Mondial Tech 2018, part of the Paris Motor Show. France is one of the countries where most investments have been made in technologies related to the automotive industry, ranking third with more than €200 million of funds raised in 41 operations.

Sales, car-sharing and connectivity solutions among the most attractive segments for investors

This ranking on new automotive technologies gives an overview of the most promising segments for investors on this market, that represented more than €1,5 billion over the same period. Sales solutions and applications sector is the first sought by investors with more than a third of the total, followed by the car-sharing and taxi sector with €476 million, and the cloud and connectivity solutions with €165 million.

The insurance, robotics and security solutions sectors follow then with respectively €45 million, €35 million and €11 million of the total amount of investments.

France provides a favorable ecosystem to create tech champions

France is particularly good on the cloud and connectivity solutions market, where investors come to find their champions. The French startups Xee or Actility, specialized in data, storage, localization and connectivity are mentioned as models in the report. France has a favorable funding ecosystem and a large pool of talents that enable and foster the creation of new tech champions, both technologically advanced and competitive.

Thus, Europe and France in particular, stand out and are expected to deepen their advantage on software innovation. It is also interesting to stress that Estonia performs particularly well and ranks fifth in this study, thanks to the startup Taxify, a competitor of Uber. The startup has caught the interest of Daimler that invested $176 million at once!