Every EV driver knows the moment. It’s January, you switch on the heat, and your remaining range drops by 30, 40, sometimes 50 percent. It feels like the car is lying to you. It’s not — and Claudine Rochette knows exactly why it happens, what Valeo is engineering to fix it, and why the electrification trend is irreversible regardless of what the headlines say this week.
As VP of Strategy and Communication for Valeo’s Power Division, Rochette has spent over 20 years inside one of the industry’s most consequential transformations. She joined Johnson Controls in 2003 as a systems integration engineer, survived the division’s acquisition by Valeo in 2005, and has since led hybrid platforms, 48V electronics, and full EV powertrain programmes from the inside. In this episode of Under the Hood: Automotive Storytelling, she explains why thermal management — not battery chemistry — is the defining frontier of EV performance, and what Valeo’s latest motor technology means for the rare earth problem nobody talks about loudly enough.
Answer: Electric cars lose range in winter primarily because they lack a combustion engine’s waste heat. Valeo’s integrated heat pumps recover over 25% of that lost range by redistributing thermal energy already present in the vehicle. Their jointly developed iBEE motor system with MAHLE eliminates rare earth magnets entirely, cutting motor carbon footprint by more than 40%.
Key takeaways from this episode:
- Winter range loss is a thermal management problem, not a battery problem — and heat pumps address it at the root
- Over 90% of EV motors today depend on rare earth magnets primarily sourced from China
- Valeo’s EESM technology and the Valeo-MAHLE iBEE system eliminate that dependency for vehicles up to 350 kW
- OTA updates allow continuous motor efficiency improvement for 10 to 15 years after a vehicle leaves the production line
- Purchase price parity between EVs and petrol cars is now the active engineering target — not the distant aspiration it was five years ago
Why Do Electric Cars Lose So Much Range in Winter?
The answer starts with what’s missing.
In a combustion engine, burning fuel produces enormous amounts of waste heat as a byproduct. Heating the cabin in winter is essentially free — engineers reroute heat that already exists. An electric motor is dramatically more efficient, which is what makes it better for the planet. But that efficiency means it produces almost no waste heat. When you want a warm cabin on a cold morning, the energy comes directly from the battery.
“On the first generation of electric car, when you were in winter and you want to put your heating, you can decrease your range by two,” Rochette explains.
A car rated for 400 to 500 kilometres could find itself delivering barely 200 on a January commute. This is not a battery degradation issue. The cells are performing exactly as specified. The problem is upstream — a thermal architecture designed around a heat source that no longer exists.
This is what Rochette calls the hidden range killer. And it’s why the formation of Valeo’s Power Division in 2024 — the merger of its Powertrain Systems and Thermal Systems business groups — was not an administrative decision. It was an engineering one.
How Does a Heat Pump Solve EV Winter Range Loss?
The same technology that heats your home more efficiently than a conventional electric radiator can be miniaturised and integrated into a vehicle.
Rather than generating heat from scratch using battery power, a heat pump moves thermal energy that already exists inside the vehicle — from the electronics, from the motor itself, from the ambient environment — and concentrates it to warm the cabin. The electrical cost is dramatically lower than resistive heating.
“We are able to recover more than 25% of this lost range thanks to this heat pump,” Rochette says.
On a car where winter heating was halving driver confidence, recovering a quarter of that loss is not incremental. It’s the difference between an EV that anxious buyers avoid and one they can trust daily.
Valeo’s heat pump doesn’t manage one energy type in isolation. The Power Division’s integrated system simultaneously handles electrical energy, mechanical energy, and thermal energy across the vehicle — which is exactly why Valeo merged the two engineering teams that were previously developing these systems separately.
What Is a Rare Earth-Free Electric Motor — and Why Does It Matter?
More than 90% of electric motors in vehicles today are permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM). They work by using powerful magnets — containing rare earth elements called heavy rare earths — to generate the electromagnetic field that drives the rotor.
Those rare earths are a problem on two fronts.
First, geopolitics. The vast majority of rare earth processing and magnet production is concentrated in China. For European and American OEMs trying to build resilient supply chains, that dependency is a structural vulnerability — and one that has grown more visible as trade tensions have risen.
Second, sustainability. “Those rare earths have a really bad carbon footprint,” Rochette says plainly. The extraction and processing of rare earth magnets generates significant CO2 emissions — an uncomfortable reality for an industry positioning EVs as the sustainable alternative to combustion.
Valeo’s answer is the EESM: the Externally Excited Synchronous Motor. Instead of relying on permanent magnets, the EESM generates its electromagnetic field using copper windings and an induced electrical current in the rotor. No magnets. No rare earths. And a carbon footprint reduction of more than 40% compared to an equivalent permanent magnet motor.
Renault and BMW have used variants of this technology. Valeo’s engineering focus is on closing the performance and efficiency gap that previously made EESM a compromise — and on solving the one engineering challenge that made it difficult to package at scale.
What Is the Valeo-MAHLE iBEE System?
The core engineering challenge with externally excited motors is supplying electrical current to a rotor that’s spinning at high speed. The conventional solution uses brushes — physical contacts between a stationary element and the rotating shaft — which require extra packaging space (roughly 5 centimetres added to motor length) and wear out over the vehicle’s lifetime.
Valeo and MAHLE’s joint development, announced in October 2024, eliminates that compromise.
The system is called iBEE: Inner Brushless Electrical Excitation. Using inductive power transfer — the same physics as wireless phone charging — current is supplied to the rotor without any physical contact. No brushes. No wear. No additional packaging penalty. MAHLE contributes its MAHLE Contactless Transmitter (MCT) technology for the brushless rotor; Valeo provides the inverter, motor control algorithms, and high-efficiency power electronics.
The combined system targets peak power of 220 to 350 kW — covering premium segment vehicles — with carbon footprint reduction exceeding 40% versus equivalent permanent magnet motors.
This partnership extends a programme Valeo began in 2022 with an unnamed European OEM. That first EESM validation, covering B and C segment vehicles, completed more than six months of testing with results that exceeded initial targets on both power density and efficiency. The iBEE collaboration with MAHLE takes the same technology upmarket.
“With this technology, we are able to reduce by 40% the carbon footprint of the electric motor,” Rochette confirms.
For a Tier 1 supplier navigating OEM pressure on both sustainability credentials and supply chain independence, that’s a claim backed by engineering data, not marketing ambition.
Can Software Make an Electric Motor More Efficient Over Time?
The answer is yes — within the limits set by hardware, but those limits are wider than most drivers realise.
Valeo now operates under software maintenance contracts with OEMs that extend active development work up to 10 to 15 years beyond the vehicle’s Start of Production. Where engineering teams previously stood down at SOP plus six months, there are now permanent Valeo software teams working on vehicles that are already on the road.
“Each time we have an improvement, the OEM will be able to give this improvement to the end user through OTA,” Rochette explains.
The motor’s physical construction sets its ceiling. But how that motor is driven — the control laws, the energy recovery calibration, the thermal boundary conditions — can be refined continuously. A vehicle you buy today can be meaningfully more efficient in three years without touching the hardware.
Artificial intelligence is accelerating this shift. Rochette notes that approximately 25% of Tier 1 automotive software coding is now AI-assisted — a figure that stood at zero in 2016. The development pipeline for automotive software has changed structurally, and the supply chain is still adapting.
Looking further ahead, Valeo is developing a software layer called Valeo Predict for Range: a system that draws on weather data, GPS routing, driving patterns, and vehicle sensor inputs to optimise the entire energy management system in real time. The goal is not to squeeze more from one component but to manage electrical, mechanical, and thermal energy as a unified system — maximising range, comfort, and efficiency simultaneously.
Is an Electric Car Actually More Reliable Than a Petrol Car?
The battery degradation narrative — fuelled partly by memories of ageing laptop cells, partly by industry lobbying — has persistent legs. The engineering reality is more encouraging.
“From my point of view, it’s more reliable than a conventional car. Because in fact, it’s more simple in terms of construction, architecture, in terms of quantity of actuators or sensors,” Rochette says.
She points to Tesloop, a US-based taxi company operating Tesla vehicles around the clock, which documented individual cars exceeding one million kilometres. OEMs actively monitor battery state of health (SOH) through OTA telemetry, allowing them to detect degradation before it affects the driver. Renault’s early approach with the first-generation Zoe — leasing the battery pack so it could be replaced if SOH declined below an acceptable threshold — is evidence of how seriously manufacturers managed this even in the technology’s earliest commercial phase.
The new generation of battery packs has improved dramatically. As Rochette puts it: “There is no anymore reason to be afraid about this.”
When Will an Electric Car Cost the Same to Buy as a Petrol Car?
Purchase price parity — not total cost of ownership, but sticker price — is now Valeo’s active target.
The TCO argument for EVs is largely made: electricity costs less than fuel for more than 95% of charging scenarios (home charging), maintenance requirements are significantly lower, and battery reliability concerns are diminishing with each product generation. But TCO arguments don’t close a sale when the upfront cost remains 20 to 30% higher than a comparable combustion vehicle.
Battery pack costs have fallen sharply — from a level where industry models suggested a chemistry breakthrough would be required to reach viability, to a point where volume scaling and manufacturing efficiency have done the work instead. Similar cost reductions have flowed through Valeo’s own product lines: inverters, onboard chargers, motor systems.
“The target is to be able to buy an electric car at the same cost as a conventional one,” Rochette says.
When that happens, the TCO advantage stops being the argument and becomes the bonus.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does EV range drop so much when I turn on the heat in winter?
Because electric motors produce almost no waste heat. In a combustion engine, cabin heating is essentially free — you’re redirecting heat the engine generates anyway. In an EV, you’re drawing directly from the battery. Heat pumps address this by moving existing thermal energy rather than generating it from scratch.
How much range does Valeo’s heat pump actually recover in cold weather?
Valeo’s system recovers more than 25% of the winter range loss caused by cabin heating. For a vehicle where cold-weather heating could halve the effective range, recovering a quarter of that loss represents a meaningful real-world improvement.
What makes the Valeo-MAHLE iBEE motor different from standard EV motors?
Standard EV motors use rare earth permanent magnets. The iBEE system uses inductive power transfer to excite the rotor electromagnetically — no magnets, no brushes, no wear. It delivers 220 to 350 kW for premium vehicles with a carbon footprint more than 40% lower than an equivalent permanent magnet motor.
Can OTA software updates genuinely improve my EV’s motor efficiency after I buy it?
Yes, within hardware limits. Valeo now maintains software development teams working on in-production vehicles for up to 15 years post-SOP. Motor control algorithms, thermal management calibration, and energy recovery strategies can all improve over the life of the vehicle.
Does an externally excited synchronous motor (EESM) perform as well as a permanent magnet motor?
Valeo’s first EESM programme, validated over six months with a European OEM for B and C segment vehicles, delivered performance matching permanent magnet motors — with results exceeding initial targets on both power density and efficiency.
When will EVs be as cheap to buy as petrol cars?
Battery and component costs have already closed much of the gap through volume scaling alone, without requiring the technology step-change that earlier models predicted. Purchase price parity is now Valeo’s stated target — not a distant aspiration but an active engineering and commercial objective.
Listen to the full conversation with Claudine Rochette on Under the Hood: Automotive Storytelling — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, and all major platforms.
Connect with Claudine Rochette on LinkedIn to follow her work at Valeo’s Power Division.
Under the Hood: Automotive Storytelling goes behind the dashboards, the press releases, and the conference keynotes — to find the human stories shaping the future of mobility.
The podcast episode with Claudine : here
IEA Global EV Outlook → https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2024
Valeo-MAHLE iBEE press release → Valeo and Mahle
AUTOSAR / E/E architecture background → https://www.autosar.org