"Those 500 million euros of orders with four major global auto groups will probably eventually represent between 1 to 1.5 billion worth of recurring business," said Vrecko.

"It's a business where the life-cycle can go up to 2024 or 2025," added Vrecko.

The upbeat comments helped Valeo shares to rise by around 2% in early session trading.

Lidar is the laser imaging technology used increasingly in self-driving cars to generate precise pictures of the environment around the vehicles.

More than $1 billion in corporate and private investment has gone into some 50 Lidar startups over the past three years, including a record $420 million in 2018, according to a Reuters analysis of publicly available investment data in March.

Nevertheless, Lidar has been criticised by Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, who described Lidar in April as a "fools' errand". Tesla vehicles rely on cameras and radars as their vision system for self-driving.

Valeo's Vrecko reckoned, however, that Musk would soon change his mind and would be won over to Lidar.

"I respect Elon Musk but I have to say, on that particular point, he is going against the consensus of opinion."

Valeo has invested heavily to benefit from ever-tightening emissions regulations and increasing vehicle automation, although it has also faced headwinds from a broader auto-market slowdown and international trade disputes.

In April, France raised its stake in Valeo to just above 7%, making the French state's shareholding in Valeo slightly higher than the one held by activist fund Harris Associates.

(Reporting by Gilles Guillaume; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)

By Gilles Guillaume