Ford’s state-of-the-art Environmental Test Centre can simulate diverse environmental conditions ranging from blizzards to searing heat, from high humidity to gale-force winds.
The air is shimmering like in the desert, while just a few metres away, it’s so cold you can build a snowman. And there’s a category 5 hurricane in the next room. Welcome to the “Weather Factory”.
Ford’s new state-of-the-art Environmental Test Centre puts all the world’s weather under one roof, enabling engineers to test forthcoming vehicles – from a small Ford Ka+ to a two-tonne Ford Transit – in the most demanding conditions and make whatever weather they want at any time of the day.
Altitudes higher than Mont Blanc, the tallest Alpine peak, vehicle and wind speeds of up to 250km/h, snow, glaring sunlight and rain are among conditions that are a push of a button away in Europe’s most advanced automotive environmental test centre.
On an area the size of a football pitch, engineers can now take vehicles on demanding journeys around the world, from the desert heat of the Sahara, to the arctic cold of Siberia and the heavy humidity of Costa Rica.
The subject of a €70 million investment, the test centre offers the first automotive wind tunnel that can simulate 5200 metres, the same elevation as the Mount Everest North Base Camp, and the first with such a range of conditions that can be simulated under one roof. The facility can also cool two rooms to minus-40 deg C and heat them up to 55 deg C, as well as generate 95 percent humidity.
The temperature extremes make the facility at Ford’s John Andrews Product Development Centre in Cologne, Germany, technically the hottest, coldest and most humid place in Europe, and home to the highest point in Western Europe.
All Ford vehicles will be tested in the facility, which features three climate wind tunnels, including a high-altitude lab, and four temperature-controlled test chambers, one of which will also facilitate humidity testing.
Ford’s state-of-the-art Environmental Test Centre can simulate diverse environmental conditions ranging from blizzards to searing heat, from high humidity to gale-force winds.
Check out the world’s first aeroacoustic wind tunnel, patented by Ford.
Read about Opel’s 50-year-old test centre in Dudenhofen, Germany.
Check out the “Iron Man” suits used by assembly line workers in Ford’s Valencia factory.
