Daimler Annual Report 2011 - Alle jaarverslagen

The Future Is Our Element
The new climate and wind tunnels
bring extreme weather indoors and
put innovations on the road much faster
In the next step after the commissioning of its new driving
simulator, the Mercedes-Benz Technology Center was
expanded as planned to accommodate two ultramodern
climate and wind tunnels. As a result, research, development,
design, planning and production are more thoroughly integrated
at the Mercedes-Benz facility in Sindelfingen than at
any other automobile company in the world.
The new climate and wind tunnels bridge the gap between
simulation and real-life testing, allowing the optimization of
newly developed vehicles and components from Mercedes-
Benz early on in weather conditions of every kind. This means
that in the future, only prototypes that have already proven
their high level of maturity in the most adverse climatic conditions
in the climate tunnel will embark on the subsequent reallife
road tests in Arctic cold or scorching desert heat.
Thanks to the new climate and wind tunnels, Mercedes-Benz
can ensure the highest possible quality. That’s a claim which
has been firmly established for 125 years.
The extremely cold temperatures that are needed for vehicle
testing cannot always be found even in Sweden’s Arctic
regions in the winter; similarly, extremely hot temperatures
do not reliably occur even in the notorious Death Valley in
the United States. But in the new climate and wind tunnels,
all of the desired climatic conditions can be created all year
round within very narrow tolerances. That simply can’t be
done on the open road.
Innovative
“The new climate and wind tunnels don’t replace road testing.
But we can significantly reduce the number of road tests
and we’re better prepared for them. This way, we can achieve
our ambitious goals faster.”
Tanja Mayer, Schedule Manager