Ford engineers expanded safety testing for the new 2012 Ford Focus, including more than 12,000 virtual and real-world crash tests globally, to prove out its new safety technologies.
Cars go through a lot of required tests: crash tests, mileage tests, consumer test drives, emissions tests and so on, ad nauseam.
Because the design of an automobile has such an impact on public safety, the environment and the lifestyle of owners, it's easy to understand why cars are one the most evaluated products on the planet.
The results of many of these assessments are considered vital public information, and consumers often see things such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration crash data and EPA fuel-economy ratings as crucial to their purchasing decisions.
But cars endure a whole other series of trials that consumers generally have little exposure to — and that are far more rigorous.
They happen long before you've even heard of a vehicle's existence, at proving grounds that, while not exactly unknown to the world, are nonetheless highly secretive. The little awareness customers do have of these trials often comes via manly truck commercials on TV, designed to impress the macho masses.
"That stuff makes nice visuals, but isn't meant to be sensational," says Leon Stokes, senior manager of global validation for General Motors. "We are trying to emulate real-world usage."
While Stokes tries to play up the practical aspects of these torture tests — and they are practical — they are also over-the-top and brutal.
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Real-World Reasoning
Proving grounds are complexes used by automakers to evaluate the performance and reliability of their vehicles. Chrysler, Ford, GM and Toyota all have multiple facilities around the globe; Ford alone has seven. The largest of these proving grounds are enormous in scale: GM's Milford, Mich., site is more than 4,000 acres, spanning two counties, with 140 miles of test tracks and 142 buildings.
As Stokes points out, the majority of tests are designed and run to simulate the rigors of real-world usage over time. But, as you know, the real world is an ugly place, and engineers spend their days at the proving grounds creating worst-case scenarios. That means not only building the most awful potholes and suspension-jarring frost heaves, or icing roads to evaluate antilock brakes and stability-control systems, but also dreaming up and running simulations for intense dust storms, as well as monsoons.
"We do water-wading testing with huge puddles that the vehicle must be able to drive through," says Andreas Ostendorf, Ford's global director for vehicle evaluation and verification. "In some parts of the world, you get these huge rainstorms, so that within two hours you get 80-centimeter-deep [2.5 feet] puddles in the road, but you've still got to drive home. So we simulate this on our proving grounds."
