Benefits of Hyundai’s fancy new European tech centre to be felt by drivers

A €200m investment in a state-of-the-art research and development centre should make Hyundai Group cars even better, and better suited to European drivers, according to the man heading up the entire project. 

The three group brands - Hyundai, Kia and Genesis - will all benefit from the new 25,000 square metre site alongside the firm’s existing European HQ in Frankfurt, featuring hi-tech labs, simulators and chambers capable of testing cars in extreme temperatures and recreating driving conditions from across the globe. 

“Some big brands are pulling back and reducing investments and projects, but we are going down a different path,”  said Hyundai Motor Europe Technical Centre managing director Tyrone Johnson, speaking at an exclusive event where Auto Express was one of a handful of titles from across Europe invited inside the facility. “Europe is the most diverse market in the world - you have Cyprus and Italy through to the Nordic countries and all the countries and customer tastes in between. If you can create successful products for Europe, your prospects are good for across the world.”

So far, the firm has spent over €150m (£132m) on the site and its advanced equipment, with another €50m is likely to be splashed out by the time it’s fully kitted out with the latest tech, including a complex simulator that the firm describes as “the top immersion you can do with the technology of today”. 

The combination of laboratories and test bases across the site allow everything from electric vehicle charging and dyno testing to rolling roads that simulate running cars in temperatures as extreme as -40 and +50 degrees, and even measure drive-by noise levels without ever needing to go outdoors. The simulator will ease testing of everything from driver assistance systems to infotainment functionality without needing repeatable road conditions. It will also enable testing of driver drowsiness or touchscreen usability without the need to be on public roads with other traffic. 

Advanced noise testing

Among the range of impressive-sounding labs and rooms, the stand-out is probably the semi-anoconic chamber, which looks more like a recording studio than a vehicle testing lab. Huge sound deadening material over a metre thick lines the walls of a room designed to easily repeat tests of both interior and exterior noise. 

“This is about repeatability versus an outside uncontrolled environment where conditions change; a very controlled environment independent of weather where you can work day and night and do much more testing in a shorter period of time,” Johnson told Auto Express. 

Electric cars have also thrown up new challenges. “On an EV powertrain, one of the biggest sources of noise is gone, therefore other road noises become more prominent and the customers sometimes say that the car is louder than before,” Johnson explained. “It’s not, but the noises may be more disturbing to customers than the powertrain was before, so road noise is more important.”

The semi-anoconic chamber includes a rolling road where engineers can bolt on surfaces to replicate different road conditions or even types of speed bump from across the world. The huge padding across the walls ensures sound doesn’t rebound, allowing engineers to isolate specific interior or exterior drive-by noises.  

Less on-road testing

Engineers will also have to spend less time out in extreme weather testing cars wrapped in bags or other disguises, as happens at the moment in places from northern Sweden to Death Valley. More development can now happen behind closed doors in the rolling road chambers that can replicate arctic conditions of as low as -40 degrees or scorching 50 degree heat, which is bad news for our spy photographers, but good news for engineers not having to spend weeks in bleak winter outposts or desert heat. That’s becoming more important as more changeable weather conditions no longer guarantee the extreme cold or heat that was once all but guaranteed when testers decamped to remote locations. 

Faster product development and improvement 

The changes brought on by Chinese brands’ seemingly constant improvements to their cars have also prompted a revamp to traditional manufacturers’ thinking. The long-standing cycle of a new car launching, generally being updated after around four years and then replaced by a new one after around seven years is quickly fading away. Constant improvements are the name of the game now, especially with tech, and it’s not possible to repeatedly test them in the traditional way. 

“Customers are being more demanding and wanting more features, you can’t hire enough engineers and there aren’t enough hours in the day to test it all," explained tech centre boss Johnson, specifically around repeatability of conditions for relatively minor revisions that would potentially not otherwise happen until a major overhaul - especially in the digital age of regular over-the-air updates.

When pushed on how consumers will benefit from the new centre, Johnson preferred to flip the question around. “I struggle to think where the cars will not be better, they will be developed more thoroughly and with even more capability than before,” he added. “I would pose a different question; where will we not improve?” 

“The development process will drive improvements but this building gives us an advantage we didn’t have before to do things more quickly and more thoroughly,” Johnson concluded. “Those processes could have happened, but not with the capability and results this building will give us, and not at the cost.”

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