FCA invests millions in AV testing

More than US$30 million will be invested by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) in a new US facility for testing autonomous vehicles and advanced safety.

Testing starts in September at the FCA’s Chelsea Proving Grounds in southeast Michigan, featuring a dedicated autonomous highway-speed track, a 14-hectare safety-feature evaluation area and a high-tech command centre housing vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, facility control and monitoring and test vehicle support.

“The all-new facility at Chelsea Proving Grounds will help support and enable the successful rollout of the company’s five-year plan laid out earlier this year,” FCA chief executive officer Mike Manley says.

“Our ability to test for autonomous and advanced safety technologies enables FCA to offer our customers the features they want across our brand portfolio.”

The facility will allow for testing of various levels of autonomy and enables the company to evaluate FCA vehicles using test protocols from third parties, such as the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), US New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) and European New Car Assessment Program (EuroNCAP), plus additional automatic electronic brake test simulations.

The autonomous highway-speed track offers the capability to develop autonomous vehicle systems under a wide range of challenging environments, including obstacles, tunnels, varying road lighting conditions, and interstate-style exit and entrance ramps.

The ADAS facility accommodates testing of advanced iterations of automatic emergency braking and automated parking technologies on a new paved test facility.

The Chelsea Proving Grounds (CPG) opened in 1954 and cover nearly 1618ha,operating seven days a week.