vehicle benchmarking and attribute engineering 2 0 F O C U S and which define each vehicle’s specific character. “We’ve been providing these engineering services at AVL for years. Crucial to our procedure is the holistic view we take, on the entire vehicle – and not limited to a single component,” explaines Peter Schöggl, Vice President Business Field Racing and Vehicle. “The benchmarking program gives us the perfect basis for defining the development objectives in the competitors’ scatter band in collaboration with our customers. In this respect, the powertrain is frequently the key to a vehicle’s ‘DNA’ – and one of AVL’s absolute core competences. But very often, we even go a step further and analyze the impact of a CO2 measure on the lateral dynamics and driving comfort. The information and reference values collected previously in vehicle benchmarking are of huge significance for our work,” Peter Schlöggl explaines. example, long recuperation phases into account. The power requirements of the various components – steering assistance, vacuum pump for the brake, air-conditioning – are also considered, allowing them to be incorporated into the vehicle’s overall energy balance, which is another important feature of our program,” Manfred Kogler adds. BASIC ANALYSIS AND ON-DEPTH MEASUREMENT IN THE CASE OF PECULARITIES If there are any signs of irregularities in the measurement results for a certain vehicle attribute, indepth (‘deep-dive’) analyses are conducted. With measurements relating to sound/NVH, for example, this could be noise interference in the vehicle cell, which only occurs in certain drive situations. “That’s when our vehicle acoustics specialists come into play. A so-called ‘finger print’ is taken on the acoustics chassis dyno testbed to identify the source – perhaps an engine or transmission bearing – along with the transmission path. At our customer’s request, we can instantly work out a proposal for a solution to the problem too – and this applies for all ten key vehicle attributes. This then becomes a project for our colleagues specialized in vehicle attribute engineering, with whom we collaborate very closely in vehicle benchmarking.“ ATTRIBUTE ENGINEERING In addition to the vehicle features the OEM is required to deliver (emission limits, noise, CO2, etc.), attribute engineering is also about those particular characteristics which customers expect from their vehicle, > The results of the vehicle tests, which cover ten key attributes, are presented in easy-to-read scatter bands, from which customers can quickly tell where their vehicles are positioned relative to their competitors, and what their strengths and weaknesses are.
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