DEARBORN, MI: Ford showed off some of its revised safety testing facilities in its sprawling operation here west of Detroit, and it's possible to see how the consumer will benefit from the US$65 million effort.
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| (Photo: Ford Motor Company) |
Ford personnel were genuinely and fairly excited about the fact that the changes would allow them to test more vehicles at the same time than any other company in the world, and that they would now be able to create new vehicles in a lot less time. The plan is that, by mid-2007, it will take Ford 18 months to go from design approval to production readiness, and that's pretty competitive globally.This is useful to the consumer looking for fresh vehicles, to be sure, but it's not likely to create a breakthrough in safety technology. To be sure, at the media presentation there was no silver bullet device that will bring a particular safety problem to its knees, and no word of any developments on the real hot fronts of safety technology -- crash avoidance and crash notification.Ford is working on crash-avoidance technology as part of large auto industry program in Europe, which will help to make all brands better together.As for crash-notification, this is the technology made famous by GM's OnStar system, which can connect with emergency services in places where cell phones don't work and have them send help to a specific location even if no one in the car can talk. Ford showed a test version of this technology in a Volvo concept car a couple of years back and flogged it relentlessly across the PR and auto show circuits, but then just cancelled it. The new Certification Test Laboratory in Ford's engineering facility near the site of the great Greenfield Village/Henry Ford Museum does have a lot of useful and modern new technologies.
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| (Photo: Ford Motor Company) |
Maybe the most dramatic test involves the regular bashing of a test dummy's head inside various future vehicles in the Head Impact Laboratory, as part of some of the most comprehensive occupant protection crash simulation tests in the world. This lab and the 11 others in the new facility "provides our product creation team with data that allows us to deliver to our customers vehicles that are among the safest in the world," said Phil Martens, Ford's group vice president of product creation. "Including Volvo's safety capabilities and technology, Ford Motor Company is helping to lead new advances in automotive safety."With the new safety lab, Martens said, Ford now has the capability to simulate five complex collision scenarios on one crash simulator. Ford's Servo-Hydraulic Reverse Crash Simulator can recreate the way a vehicle pitches, or tilts, forward during frontal impact. Other important tests include frontal impact without pitching, destructive and non-destructive side impact and rear impact simulations. "Taken together," said Martens, "these tests provide more comprehensive collision data, faster, resulting in safer vehicles for customers."The point person in terms of safety at Ford is one of the firm's longest-serving executives, Sue Cischke, the vice-president of environment and safety engineering. Her long experience in the job convinces her that the latest investment in technology will "result in some of the safest vehicles in the world."