JLR’s New $300M EV Test Lab Can Simulate Arctic And Desert Conditions In Gray And Rainy England

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Cars need to work in all kinds of conditions and in all seasons, from scorching summer desert heat in the Middle East to the freezing winters in northern Scandinavia, and that means automakers have to spend a truckload of money during the development phase ferrying prototypes around the globe.

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But JLR says its new £250 million ($304 million) Future Energy Lab will reduce those development costs, while also reducing the carbon footprint of the entire development programs because it cuts down on the need to transport people and engineers overseas. Development times are also guaranteed to be slashed, ensuring JLR can get new models to market faster, though obviously it will still need to carry out some on-road testing.

The 323,000 sq ft (30,000 sqm) facility has been designed for the new EVs the automaker will roll out in the next few years, partly because EVs and their batteries are particularly sensitive to extreme temperatures, but also because JLR is about to get serious about electric vehicles having been very slow out of the blocks. It plans to launch nine pure EVs by 2030, the first of which is a fully electric version of the flagship Range Rover due to hit the market next year.

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Related: Range Rover Velar To Be Reborn As An EV, Electric Evoque And Discovery Sport Also Coming

Test engineers working on cars and electronic drive units (EDUs) will have access to more than £40 million ($49 million) of technical equipment including electric test rigs and EV test chambers that can simulate conditions ranging from -40 degrees C to 55 degrees C (-40 F to 131 F). More than 200 EV engineers are already working at the site located within JLR’s existing Whitley Engineering Center facility and 150 additional jobs will be created soon.

“This facility, a core component of our Reimagine strategy, is essential to providing the advanced testing capabilities that will be vital to the performance and reliability of the modern luxury vehicles we are proudly developing,” said Thomas Mueller, JLR’s executive director of product engineering.

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