REPORTING. Emergency braking, “immunity cage”, extreme temperatures … How Renault puts its cars

All the prototypes and new models of the group pass through eight different workshops, in a discreet technical center, nestled in the Norman forest.

This is one of the most secret sites of the Renault group in France, the Aubevoye technical center, hidden in the Norman forest. This is where since 1982 have been very prototypes and all cars of the diamond brand since 1982, but also now the Dacia and the Alpine. On the program: ruthless tests and tests, in different workshops and on no less than 33 different tracks, supposed to reproduce all possible situations on the road.

Pavés, deformed roads, rope turns, tunnel projecting salt water or large speed ring. The 60 km of Aubevoye tracks allow you to test 362 days a year and 24 hours a day, all the cars of the Renault group and all their equipment, such as automatic emergency braking. Demonstration with Guillaume Mercier, expert in driving aid systems. “We are at 70 km/h, we follow the car in front of us at a school of 12 meters, and all of a sudden, the car in front of us”, he illustrates.

“The emergency braking car detects the impact potential, decides to send the brakes at the last moment and we are premaching of the impact.”

Guillaume Mercier, expert in driving aid systems

in franceinfo

At least about fifty tests of this type are carried out every day and analyzed thanks to the sensors arranged in the car to constantly improve the effectiveness of braking. Same performance objective but another atmosphere inside the buildings. “There, you are in what is called ‘Cage Immunity’,” describes Anis Bouguechal, head of the electromagnetic laboratory. “It is typically in the event that you have a thunderstorm, and lightning that falls very far, it generates an electromagnetic field and it can result in dysfunctions in the calculator, with warnings that light up, doors that unlock.”

Cars must go through no less than eight different workshops. Direction that of sustainability, in front of a climatic chamber with a sign “Attention, risk of burns on bodywork”.“We are going to put him hot, especially for the part of the plastics”Lance Bertrand Régis. This expert durability torture a Renaut 4 whose doors will be opened and closed about 18,000 times in a few weeks, the equivalent of five years of use in all temperature conditions. “We accelerate the aging of plastics, he continuesThen we make snaps when we go out, slams with hot plastics, to see if they always hold well. “

Tests that sometimes even go further than the standards required by regulation. Renault thus tests, for example, the batteries of its electric models at temperatures of -30 to 50 degrees, to know their autonomy and their consumption in extreme conditions.