automotive reliability and durability testing

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

cwerdna

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 3, 2011
Messages
13,674
Location
SF Bay Area, CA
Post links, articles, figures about automakers and their long-term reliability and durability testing.

Starting splinter thread from http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=377048#p377048" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

http://blog.caranddriver.com/how-powertrain-development-teams-ensure-durability-by-beating-the-crap-out-of-engines/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; - talks about beating the crap out of engines

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yrw5fXMa78" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; that I posted in another thread mentions how Nissan loaned this AZ company the NV 3500 van and they were putting on 7500 miles/week, 80K miles in 3 months. They showed a van w/557K miles.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=13363" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; is about Ford using robots to help test cars on the track. Here's a few more about Ford:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/172992-on-the-very-bumpy-road-with-fords-robotic-almost-self-driving-test-track-truck" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.at.ford.com/news/cn/Pages/How%20Ford%20Uses%20Robots%20in%20Vehicle%20Testing%20Assembly.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I found this:
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/05/01/building-million-mile-car/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; - yeah, yeah Fox News
The automaker racked up about 8.5 million miles on the road and in the lab on its Dart test fleet, averaging about 150,000 miles per car. That’s about twice as much driving as Chrysler put its test cars through just five years ago.

During the tests, Chrysler made sure that the horn can handle at least 75,000 honks (in China, drivers honk about 20 times per day, or 40 times more than the US), the doors can open and close 84,000 times, and the brakes can last for about 400,000 red lights and the pedal can be pressed about 1 million times.
...
For the newly designed 2013 Malibu, Chevrolet engineers used about 170 pre-production test cars, driving each one about 45,000 miles per month for 22 months. (The re-designed 2013 Malibu Eco debuted in March.) In total, they put about 1 million miles on the test cars during the pre-production phase.
The doors opening/closing 84,000 times figure is also mentioned at http://www.autoalliance.org/auto-innovation/testing" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.
It takes 84,000 open-and-close cycles to simulate 10 years of customer use of a car door. This testing happens in a wide range of temperatures, just like real life.
AGES ago, before GM's bankruptcy, I recall reading an article (that's LONG gone off the web now :() where it mentioned that GM changed their testing procedure from testing parts until mileage warranty expiration to testing until part failure. I guess the old procedure might help explain why the 3 GM vehicles we had long ago weren't so reliable...
 
Sorta along these lines is this video:

Inside Ford's high-tech climate chamber:
http://www.autoblog.com/2014/12/26/ford-driveability-test-facility-climate-chamber-simulator-video/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Never thought about ICE air filters possibly getting clogged w/snow before...
 
The first few minutes of http://www.autoblog.com/2015/09/22/ford-autonomous-testing-virtual-manufacturing-translogic-185 has a bit more details on Ford's testing w/cars driven by "robot".
 
Sorta along these lines, Joan Lunden finally put up a segment about going behind GM's proving grounds that aired LONG ago. From about 0:20 to ~1:24 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnwki1NbMxY shows some of GM's testing.
 
I just saw this posted on LinkedIn (!) by Nissan.

https://youtu.be/CooCOEv-r0o

They mention the average car door slam about 45K times in 10 years. The robot can do 14K slams/day.
 
Back
Top