You Won't Believe BMW's Amazing New $105 Million Vehicle Simulation CenterYou Won't Believe BMW's Amazing New $105 Million Vehicle Simulation Center

BMW is opening its new vehicle simulation center, the world’s most advanced, with 14 separate simulators.

Dan Carney, Senior Editor

November 10, 2021

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BMW’s new Group Driving Simulation Centre boasts 14 simulators and usability labs in a brand-new $105 million, 123,000-square-foot building at the company’s Research and Innovation Centre, and Design News had the opportunity for a tour of its impressive facilities.

The huge increase in simulation capacity will let BMW convert much physical testing to simulations, which can be done less expensively, more quickly, at any time of day, in any season, and much earlier in the vehicle development process, explained Martin Wahle, head of Virtualization and Driving Simulator.

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There is a driver inside a car that is inside the hexapod. The car faces to the right and is swerving through a slalom to produce large movements in BMW's Sapphire simulator.

“We use this especially in the early stages of development,” before physical prototypes are available, he said. “This gives us a lot more input than traditional simulation models.”

In fact, the company aims to add later parts of the vehicle development process to the simulation center’s to-do list. “We want to expand into implementation and verification modes,” Wahle said.

There are a variety of different kinds of simulators in the center. This is because, not only is it prohibitively expensive for every simulator to be a top-of-the-line moving hexapod, but some factors are actually better tested on smaller, simpler simulators, he said.

The flagship simulators are the large hexapod-mounted systems. Those feature a dome with a car inside, with the virtual world projected 360 degrees around the car, creating a realistic virtual world for the test driver inside the car.

Related:DIY Budget Folding Sim Driving Rig


Another kind of simulator has a wraparound 220-degree LED wall in front of a car that sits on a platform that can tilt but doesn’t move around like the full hexapod systems. This is called the Vega Vector dynamic simulator, and the center has five of these. And there are numerous smaller simulators that employ a stationary mockup of a prototype, with projector screens placed in front of it.

While the building was finished in Spring 2021, it has taken time to assemble and test all of the simulators inside it. “These simulators don’t build themselves, so we put quite a lot of work into them,” Wahle said. With most of that work done, the center is just beginning its first real experiments.

About the Author

Dan Carney

Senior Editor, Design News

Dan’s coverage of the auto industry over three decades has taken him to the racetracks, automotive engineering centers, vehicle simulators, wind tunnels, and crash-test labs of the world.

A member of the North American Car, Truck, and Utility of the Year jury, Dan also contributes car reviews to Popular Science magazine, serves on the International Engine of the Year jury, and has judged the collegiate Formula SAE competition.

Dan is a winner of the International Motor Press Association's Ken Purdy Award for automotive writing, as well as the National Motorsports Press Association's award for magazine writing and the Washington Automotive Press Association's Golden Quill award.

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He has held a Sports Car Club of America racing license since 1991, is an SCCA National race winner, two-time SCCA Runoffs competitor in Formula F, and an Old Dominion Region Driver of the Year award winner. Co-drove a Ford Focus 1.0-liter EcoBoost to 16 Federation Internationale de l’Automobile-accredited world speed records over distances from just under 1km to over 4,104km at the CERAM test circuit in Mortefontaine, France.

He was also a longtime contributor to the Society of Automotive Engineers' Automotive Engineering International magazine.

He specializes in analyzing technical developments, particularly in the areas of motorsports, efficiency, and safety.

He has been published in The New York Times, NBC News, Motor Trend, Popular Mechanics, The Washington Post, Hagerty, AutoTrader.com, Maxim, RaceCar Engineering, AutoWeek, Virginia Living, and others.

Dan has authored books on the Honda S2000 and Dodge Viper sports cars and contributed automotive content to the consumer finance book, Fight For Your Money.

He is a member and past president of the Washington Automotive Press Association and is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers

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