automotive reliability and durability testing

[cwerdna]

I pointed to automotive reliability and durability testing - My Nissan Leaf Forum at Drive Unit failure symptoms and thresholds for replacement - Page 5 and I'm not sure if people paid much attention or visited some of the links.


Post links, articles, figures about automakers and their long-term reliability and durability testing here. I'll start.

How Engine Development Teams Ensure Durability – Feature – Car and Driver | Car and Driver Blog - talks about beating the crap out of engines

Nissan Proves Commercial Vehicle Toughness in Extreme Arizona Desert - YouTube 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. Some quotes typed up at Official Tesla Model S thread - Page 270 - My Nissan Leaf Forum.


Robots Are Test Driving Your Next Car - My Nissan Leaf Forum is about Ford using robots to help test cars on the track. Here's a few more about Ford:
On the (very bumpy) road with Fords robotic almost-self-driving test track truck | ExtremeTech
http://www.at.ford.com/news/cn/Pages/How%20Ford%20Uses%20Robots%20in%20Vehicle%20Testing%20Assembly.aspx -- too bad a lot of videos here no longer work.

I found this:
Building the million-mile car | Fox News 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.
...
At its Stanfield, Ariz., proving grounds, Infiniti has early prototype cars with about 300,000 miles on each vehicle, and simulates road wear for 20 years of use.

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 Testing | Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers

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...

Inside Ford's high-tech climate chamber - Never thought about ICE air filters possibly getting clogged w/snow before.

The first few minutes of Translogic 185: Ford Autonomous Testing and Virtual Manufacturing has a bit more details on Ford's testing w/cars driven by "robot".

 

[cwerdna]

Anyone? I finally got around to watching Nissan “TITAN Truckumentaryâ€￾ Chapter 4: TITAN tough - YouTube.

Wayne Gerdes of cleanmpg.com posted 2016 Nissan Titan XD Destruction Testing - YouTube today. In his Facebook post at https://www.facebook.com/groups/160652140622334/permalink/1045590172128522/, he said "Destruction Testing front and center and in your face. Damn these trucks are tough.
The alignment is the same spec as when they started testing too!"

MANY years ago GM's bankruptcy, I saw an ep of Behind Closed Doors with Joan Lunden where she went to GM's testing facilities and they did some pretty crazy stuff. As I posted at Chevy Spark EV Forum View topic - Just got into an accident... "During part of it, they showed some of the testing facilities at GM. I saw some fairly extreme stuff like cars intentionally being spun out or driving up and over curb at speed (that ran parallel to the road). Think driving along at 40+ mph, drifting slightly to the right, having one side end up on the sidewalk, then coming back onto the road. Boom boom! Boom boom! "

 

[cwerdna]

So nobody here cares about this subject and/or nobody has info to add about what any automaker does on this subject?

I skimmed only bits of Perforated seats durability? and that prompted to me to do some quick Google searches for stuff re: car seat durability tests. I found stuff like this:

Testing | Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers - little info on car seats, specifically
Ford uses hefty men to test durability of 2015 F-150 seats - interesting

Last summer, Ford assigned about a dozen men weighing between 265 and 275 pounds to work as many as 10 hours a day climbing into and out of the driver's seat of a 2015 F-150, a Ford spokesman said. The testers were to enter and exit the trucks at least 10,000 times in the course of a week.

Human testers were used instead of robots in order to replicate actual wear and tear, the spokesman said.

The testers were required to wear the same pair of jeans, and the seats were sprinkled with Arizona fine dust, a commercially available material used to simulate the consistency of dirt, the spokesman said.

Ford Motor Company Fabric Durability Testing | Ford Authority
Durability of Buick Interior Materials: Tested and Confirmed The News Wheel
Main MediaÂ*-Â*United KingdomÂ*-Â*Nissan Newsroom - 11 stones is apparently 154 pounds or almost 70 kg

 

[GSP]

Quality, Reliability, and Durability (aka QRD) are important subjects for any automaker or consumer. It is hard work, and takes significant time and money, but absolutely necessary for long term survival for any automaker.

Thanks cwerdna for posting these product validation testing links. You are doing us all a service, despite what looks like a lack of interest. This really is important for long term Tesla investors, whether the invest in TSLA, or a new S or X.

Tesla is working on QRD. They did significant field testing of the Chademo adapter. This caused a delayed introduction, and reportedly a redesign of the adapter, but it seems to be working fine at Chademo stations world-wide. I think they did more testing of the X before production. That was good for the "R" and the "D," but it looks like manufacturing quality and design for assembly needs some work before Tesla can launch a product "flawlessly." (to borrow some language from arch-rival GM)

Let's hope Tesla will be even better for the launch of the III. I have every reason to believe they will be.

GSP

 

[cwerdna]

The doors opening/closing 84,000 times figure is also mentioned at Testing | Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers

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.

I figured I'd mention this again, in light of the problems w/the front doors on the Model X and its FWD. One really has to wonder if Tesla has done the above on the X, esp. on more than one vehicle (sample) and if problems were corrected along the way w/re-tests to ensure at least 84K cycles w/o problems.

 

[ohmman]

I figured I'd mention this again, in light of the problems w/the front doors on the Model X and its FWD. One really has to wonder if Tesla has done the above on the X, esp. on more than one vehicle (sample) and if problems were corrected along the way w/re-tests to ensure at least 84K cycles w/o problems.

I think the answer to your question is that we really just don't know. The hypothesis you propose (that they haven't done that kind of testing) seems to match with the evidence so far.

 

[WhiteCap]

I've seen several Tesla statements that indicate that much of the engineering going into the Model 3 is about "Ease of Manufacturing" - which is good - but I'd sure like to be seeing some more information about both "Ease of Maintenance" and "Increased Reliability". I have a Model3 deposit, but don't yet have the information I would need to decided on converting it into an order. Hoping for a good outcome.

 

[cwerdna]

MANY years ago GM's bankruptcy, I saw an ep of Behind Closed Doors with Joan Lunden where she went to GM's testing facilities and they did some pretty crazy stuff. As I posted at Chevy Spark EV Forum View topic - Just got into an accident... "During part of it, they showed some of the testing facilities at GM. I saw some fairly extreme stuff like cars intentionally being spun out or driving up and over curb at speed (that ran parallel to the road). Think driving along at 40+ mph, drifting slightly to the right, having one side end up on the sidewalk, then coming back onto the road. Boom boom! Boom boom! "

Ok, Today, noticed Joan Lunden put up the segment I was talking about on June 29, 2016.

It's at

. Skip to 1:01. I haven't watched this in ages. 0:30 to to ~1:25 may be worth watching, as well.

 

[cwerdna]

I stumbled across Chrysler Technical Center (CTC): huge state-of-the-art headquarters and indirectly, I found a bunch of videos at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

I've only watched these so far:

At around 0:50, they mention 3,000 miles a week on a test car and although they didn't say the # of vehicles, they said 2.5 million miles in a little over 14 weeks, spread out over an unknown # of vehicles.

on the Dart mentions 8.4 million miles and my OP mentioned 8.5 million.

 

[cwerdna]

I've seen several Tesla statements that indicate that much of the engineering going into the Model 3 is about "Ease of Manufacturing" - which is good

Seems like their "ease of manfacturing" may not have worked out too well given Tesla Model 3 production reached ~440 units to date last month, sources say vs. Nissan Shows How To Launch An EV Right, Almost 4,000 LEAF Sales In Debut Month For Japan.

OT: I just saw this posted on LinkedIn (!) by Nissan.

They mention the average car door slams about 45K times in 10 years (interesting this is so different the 84K figure I cited in the OP). The robot can do 14K slams/day so the video says they can simulate the 10 years of usage in 3 days (well, actually it'd take ~3.2 days). Still keep wondering if Tesla simulates this many cycles on the Model X doors and if they can do it as quickly... How about the Model S door handles?

 

[cwerdna]

EQC 2019: Extreme testing | Teaser.
claims

Like all Mercedes-Benz vehicles, the Mercedes-Benz EQC (2019) undergoes an extreme testing and this is the official teaser. The EQC is being intensively tested and undergoes a demanding programme with around 500 individual tests. Prototypes and pre-production vehicles cover several million kilometres on four continents until their market launch. There are also special tests for the electric drive, the battery and the interaction of all drive components. In addition, the first Mercedes-Benz member of the technology and product brand EQ is checked on numerous test rigs. In doing so, the Mercedes-Benz engineers can build on the comprehensive knowledge gained from digital testing. #switchtoEQ

Watch Mercedes-Benz EQC 2019 Conduct Final Heat Testing in the video starting around 1:10 talks about testing for 3 years, having driven millions of km, having driven 90 prototypes + 30 pre-production cars.