Nissan today announced that it is expanding its Michigan-based engineering center, Nissan Technical Center North America (NTCNA). It has spent $40 million on a new Safety Advancement Lab for vehicle safety testing.
“This expansion underscores Nissan’s commitment to the region and enables us to be a global center of excellence for new vehicle testing,” said Chris Reed, regional senior vice president, Research and Development, Nissan Americas. “The goal of virtually zero fatalities is always guiding our work. The combination of this new lab plus our passive and active safety technologies can help us reach that goal.”
The lab will make the vehicle development process more efficient and will provide the automaker with the ability to conduct full vehicle crash testing, vehicle certification, advanced development testing, and benchmarking at NTCNA.
Read Also: NHTSA Launches Probe Into 30 Million Vehicles Over Takata Airbag Inflators
The 116,000 square foot (10,777 square-meter) facility is equipped with state-of-art high-speed photography systems, data acquisition equipment, and a precise vehicle tow system to allow it to conduct more than 48 different passive safety crash test simulations onsite. It also includes a dummy calibration lab, space to prepare vehicles, and a pedestrian safety lab.
The lab is also equipped to test the integrity of high-voltage EV batteries to make Nissan’s transition into an electrified future safer.
“Here in the Safety Advancement Laboratory, we’re focused on passive safety,” says Mike Bristol, director, Vehicle Safety Test Engineering, NTCNA. “Our vehicles come equipped with technology to help prevent a crash, but in the event that there is a collision, we’re focused on helping protect customers from injury and evaluating the vehicle structure performance, airbag performance, seatbelt performance, and other mechanisms that help protect our customers.”
![](https://www.carscoops.com/wp-content/themes/carscoops/assets/images/icons/arrow.png"){kind=icon}