![]() ![]() Test drivers try to kill a car to make sure it doesn’t kill you. Prototype cars need to be tested, tweaked, calibrated and generally flogged to death in extreme climate environments that would have sane people booking the next flight back to civilization. This can all be tested in a secure lab away from prying eyes. ![]() With a washing machine, so long as it doesn’t leak, can complete a prescribed number of wash cycles over its lifetime and doesn’t explode when you load it with knickers and detergent you’re probably good to ship. But, at some point, the rubber quite literally has to hit the road. Getting there takes an enormous engineering effort and countless hours of testing both real and virtual, in labs and workshops and on the private test track. Successfully achieving all of this is why it takes four or five years to get a car from swishy sketch to something you can walk into a showroom and plonk down a check for. It’s Hard To Camouflage A Car Without Affecting Its Functionality The modern passenger vehicle is an engineering miracle. Oh, and if it will start every morning that’d be peachy. ![]() It has to get by on minimal maintenance, hopefully be nice to look at and easy to operate, affordable to purchase and be stamped out by the thousand on tiny profit margins with no variation in quality. Think about it at least 3000 individual parts made of different materials various alloys, plastics, rubbers and fabrics make up intricate systems that all have to work together seamlessly to make sure the thing doesn’t rattle itself apart, keeps its occupants safe and comfortable and fulfill its intended function of fitting into your life and enabling you to get shit done with a minimum of fuss. Here’s how my team did it.Ĭars are by some margin the most complex consumer grade products you can buy. Adding camouflage to disguise a test car is not a life-and-death matter in the same way hiding a tank is, but as a car designer I took the task just as seriously. People do way worse things to their cars which means you have to test a new car out in the real world where everyone has a camera connected to the Internet in their pocket. People do not treat cars like they treat washing machines. If you want to build the world’s newest and most exciting washing machine you can test it in a lab until it’s time to release it. ![]()
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