14 DAY TRIAL // American multinational corporation General Motors Company, otherwise known as GM, is determined to improve on the ecological footprint of the vehicles it designs, manufactures and markets.
To this end, the company has decided to equip its testing facility on the Warren Technical Center campus in the state of Michigan in the US with a brand-new wind tunnel.
On its website, the American multinational corporation writes that it was just yesterday, March 13, that it broke ground on this project.
It further details that the wind tunnel now under construction on the premises of its Technical Center campus in Warren, Michigan is to be a reduced-scale one.
If the company's estimates are correct, then the costs associated with building this tunnel will amount to $30 million (€21.55 million).
Once completed, the tunnel will make it possible for specialists working with the General Motors Company to come up with more aerodynamic car models.
It is expected that, on the long run, this will yield noteworthy benefits as far as environmental protection is concerned, information shared with the public says.
According to the multinational corporation, this is chiefly due to the fact that aerodynamic cars have been documented to have a lower fuel consumption.
“General Motors broke ground today on a new $30 million reduced-scale wind tunnel to expand its aerodynamic testing facility on its Warren Technical Center campus,” the company writes on its website.
“The investment will improve test capabilities and support of aerodynamic development, critical to GM’s global carbon dioxide compliance strategy,” it goes on to detail.
The General Motors Company estimated that, once this wind tunnel is completed and becomes operational, the Warren Technical Center will experience a 50% increase in reduced-scale testing capacity and a 25% increase in full-scale testing capacity.
In order to ensure that the tests carried out at this new facility are as accurate as possible, the tunnel will be equipped with a moving ground plane intended to make it possible to recreate full driving conditions in this artificial environment.
“The new facility will add a 50-percent increase in reduced-scale testing capacity, a 25-percent increase in full-scale testing capacity and create up to five new jobs.”
“In addition, the new wind tunnel will use a moving ground plane to simulate full driving conditions enabling higher fidelity aerodynamic testing,” the company explains.
Interestingly enough, the completion of this project is expected to translate into the creation of about five new job opportunities.
For the time being, information concerning when exactly GM's new reduced-scale wind tunnel is completed and when it becomes operational has not been made available to the public.