I got the idea to start the Ford Simulator programme from the racetrack. During over two decades at Ford, I’d spent years on the Ford Racing team. So, when that team got their first simulator, after I had moved into vehicle dynamics, I saw big potential. I wondered if these tools that benefit racing performance could be used in other Ford programmes.
The Product Development Simulator I envisioned for road cars started putting vehicles through their paces in a virtual environment in 2020. And in the years since the simulator was launched, it has lived up to its potential.
Anything you would do when driving in a car, we’ve looked at replicating in a simulator, from driving to work on normal highways, to emergency manoeuvres.
Part of the power of virtual testing is its speed. In a single day, we can run simulations that would take six months in real life. We can run ten times as many tests in a tenth of the time.
With simulations, you don’t have to get a mechanic to switch parts out before running the next test. Vehicle damage that might total a test vehicle can be ‘repaired’ at the touch of a button.
And you don’t have to drive your test vehicle all the way from a frozen tundra to the desert to test it in a different environment – you can compare them back-to-back without leaving the simulator. And the simulator team validates all our testing against real-world outcomes.
“If we run virtual tests, we want the same answer and information we get at the race track,” said Mike Del Zio, who recently joined my team as a vehicle dynamics core methods engineer.
But in some cases, simulators can do things that couldn’t be achieved by traditional testing.
In the real world, when you test on a fifty-degree day and the next day it’s seventy-five degrees, you can’t really run the same test again under identical conditions. But virtual testing makes it possible to control those kinds of variables, and many more.
It can also test in conditions you would never find in the real world, like a highway that is perfectly flat and perfectly straight. That allows engineers to get a totally different take on how steering or brakes work, without any of the unpredictable inputs of the real world.
Today, the simulator facility in Dearborn has been used by every programme at Ford, and other simulators have been opened at Ford sites across the world.
For example, the Ford Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) team is using the simulator for the development and continuous improvement of key features, including BlueCruise hands-free highway driving.
As the virtual testing programme has grown, the simulator team has also worked to create a global ecosystem that keeps virtual testing consistent across all programmes and locations so that information and improvements can be shared quickly.
We’re also branching out into off-road simulations, and have started to work with suppliers to integrate supplier simulation capabilities into the Ford Simulator ecosystem.
Del Zio believes this is some of the most exciting work happening anywhere in the auto industry – even though he came to the team directly from the Mustang programme.
“People would ask me, why did you leave Mustang?” said Del Zio. “I was getting to take Mustangs to the racetrack, and Broncos to the desert.”
But, Del Zio said, “I was tired of running into the same challenges. And I wanted to get to work on them upstream, where we could make an even bigger difference.”
On the simulator team, he feels like he’s found his place: “We are a team of people who love to drive, building tools that build better vehicles.”
