INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Allison Transmission is developing a 60,000 sq.-ft. Vehicle Environment Test (VET) Center in Indianapolis. It’s currently under construction, with the official opening scheduled for July 8, 2020.

The facility will house two environmental chambers capable of simulating a broad range of environmental conditions and duty cycles, including temperature extremes from minus-54 to 125 degrees F., altitudes of up to 18,000 feet, dynamometer-simulated road grades and other on-road conditions.

Allison and its OEM partners will use the VET center to accelerate development and validation of conventional powertrains, alternative fuel vehicles, electric hybrid vehicles and fully electric vehicles for all aspects of performance — including emissions and fuel economy. The Center can accommodate most commercial on- and off-highway and wheeled defense vehicle applications.

“This will one of a few such facilities in the United States and the only one of its kind in the mid-west,” said Randy Kirk, senior vice president of product engineering and program management at Allison Transmission. “This center moves Allison beyond powertrain innovation, enabling Allison and our partners to bring new innovative technology and vehicle systems to market faster and more efficiently.”

The new VET center breaks the seasonal dependency of the product development cycle while eliminating nature-induced variations in fuel economy and performance testing.

The Center can simulate any temperature, any road and any location, on any day all in one location. But the real pay-off is taking the reliable and repeatable data produced in the VET and driving those correlations back into models and simulations to create more sophisticated virtual product development.

When not in use by Allison, the Center will be available to external parties to support their testing and certification needs. All outside customer data will be kept secure and confidential.