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Nissan Opens Farmington Hills, Michigan, Safety Advancement Lab

10/06/2021
Nissan opened a more than $40 million Safety Advancement Lab for vehicle safety testing at its Nissan Technical Center North America in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Nissan Technical Center North America currently serves as the main campus for Nissan Motor Company’s Research and Development in the Americas with more than 1,200 employees. This expansion brings Nissan’s overall investment in Farmington Hills to more than $310 million since opening in 1991.

“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 new lab brings more efficiency to the vehicle development process and furthers Nissan’s goal of reaching a future with virtually zero fatalities. Nissan Technical Center North America includes full vehicle crash testing, vehicle certification, advanced development testing and benchmarking. Engineers can conduct 48 different passive safety crash test simulations onsite, creating efficiencies in timing and results analysis.

“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.”

The 116,000-sq.-ft. facility is equipped with state-of-art, high-speed photography systems, data acquisition equipment and a precise vehicle tow system. The site also includes a test dummy calibration lab, space for preparing vehicles and a pedestrian safety lab.

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