Testing of the New Maybach

Press Release

Fast forward: 300,000 kilometres in just a few months For years now, DaimlerChrysler engineers have set themselves extremely high standards when it comes to the durability of their vehicles. Each test the company runs to this end is intended to simulate the stresses on a vehicle over its entire service life – and when it comes to the premium models from the Stuttgart-based car maker, that is normally a very long time. The aim of the durability testing is to simulate within the space of a few months the strain normally only exerted on a customer's car after it has covered up to 300,000 kilometres in everyday service. In order to get through this imposing workload, many tests run in fast-forward mode. One example is the heathland endurance test. It takes only 2,000 kilometres on a specially designed torture track for the prototypes and pre-production models to reach a degree of wear and tear which a car will only normally experience towards the end of a long service life. The extreme tests regularly carried out on the Hockenheimring and Nürburgring racing circuits fulfil a similar function. The Maybach clocked up 6,000 kilometres on each track, to a tempo of fixed and precisely calculated lap times. And let us not forget the 15,000 kilometres the new model completed over the gravel and unsurfaced roads of Sweden, and the full-load testing for axles and transmission over 50,000 kilometres at the high-speed circuit at Nardo in southern Italy – both serving to simulate in double-quick time the stresses and strains exerted on a car in everyday service. Test rigs: axles and bodywork under extended periods of stress In addition to the testing on track and road, the Maybach engineers also cast a close eye over the prototypes on simulation test rigs. This state-of-the-art equipment allows them to channel forces and movements into the suspension through the wheels in order to reproduce typical driving maneuvers such as braking and cornering. All the factors which effect ride comfort and driving dynamics are then recorded, i.e. suspension performance, fluctuations in wheel load, body vibrations, body damping, kinematics and elastokinematics. Analysis of the test results enabled the engineers to work out further development steps and optimize the vehicle's technology. The Maybach engineers also used the driving dynamics simulation test rig to look into the vehicle's handling characteristics in typical steering and driving maneuvers. For example, the rig was able to reproduce the full range of wheel and body movements in a stationary circle test, thus allowing conclusions to be drawn - concerning the over/understeer characteristics of the car – based on practical results. Vibration analysis benefited from a similar level of reality-based testing. Data describing the surface profiles of various different country roads and motorways was fed into the computer in the power-assisted hydraulic vibrations test rig. Hydropulse pulsations under all four wheels of the test car reproduced the effect of the uneven roads. Up to 140 acceleration sensors fixed to the inside and outside of the car registered the wheel and body vibrations during the test. A further testing station was the flat-surface test rig, which was used to simulate a level road surface. The test engineers set speeds of over 150 km/h, analyzing steering angle, wheel alignment and camber, as well as tyre characteristics when taking corners at high speed. This is another example of how cutting-edge computer-based technology can allow tests car-ried out on the road to be reproduced, and the results confirmed, under laboratory conditions.