Swedish based global truck maker Scania has opened a new $AUD140 million (SEK975 million) 85 hectare proving ground and R&D centre at Södertälje in Sweden which it says will strengthen the its parent Traton Group’s capabilities and its ability to develop, test and validate future transport solutions under controlled and realistic conditions.
Scania says its new facility features 13 kilometres of paved roads along with four kilometres of gravel roads and adds that it has been designed to support testing across electrification, autonomous systems, safety, vehicle dynamics and conventional technologies.
The president and CEO of Scania and Traton Group, Christian Levin said that the transformation of transport requires continuously strengthening the way new technologies are developed and validated.
This investment is about building the capabilities we need for the future while ensuring that the solutions we bring to our customers have the safety, quality and performance they expect,” said Levin.
The company says the new R&D proving ground was inaugurated on on Monday this week (19 October) by putting vehicles on the track and doing what it was built for.
Scania said that instead of a traditional ribbon-cutting, a range of vehicles entered the proving ground, representing the breadth of technologies and applications the facility is designed to support.
The company reckons the new proving ground gives it the possibility of carrying out tests that previously required external test facilities, with its large, purpose-built surfaces enabling vehicle-dynamics testing, while dedicated areas can be configured for active safety and autonomous-driving scenarios with different levels of complexity.
“New technology only creates value when it performs in the real world. The R&D proving ground gives our engineers greater possibilities to test, learn and validate solutions under demanding conditions, so it strengthens our 
ability to turn innovation into solutions that deliver real value for our customers,” said Scania’s CTO and head of brand identity development, Sara Forsberg.
The facility includes three irrigated braking tracks with different friction characteristics, including asphalt, concrete and basalt tiles for safety development. The tracks make it possible to test braking with different grip levels on each side of the vehicle, and the basalt section includes a curve for braking tests while cornering.
Scania said that the facility has a flexible environment for testing advanced driver assistance systems such as automatic emergency braking, lane support and blind-spot warning, and for autonomous transport, engineers can build realistic traffic scenarios and increase their complexity gradually.
The company added that repeatability is a key part of vehicle development and the paving specification has been adapted to provide long service life and the surface evenness needed for comparable tests over time, including banked curves. Drivers experience the road as a straight despite that it is built as an oval with banking gradients of up to 22 per cent, realistically making it an endless highway for long periods of test driving .
Scania claims the new facility adds to the wider research and development capabilities available within the Traton Group.
Traton Group’s head of group R&D, Niklas Klingenberg said that the advanced testing and validation capabilities become increasingly necessary as it develops the next generation of transport solutions.
“The R&D Proving Ground is an important addition to our landscape and strengthens our ability to turn new technologies into proven solutions,” Klingenberg said.
The company also claims that nature and biodiversity have been considered in the site design with the construction project being focused on reducing resource use and environmental impact, opting for construction choices such as using ECO asphalt and HVO100 for transports, helping Traton avoid approximately 30,900 tonnes of CO2e.
