HORIBA MIRA Announces £6m Development of Advanced Emissions Test Centre

HORIBA MIRA – a world-leader in advanced engineering, research and product testing – is further enhancing its test and engineering capabilities with a 12,000 square foot dedicated Advanced Emissions Test Centre at its Nuneaton headquarters.

The Advanced Emissions Test Centre, which represents a £6 million investment into MIRA’s engineering facilities, will provide emissions testing capabilities for global compliance, including Euro6 and Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP), as well as incorporating Real World Driving Emissions (RDE) testing capabilities. The facility will be focused around a four-wheel drive (4WD) climatic chassis dynamometer and four soak rooms.

The significant investment, which has been made by the HORIBA Group, brings the total committed investment to date to £22m since MIRA joined HORIBA in July 2015. The facility is set for completion by the end of 2016, and will create a number new jobs, including a combination of apprentices, engineers and technicians.

George Gillespie OBE, CEO at HORIBA MIRA, commented:

“We are incredibly proud to be developing this new Advanced Emissions Test Centre here in Nuneaton and helping contribute to reducing vehicle emissions globally alongside the HORIBA Group. Vehicle manufacturers will now have access to first-class facilities to ensure their vehicles meet new EU6c regulations.

“This second investment from the HORIBA Group, which follows an initial committed investment of £16m announced earlier this month, reiterates MIRA’s leading position in cutting edge automotive technologies and builds on our portfolio of expertise available to help our customers develop world leading products.”

The project will be the first to bring together six group companies of HORIBA, including HORIBA Japan and HORIBA MIRA who are collectively leading on project management, building and integration, as well as HORIBA Test Automation in UK, HORIBA UK, HORIBA France, and HORIBA Europe.

The test centre, which starts construction this month, will consist of one main test cell, where the 4WD dynamometer will be located, as well as three individual climatic soak rooms and an ambient soak room. The combination of the 4WD dynamometer, range of climatic conditions and state-of-the art HORIBA emissions systems will allow the determination of exhaust pollutants over a range of climatic conditions, from temperatures of -20°C to 35°C .

MIRA’s new facility – the first newly-created facility since 2014 – will provide vehicle manufacturers with testing services to comply with foreseen future emissions regulations. The new requirements include the additional Type Approval for RDE, enabling manufacturers to develop low carbon vehicle technologies through lab and on-the-road testing.