Hyundai America Technical Center, Inc. (HATCI) celebrated in honour of 20 successful years of quality and performance testing at its California Proving Ground (CPG) in California City, Calif. The $80 million facility opened in 2005 and has seen more than 5,000 Hyundai Motor, Kia, and Genesis vehicles undergo rigorous testing on various roads and in extreme conditions to ensure their quality, durability, reliability, and safety.
Situated in the middle of the Mojave Desert, the HATCI CPG is a 4,500-acre facility serving as the centre for North America’s Hyundai Motor, Kia, and Genesis vehicle evaluation operations. The grounds include a 6.4-mile oval track, a 2-million-square-foot Vehicle Dynamics Area (VDA), a 2.75-mile winding road track, a 3.3-mile hill road, off-road evaluation loops, and various specially surfaced roads exactingly constructed to replicate U.S. highways.
Team members at the facility perform complete vehicle evaluations, durability tests, and development testing. Vehicle development operations include ride and handling evaluations, noise, vibration, harshness (NVH) tests, and heat protection assessments. The CPG also features three fully equipped garages and a material-weathering facility to accelerate and assess UV degradation.
The CPG is one of many HATCI facilities in the United States dedicated to the design, technology and engineering of Hyundai Motor Group (HMG) vehicles. HATCI supports new model development for HMG’s North American operations and global programs from dedicated engineering facilities and support staff at affiliate sites located throughout the United States, including:
- HATCI HQ (Superior Township, MI) – 220,000-square-foot state-of-the-art engineering and technology centre
- Chino Lab (Chino, CA) is a specialized research facility focused on powertrain performance tuning, specialising in eco vehicle applications.
- Hyundai America Design & Engineering Center (Irvine, CA) – 90,000 square-foot design and technical centre fitted with the world’s most advanced visualization, graphics and clay modelling technologies.
- North America Quality Center—NAQC (Chino, CA)—is a centre dedicated to quality activities spanning early prototypes, benchmarking activities, and pre-production durability.
- CRADLE (Silicon Valley, CA) is home to acceleration programs and next-generation technologies, including mobility, electrification, connectivity, and robotics.
Hyundai Motor Group directly or indirectly employs more than 570,000 people in the United States and has invested over $20.5 billion in the country since 2002.