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BMW鈥檚 Billion Euro R&D Facility - YouTube
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- Today BMW unveils the all-new IX.
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An electric crossover
that looks freaking sweet.
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But instead of talking about the car,
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BMW sponsored this video to
focus on the billion Euro,
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R and D headquarters that they just built
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to make designing cars like the IX
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as efficient as possible.
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Now Munich is freaking awesome,
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and under normal circumstances,
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I would have been happy
to go out there again
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to check it out,
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but you guys know the
drill global pandemic.
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Thankfully, a German
camera team was able to go
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in our stead and fire back a bunch
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of footage that ranged
from insanely cool to-
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- [Narrator] Martians playing golf?
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Philosophers?
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- Why did we get this?
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And for that matter, why does it exist?
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And we were given access
to BMW's engineers
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to ask whatever questions we wanted.
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This is going to be a hell of a ride.
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(upbeat music)
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- A couple of months
ago, we were pretty happy
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with the driving simulator that we built.
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Big screen, comfy chair
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that moves around when
you hit bumps and such.
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What more could you ask?
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Oh, oh yeah.
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That is on a whole other level.
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What you're looking at right now is a test
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of the site acceptance test
high fidelity simulator
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which has 400 square meters
of play area to toss around
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its 83 tons of mass.
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The SAT high fidelity simulator is able
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to not just faithfully
recreate the 0.65 G's you'd get
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from launching an M3
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but is actually able to accurately
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simulate the one G cornering
force of a formula E car.
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This combination of accurate
longitudinal, transverse
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and rotational movements
along with VR glasses
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or a headset allows BMWs engineers
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and test drivers to experience the feel
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of driving a car long
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before the first physical
prototype is ever made.
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And some of you are probably
thinking at this point,
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wow Linus, 83 tons of mass
being tossed around like that?
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Probably requires a lot of
energy and you'd be correct.
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The high fidelity simulator can consume
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up to six and a half megawatts
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of power delivered by
freaking super capacitors.
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Now the full featured simulator
isn't expected to be online
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until early to mid next
year, but when it is,
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and travels are okay, BMW, call me.
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Now all this attention
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to making a car fun to drive
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might make people want to
drive rather fast in it,
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particularly in Germany.
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So BMW uses both active
and passive safety features
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to help their customers
avoid the booboo mobile.
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Active safety features
try to prevent a crash
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in the first place like lane assists,
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emergency braking and
various self-driving modes.
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And these are great,
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when you're daydreaming about
retiring to a cranberry field
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getting up each morning to
overlook your beautiful bog when-
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Holy crap! There's a person.
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Active safety features are cool and all,
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but the testing of the passive features
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is a lot more fun to look at.
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The key to making a car crash as safe
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as possible is to design
the structural layout
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of the car so that the
outside can be destroyed,
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and in the process dissipate enough energy
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to keep the driver inside safe.
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The engineers there said
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that the more contact area you
have in a crash the better.
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So fun fact, if you're
cruising for a head-on bruising
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and you can't avoid
the other car outright,
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aim more direct impact means
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that the structures of the car
will have their best chance
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of safely slowing you.
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Now the main crash test dummies used
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are called the hybrid three.
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They were originally developed
by GM in the seventies,
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but have since been adopted by the society
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of automotive engineers, making
them the industry standard.
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But BMW has a full family
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of dummies with six adult
sizes and four children.
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Another fun fact.
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Well each one of these dummies costs more
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than the car they're strapped into.
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The test device for human
occupant restraints,
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AKA THOR here makes the rest
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of the crash testing costs look tame.
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It's worth as much as a house
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in Vancouver.
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The reason THOR is such an expensive boy
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is that he is extra packed with sensors
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to measure forces on the
ribs, thorax, and other bones
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to determine the likelihood of
harm to an actual human being
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in a given crash.
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Now, because THOR does his best
work in the blink of an eye,
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getting good footage of him
can be a bit of a challenge.
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That's where these 50 high
speed cameras come in.
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Each one of them records at either 1000
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or 5,000 frames per second,
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generating about one
gigabyte of footage per test.
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Holy schnikes.
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And the 50 cameras aren't
even my favorite thing
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in the room.
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Now, as you guys might know,
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getting good high speed footage requires
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(speaks in German)
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of light.
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For perspective, this right here
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is our brightest studio light.
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It consumes about a
thousand watts of power.
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Hit me.
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(screams)
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Yap.
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That's pretty bright all right,
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but an FIZ Nord-
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Okay. You can put it away.
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It's hot too.
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They have 350 times as
much light to make sure
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that they can clearly
see all of the action.
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And do you know what the best part
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of all this high-speed camera tech is?
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It's the redundancy.
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The crash test dummies are strapped
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with up to 192 signal channels
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to record acceleration pressure
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path, power, and so on.
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So basically right after the crash,
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the engineers have all the data they need.
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The high speed footage is then just used
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to verify all their findings.
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Wanna know what's even crazier?
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Before the test even starts,
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the engineers know what the forces
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and all the sensors are going to be.
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Crashing the cars is
already just verifying
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the numbers that they simulated.
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Man, computers are cool.
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What kind of computers you ask?
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First, let's take a moment
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to appreciate the detail that's required
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for this type of simulation.
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A car will have about 12 million elements,
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4,000 individual parts and
8,000 screws and spot welds.
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Running a simulation like that?
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That has got to take days, right?
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Not if you have 120,000 CPU course
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then it's more like 5 to 25
hours depending on the test.
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Now, most of you probably noticed
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that it feels like there's a bit
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of a lag between when fancy
electronics get unveiled
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to the public, like a new
GPU or a super snappy iPad,
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and when equivalent tech
is available in cars,
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and there is a good reason
for this, verification.
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If a bit flips in your desktop gaming rig
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the worst that can happen is a blue screen
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during a ranked siege match.
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In a car, well, there's
a lot more at stake.
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This is why BMW now has
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four EMC or electromagnetic
compatibility testing halls.
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EMC testing is looking for two main things
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that components aren't emitting
too much electrical noise
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and that their operation isn't influenced
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by outside electrical noise.
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According to the engineers
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getting any individual
component within spec
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is pretty easy,
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but these days, almost every component
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in the car has wires and
electricity running to them.
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And the interaction of it
all can get very complex.
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For example, the fuel pump
is going to emit a little bit
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of electronic noise
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during operation, which
you probably won't notice
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unless that noise happens to
be in the same frequency band
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as the radio causing your
favorite beats to disappear
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when you hit the gas.
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Each of the four EMC halls basically looks
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like a massive anechoic chamber
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but instead of trapping noise
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these walls are designed to trap
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any stray electromagnetic radiation
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behind the wall is shielding,
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to prevent any outside
electromagnetic radiation
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from getting in.
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Now, the hall is designed to
work between 150 kilo Hertz
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to six gigahertz, but
measurements can be taken outside
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of those frequencies just
with less ideal test results.
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The benefits of this are twofold.
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The tests can be accurate
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without any reflections
or outside interference.
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And also they aren't pumping
electromagnetic noise
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across the rest of the facility.
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This is especially important
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when they're testing
how the components hold
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up to external radiation.
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These antennas
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and signal generators
basically turn the whole room
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into a massive microwave.
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Venous schnitzel, any one?
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In about every room in this building,
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there's probably an
entire LTT videos worth
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of cool tech, but we only
have so much time today.
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So let's quick fire around
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some of the other cool things.
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In the workshop testing
and measuring building
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or a WPN on the top floor,
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there are 100 test benches
and 200 laboratories.
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On the second level there
are 12 large test benches
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that together pump about a thousand liters
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of hydraulic oil per minute,
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a 220 meter corridor and
an axle testing room.
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We weren't able to see
all of this unfortunately,
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largely because they're
working on prototypes
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of vehicles that are a long
way from even being announced
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in some of these rooms,
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but with the IX being the latest
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to finally see the light
outside of the facility,
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it gives me a lot of hope for
the work that they're doing
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inside it.
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Of course,
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no high tech lab is complete
these days without some VR.
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This allows engineers, designers,
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and executives to get a much better idea
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of how sitting in the
car will feel compared
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to looking at it on a screen.
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In particular, they said
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that this can be advantageous
for designing leatherwork.
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In the past,
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this would be done on a
physical model of the chair,
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but because the designs
are constantly changing
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by the time their designs are done
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the dimensions of the
chair might have changed.
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Well, now they're able to
import accurate textures
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onto the latest 3D models,
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and then look at it in VR to make sure
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that it can hold up in both
light and dark environments.
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And this is all powered
by top tier gaming PC
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or at least, well, it was top
tier when we got this footage.
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Hopefully they're subscribed
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to LTT so they know how to upgrade it
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to Ryzen 5,000, and one
of the latest GPU's.
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Huge thanks to BMW again
for sponsoring this video
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and letting us take a look
inside their crazy facility.
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As I said before, when the time's right
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I would really like to take
another crack at this one,
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but actually driving
the simulator instead.
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You think they let me do that?
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- [Crew Member] Yeah.
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- Yeah, yeah.
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If you guys enjoyed this video
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maybe check out our last BMW video,
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where I had to look at a
sweet concept motorcycle
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that BMW put together.
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