Secrets of Immendingen: Inside Mercedes-Benz's Testing Facility that can Create its Own Weather

Immendingen is a municipality in Germany, less than 150 km away, and an hour or so from the Mercedes-Benz HQ in Stuttgart. Ten years ago, Mercedes-Benz started building what has now become the world’s finest and most high-tech vehicle testing facility, adding the world’s most advanced light testing centre (Yes, it even tests headlight technology) as recently as last week.

But Immendingen isn’t just a ginormous testing facility that helps Mercedes-Benz create some of the finest automobiles on the planet. It is also a beacon of innovation, technology, and out-of-the-box thinking on Merc’s part.

Here are some incredible facts about Immendingen that will blow your mind:

• Sheep is used to maintain the landscape. Once you’ve read that again, just to make sure that you weren’t hoodwinked the first time around, you’ll realise it’s super clever. Sheep graze. We know that. What doesn’t strike us is that grazing grounds seldom have trees and shrubs. Trees or shrubs are generally not ideal for vehicle testing, and unlike sheep, cannot be herded away. So the sheep help, and it’s a hundred per cent eco-friendly method of keeping the ground as rough pastures.
• 30,000 cars have been tested over a total of cumulative 100 million kilometres, which is the equivalent of circling planet Earth a staggering 2,500 times. A total of 400 vehicles can be out on the track with 30 different test modules at the same time.

• The proving ground, which is at the cutting edge of technology, also acts as a biodiversity catchment area with its compensation zones or vast run-offs acting as refuges for endangered animal and plant species, including those on the Red list. The proving grounds also have numerous ponds, forested areas, sand lenses, and nesting boxes that further help the cause of biodiversity conservation.
• Every kind of road in the world is simulated inside Immendingen. There are a total of 86 km of roads and a mind-numbing 286 junctions to help engineers evaluate every aspect of real-world driving conditions that the cars will eventually be subjected to. There is a city centre test module with 1.5 km of roads and a variety of intersections for effectively testing autonomous driver assistance systems.
• The Bertha test site alone is spread over 1,00,000 sq m. The grounds depict the real-world traffic environment in many ways: from complex urban intersections to mountain passes with nearly 180 metres of altitude change, from rough roads and cobblestones to motorways and off-road tracks. Some routes replicate the road conditions and road markings in European countries, as well as copies of roads and road markings from the USA, China, or Japan. Strangely, Indian roads seem to be impossible to duplicate, but that small snag aside, Immendingen allows Merc to test their cars for practically every and any condition.

• The proving ground has an artificial Sun and can create its own weather. To test how vehicle sensors behave under low sun or particularly bright light sources, even on overcast days or at dusk, Immendingen features a so-called artificial sun. These high-performance mobile lights are otherwise used on Arctic ships for iceberg detection. In addition, heavy rain and spray can also be simulated using special systems.
• Even the military made way for Merc. Well, we are taking creative liberties with that statement, but the fact is that Immendingen used to be a military base. Mercedes-Benz has invested over 200 million Euros to create the facility that now houses 250 permanent employees and can accommodate up to 2,100 employees during peak working weeks.
• It’s a micro city. That’s what the proving ground really is, with 100 electric vehicle charging stations and a dozen fuel stations inside the premises. As if that wasn’t enough, the facility even has its own fully equipped plant fire brigade. 

And we haven’t even told you that it’s absolutely stunning to look at. For that, we’ll let the pictures do the talking.