CAR&D objectives

A concentrate of technical excellence and creativity in the field of road vehicles.

A lean, agile permanent structure and an extended enterprise operation with a network of highly competent partners for integrated services.

Methodology

Development methodologies are evolving, as are tools and products:

  • In industry, the V-cycle has replaced the cascade method.
  • In software, the trend is towards less formal "agile" methodologies with more cycles.
  • Test benches and simulators tend to "hybridize" real and virtual sub-assemblies.

The current trend is to use a lot of :

  • functional analysis, value analysis, key design tools,
  • brain storming, and its visual design equivalent, sketching,
  • simulation and digital mock-ups,
  • mock-ups or demonstrators when the exploratory dimension is strong.

These trends are illustrated by citing the masters:

  • "Experiment is the ultimate authority", Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner in physics,
  • "Nichts ist praktischer, als eine gute Theorie", Theodore von Karman, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Note that these two quotations are crossed, the theorist appealing to experimentation while the specialist of a largely experimental science appeals to theory; what if experimentation and theory were the two legs that allow us to walk by their alternative use? cf. publication no. 44.

Given the incremental and combinatorial nature of automotive R&D, we can deduce that three axes are essential to the methodology:

  • a rigorous functional analysis of the project,
  • a broad, cross-disciplinary technical culture, enabling you to carry over components or concepts, and find the simplest possible solutions,
  • a preferential choice of the smallest tool necessary to obtain an answer, cf. Lean, Frugal Innovation, Jugaad, Accelerated Innovation, Agile Method...

Here you 'll find a list of major technical inventions related to the automobile in the broadest sense, often based on pre-existing and often remarkably simple technological building blocks, which were gradually combined.