Pirelli opens new virtual development centre at German site

Breuberg, Germany – Pirelli has opened a new virtual development centre at its tire manufacturing site in Breuberg, south of Frankfurt, Germany.

The centre is a “significant milestone” for the group's strategy, enabling the tire maker to enhance virtual development and testing, said a Pirelli announcement. 

The unit will use artificial intelligence and “neural networks” for reduce tire development time by 30%, added the statement issued 14 Dec.

In addition to saving time and costs, the centre also contributes to sustainability by cutting the number of prototypes by 30%, the tire maker added.

The facility includes a driving simulator which, according to Pirelli, helps achieve “increasingly more precise results” compared to traditional R&D and test methods.

At the centre, Pirelli can develop tires for “cars that don't yet exist in reality, but which are provided to us by car manufacturers in the form of digital models," said Thomas Michel, CTO, Pirelli Germany.

Here, Michel added, AI and neural networks help speed up the development of virtual tire models “enormously".

"What used to take hours or even days is now often completed in just a few seconds,” he commented. “It’s a sort of a virtual tire factory."

At the unit, Pirelli engineers can access and test drive virtual versions of vehicle models provided by the car makers for the simulator.

The engineers, then see how the vehicle behaviour is affected by steering, acceleration, and braking interventions on the virtual vehicle.

These capabilities will support “all virtual project phases for German car manufacturers," stated Florian Waffenschmidt, head of the centre.