Continental Celebrates One Million Trips on Its Unique, Fully Automated Tire Braking Test Facility

In the AIBA facility, real vehicles are tested on real road surfaces under fully climatecontrolled conditions.

The results are precise, repeatable, and free from external influences such as temperature changes, wind, or precipitation.

Continental has carried out more than a million trips on its fully automated tire braking test facility known as the AIBA (Automated Indoor Braking Analyzer) since 2012. The facility, which is unique worldwide, enables precisely reproducible test processes to check the performance of new car and van tires on different road surfaces – dry and wet – under laboratory conditions. Its advantages lie not only in the special test environment. In the facility, unmanned, rail-guided vehicles are automatically accelerated to speeds of up to 120 km/h along a track almost 100 meters long. They are then braked autonomously on a 75-meter-long braking track. No fuel is required for this process. This is because the acceleration takes place with the help of an electromagnetic linear drive borrowed from modern roller-coaster technology. The AIBA facility also eliminates the need for the many kilometers of driving that are required on normal test tracks for starting off and pulling away. The test facility is thus an example of Continental’s strong commitment to maximum driving safety in traffic. It also reflects the company’s comprehensive efforts to develop and produce increasingly environmentally friendly tires.

More than one million test drives for maximum safety on the road