A person sits behind the wheel of a vehicle suspended above the floor as an overseas road appears across a wraparound screen. The road is not real — but it is a virtual recreation of one that is. As the driver turns the wheel, Stellantis engineers study how the vehicle responds, searching for anything that does not feel quite right — and ensuring a Jeep, for example, still drives the way a Jeep should. It is one of many forms of vehicle testing happening inside the Stellantis Canada-University of Windsor Automotive Research and Development Centre, better known as the ARDC. The Windsor facility marked its 30th anniversary Tuesday, giving members of the media a rare look inside a building where much of the work is normally kept under wraps. Opened in May 1996 with a $30 million investment, the ARDC was Canada’s first partnership of its kind linking the automotive industry with academia. Since then, more than $2 billion in Canadian research and development spending has been connected to the centre, which Stellantis says has contributed to the development of nearly every vehicle in its portfolio. The technology may have changed dramatically since 1996, but the objective has remained largely the same: find problems early, improve how vehicles perform, and prepare them for roads their future owners have yet to travel. Today, the ARDC employs approximately 800 people and spans more than 93,000 square metres near the Windsor Assembly Plant and the Canada-U.S. border. But when the doors first opened, the automotive future was still being created using some decidedly traditional tools. “In 1996, we still had designers that actually used pencil and ruler,” said Antonio “Tony” Mancina, Stellantis’ director of Canada engineering. “Everything was done by hand entirely.” Three decades later, the pencils and rulers have largely given way to driving simulators, artificial intelligence, and environmental testing chambers. Inside the Vehicle Dynamics Simulator Laboratory, engineers can recreate roads from countries including Brazil, France, Germany, and Italy without leaving Windsor. The simulator is used to assess ride and handling, driver-assistance technology, control systems, and other aspects of a vehicle’s performance before it reaches a real roadway. Mohammed Malik, manager of the simulator lab, said the technology also helps engineers preserve the character associated with each Stellantis brand. “The other thing that we are trying to do is protect the DNA of the vehicle,” Malik said. “A Jeep is a Jeep because of whatever the performance is — the targets, right? We need to make sure that we have those targets.” Elsewhere in the facility, road-test rigs shake vehicles through millions of kilometres of simulated driving. Stellantis says those rigs have recreated the equivalent of approximately 200 million kilometres over the past 30 years — comparable to more than 500 trips to the moon. The testing does not stop there. The ARDC’s brake laboratory has recorded 96,840 hours of vehicle testing and 912,000 stops. Its seating laboratory examines everything from durability and vibration to temperature and comfort, while other areas test steering, corrosion, and exterior lighting. Much of what happens inside the building cannot be shown publicly because engineers are not limited to vehicles already found in showrooms. “We don’t only work on current production vehicles,” Mancina said. “We work on future vehicles as well.” The newest addition to the complex offers the clearest look at where that future is heading. Stellantis’ North America Battery Technology Centre was completed at the end of 2025, with around-the-clock testing beginning in January. Spanning more than 8,600 square metres, the facility serves as the company’s North American hub for developing and validating cells, modules, and battery packs for electric and hybrid vehicles. Its 35 walk-in climatic chambers can accommodate as many as 63 battery packs simultaneously, while 11 smaller chambers can test up to 132 individual cells at once. Testing can replicate temperatures ranging from -40 C to 80 C. The facility also has storage capacity for 120 electric-vehicle battery packs and is expected to create approximately 55 highly skilled engineering and technical positions. Trevor Longley, president and CEO of Stellantis Canada, said the ARDC’s relationship with the University of Windsor and other Canadian universities has helped the automaker access expertise that is difficult to replicate elsewhere. “What we wanted to do when we put this facility here was find the best and brightest talent pool that we could leverage,” Longley said. “What I think we found ultimately is, with the University of Windsor as a partner and universities across Canada, we’ve got this really great relationship that gave us a pool of technology and engineering expertise that’s hard to find elsewhere.” More than 800 engineering co-op placements have taken place at the ARDC over its 30-year history. Some of those students later returned as full-time Stellantis employees. Mancina is among them. He joined the facility as a University of Windsor engineering co-op student in 1999. Now, he oversees the operation he once entered as a student. “It’s come full circle,” Mancina said. “Now I’m running the facility, which is a very proud moment for my mother.” Artificial intelligence is also becoming part of the ARDC’s next chapter. Mancina said engineers work with enormous amounts of data and are using AI to complete some tasks in hours that previously required a week.
