At Toyota‘s Arizona Proving Grounds site in Wittmann (60 miles northwest of Phoenix), the new and remodeled surfaces go beyond the smell of fresh asphalt. The $50 million overhaul will add a new sound-measuring facility, a smaller oval, a reworked ride-and-handling loop, and more off-road areas. This is expected to reduce the time required to create projects and to cut down on travel to other countries. It also wants to get more people who don’t work for Toyota to test it. We rode shotgun with TAPG engineers to experience the changes firsthand at Toyota’s biggest global testing centers. Engineers who waste important time doing a full 10-mile loop with 32 degrees of banking can now retake tests faster thanks to a new loop that’s only 5.5 miles long and made for accumulating mileage, stop-and-go testing, and faster speed assessments. Toyota’s fuel-economy predictions are based on data from a 1.75-mile route that has been converted to a specific coastdown surface. Scott Slade, Senior Program Manager of R&D, says that Toyota used to have to run many miles from a 1.3-mile piece, so the repave is good for EV coastdown tests that require at least 1.7 miles. A coastdown test measures how long it takes a car to slow down after it reaches a certain speed, with the driver putting the car in neutral. Of course, it goes further than that, such as starting the test when the drivetrain hits a certain temperature. After tens of thousands of hours of building, a large percentage of this labor is likely wasted on the people who buy these cars and then have to park them right away. In fact, TAPG offers a wide range of parking spots, making it a good choice for people who don’t trust businesses. The 1.5-mile ride-and-handling course was divided into smooth and bumpy sections, and it was repaved, smoothed, and widened. Stephen Provost, who has worked in car dynamics for 14 years, helped write the screenplay for the revamp. He said, “We wanted something that keeps all of the surfaces we need while separating pure handling from pure ride.” He says that the new plan saves at least one-third of the time that it takes to do something, as long as it is done right. “We can get more data over a shorter distance.” We were given the chance to drive two separate Toyota Camrys in a circle. An XSE with a 19-inch wheel and sportier suspension, and an LE basic model with a 17-inch wheel. This short loop features wave-like surfaces, a curve with a decreasing radius, bumps on both sides, step-up and step-down jolts, and three large-radius sweepers that mimic how a car moves on curvy roads. A part is even based on Michigan’s Southfield Freeway, which is the worst example of serious problems, like many of the freeways near the Invoice-pricing company’s office. Even though it wasn’t our most important question, Toyota came close to admitting that the Tundra Twerk video wasn’t made at their Arizona testing grounds, which we still talk about and link to all the time. Engineers can now study high-speed behavior thanks to a new, two-lane, smooth section with enough space for a car to reach 80 mph and a wide safety shoulder. A PebbleTec aggregate track with constant sprinklers at the loop’s edge provides a level of grip between wet asphalt and snow. This way, tire behavior and traction control can be changed without ever leaving the desert. Stephen says that by adding more tests to the same loop, the time spent moving between them will be shorter. We drove through the new noise pass-by zone in a 1794 Edition Sequoia. This was built to meet global standards and to allow testers to measure the car’s sound emissions. Even though it doesn’t look like it, this place has a two-car garage with a lift and Level 2 EV charging options. With the addition of lights and reflective track markings, the pass-by-noise area can now be used at any time of day. Engineers said the buildings here were built at an angle so sound wouldn’t bounce into the microphones. Laws require cars to make certain noises when moving with the throttle wide open and even when backing up. These rules vary depending on the country. Our next date was about Tacomas and dirt. Along one side of a newly made dirt hill in the newly expanded off-road area, there is a line of mailbox-sized rocks. It has already been named the Ditner Mountains by engineers. Bob Ditner, who spent decades changing how Toyota cars perform off-road and is now the manager of vehicle dynamics evaluation, has it named after him. On a set of hills with Ditner Mountain in the middle, Toyota showed off its Downhill Assist Control. Toyota chose how fast each of the five stages of off-road cruise control should go and when to intervene with the brakes. The loose, bumpy ground is meant to test brake modulation and traction. I asked our test driver if any of its clients used this trash. I like to have control of the car myself. Yes, particularly beginners in off-road driving. They use it to tell how fast they are going. The new Taco went down the 20% slope like it was meant to. Because it’s made that way. Cleaning off the carbon buildup on the Tacoma Trailhunter’s normal right pedal down a path that ends at the property fence was the most fun thing we did on our trip. Our tour guide told us that Tacoma’s “sand” driving mode was made at a not-so-impressive sand pile, which we passed by pretty fast. “Is there a road here that you avoid using?” Sir,” responds. That’s the unspoken draw of any place to test things. At first, it seems dark and boring, but once you learn about the long hours of work that went into making this long stretch of gloomy road, you start to like it. The TAPG is not for weak people. One of the ground crew told us that the ground temperature can reach 150 degrees Fahrenheit out here, and that in some years, it stays over 110 degrees Fahrenheit for more than two months straight. Engineers joke that Arizona has five bad days and 360 good days. It is, after all, a desert. There are only a handful of tests that TAPG can’t do. Toyota admitted that some durability tests on its to-do list haven’t yet been conducted and that crash testing isn’t allowed at the Arizona plant. We saw in person how the new surfaces make it possible for engineers to test performance on unpaved roads, systems for managing trails, transitions for turns, braking with low friction, traction when it’s wet, rides in the city, and behavior at high speeds, but there is more going on. To broaden its testing capabilities and showcase them, Toyota has invested heavily in testing centers in the United States. More than 37 outside businesses have hired space at TAPG in the past. Both Lucid and Rivian have campus facilities. Intertek is a private engineering company that gives top testers to makers who would rather send their test cars to a facility like this for verification than pay for their own track. Engineers can do more in less time if they are more efficient. But in 1993, when execs broke through a paper banner to open the gates, TAPG affected Toyota cars. Here, thirty years later, is where almost everything Toyota needs to do to prove a car happens.
