Automotive benchmarking services

Our benchmarking services including design, cost, individual components to complete systems, powertrain performance and emissions and Noise, Vibration and Harshness. 

We offer clients broad ranging independent product knowledge, engineering expertise and benchmarking test and evaluation facilities for engines, drivelines, transmissions, battery systems and vehicles.

Ricardo has world-class capabilities to benchmark hybrid and electric vehicle systems, with a broad range of engineering expertise and an extensive internal database for comparison against benchmarking reports from other class-leading systems. Our benchmarking reports and test and evaluation facilities ensure our clients have the information and platform they need to launch a competitive vehicle into the booming hybrid and electric vehicle market.

Our capabilities combine our expertise and experience in engineering and business, including:

• Leveraging in-house technical experts in all areas of transportation equipment who are familiar with the latest developments in technology
• Developing statistical cost modelling to generate market price estimates based on feature sets, manufacturing location, production volume, and commodity cost
• Creating virtual production processes and determining variable cost and investment based on world-class manufacturing process simulation tools
• Evaluating a company's relative cost position and identifying opportunities for improvement
• Revealing Best-In-Class component designs, features, technology sets, and estimated costs
• Identifying part consolidation and functional performance improvement paths
• Understanding opportunities for new materials or manufacturing techniques

Our unique approach combines:

• Acquisition of competitive components, disassembly, imaging, examination, and testing
• Analysis of competitive components, feature set(s), technologies, manufacturing methods, and costs
• Passing of all benchmarking data through a rigorous validation process, wherein each input is scrutinized and validated using both logical and statistical tests
• Product teardown and expert technical analysis with a comprehensive evaluation of a product’s design execution
• Performance of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ cost calculations to increase understanding of a product’s cost structure
• Development of clear comparisons between like components to inform clients on the key attributes for competitiveness

• Broad ranging product knowledge, engineering expertise and benchmarking test and evaluation facilities for engines, drivelines, transmissions, battery systems and vehicles
• Access to extensive internal Ricardo databases of benchmark information including many off-the-shelf reports on market-leading products.
• Evaluation against the processes and design guidelines of Ricardo’s world-class in-house design team
• Technical commentary by experienced engineers
• Independent of any OEM, supplier, technology etc.
• Choose only what you want, no subscription fee
• Arrange meeting at Ricardo UK sites to view the hardware etc. and discuss the report with the engineers who conducted the study and wrote the report
• Consortium members (where applicable) can influence future benchmark priorities