Homologation and type approval certification

Our extensive test and development expertise and our world-class WLTP accredited facilities which are calibrated to comply with global regulations and inspected for compliance by multiple approval bodies, including:

• Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA)
• ATTEL
• DEKRA
• Idiada
• TUV
• LuxControl
• UTAC
• DNVGL
• RDW
• ATE EL
• Vincotte

Type Approval Certification is essential for OEMs seeking to demonstrate that their products meet the specified performance necessary to sell to a global market. Ricardo works with a number of accreditation authorities and witnessing bodies, including the Vehicle Certification Authority (VCA), to deliver type approval certification services to meet a range of global standards and for vehicles from a variety of categories, including:

• Light vehicles with up to four wheels (L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, L6, L7)
• Passenger vehicles inc pass car, bus and taxi vehicles (M1, M2)
• Commercial vehicles inc vans, pick-ups and commercial truck (N1, N2)

We are trusted by the automotive industry to independently validate vehicle emissions, fuel consumption and electric range.

Ricardo provides a comprehensive Conformity of Production (CoP) test service to certify that vehicles are produced to the standards of an approved type. This is a legal requirement for manufacturers and covers all ICE, HEV and EV vehicles.

Our full service CoP testing package includes comprehensive testing, as well as expert engineering support and analysis to help our customers to understand their results.

We understand the time critical nature and the flexibility required to work around manufacturing and delivery schedules to enable effective Cost of Production testing which is flexible to the requirements of our customers. Our streamlined testing and delivery process ensures a quick turnaround time at a competitive price. Additionally, our facility has virtual testing capability. This enables us to be able to perform CoP testing without the need for engineers to travel to visit the Ricardo site.

In Service Conformity testing enables manufacturers to verify that their in-service vehicles remain compliant to type-approval standards in the real world.

Ricardo provides an independent, impartial and secure end-to-end ISC testing service to our customers. We aim to provide a quick turnaround to ensure that our clients receive their results and that the vehicles are back on the road as soon as possible.

We can source vehicles from hire fleets or dealer and distributor networks. We then prepare the vehicles for testing with robust processes in place to ensure that the vehicles are cared for whilst in our facilities and returned in as received condition. Testing is completed in compliance with global standards and, in addition to emissions testing, we can offer an analysis of oil and fuel samples to future understand the in service condition of the vehicle. When testing is complete, we provide manufacturers with test data to prove compliance to relevant authorities and offer analysis to ensure that our clients get the most out of their results.

Ricardo is able to offer a wide range of vehicle testing capability remotely to our clients, including:

• Virtual certification for both the complete vehicle and e-machines
• Calibration
• General test operations

Our Virtual Vehicle Certification is conducted over a secure, live 3-way feed to our automation and data management systems at our testing facilities to allow both the witnessing body and our clients to view testing being carried out from a remote location. This enables the witnessing body to be able to validate quality checks, such as tyre pressure, in real-time via video feed, without the need to be present on-site.