Fiat Chrysler to open $30M autonomous driving test facility in Michigan

Fiat

Chrysler said Wednesday it’s invested more than $30 million in a new facility to develop and test

autonomous vehicle

and advanced safety technologies at its Chelsea Proving Grounds in southeast Michigan.

The facility is the first of its kind for the automaker, which has mostly relied on partnerships with the likes of

Uber

and Google subsidiary

Waymo

to develop the hardware and software used in self-driving vehicles and avoided making large investments itself under former CEO

Sergio Marchionne

. The company this spring

announced plans

to deliver as many as 62,000 additional

Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans

to Waymo and make Waymo’s tech available in customer vehicles via a licensing deal.

The new facility features a dedicated highway-speed track for testing self-driving cars with obstacles, tunnels and other features, a 35-acre safety feature testing area and a high-tech, 6,500-square-foot command center equipped with computers that can track

GPS

coordinates and test vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. It will allow

FCA

to test for different levels of automated driving, automatic electronic braking and automated parking simulations, and test protocols from third parties such as the

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety

, U.S. New Car Assessment Program and European New Car Assessment Program. Testing starts later this month.

“The all-new facility at Chelsea Proving Grounds will help support and enable the successful rollout of the company’s

five-year plan laid out earlier this year

,” Mike Manley, FCA’s new CEO and chief operating officer for the NAFTA region, said in a statement. “Our ability to test for autonomous and advanced safety technologies enables FCA to offer our customers the features they want across our brand portfolio.”

The Chelsea Proving Grounds, near Ann Arbor, opened in 1954 and now cover about 4,000 acres. About 900 people work there, the company says.

Related Video: