(August 11, 2010) INGOLSTADT, Germany — They stick their noses into everything — it’s just part of their job. The Audi Odor Team, generally referred to as the “Nose Team,” is on the trail of unpleasant odors in vehicles.

They work to ensure a consistently pleasant odor level in Audi vehicles. Plastic parts that give off unpleasant odors, leather that smells like fish oil or floor mats that exude an aroma of onions don’t stand a chance at Audi. The same goes for materials that can give off unhealthy emissions in the car.

Around 500 different components from each model’s interior are analyzed using the human nose as a measuring device. Audi applies the strictest standards in its fight against odors and sets the benchmark for the industry. The aim is not actually to achieve the “odorless” car, but rather the “neutral odor” car in which the customer feels at ease.

“There cannot be and never will be an odor-free car. That isn’t even desirable. You wouldn’t want to sit in a noiseless vehicle either,” explains Heiko Lüssmann-Geiger, Head of the Audi Nose Team. These days the car has become an event for the senses. “You spend so much time there now that what your senses perceive in the car has become ever more important,” says Lüssmann-Geiger.

A new vehicle should therefore always have a typical but never unpleasant odor. It is up to the olfactory experts to ensure this. Olfactorics is the study of the sense of smell.

Although, at first glance, this plays a rather subordinate role compared to other vehicle properties, it has a fundamental significance in the subconscious of the customer. The head of the Nose Team explains this with the example of the scientifically based comfort hierarchy: “You have to imagine this as a pyramid. At the tip of this hierarchy pyramid is the well-being of the customer, right at the base is the odor. If the customer is now irritated by this odor, he will no longer perceive all the other positive comfort-related properties of the vehicle properly. He is too annoyed by the disagreeable odor.”

The Nose Team became an indispensable part of vehicle development and quality assurance at Audi back in 1985. Since then, the carmaker based in Ingolstadt has played a pioneering role in the field of vehicle odors. Lüssmann-Geiger recalls that on the initiative of Audi, the automotive manufacturers in the German automotive industry association (VDA) sat down in 1991 in order to set up a uniform procedure for odor assessment.

Until this point, almost every vehicle producer had its own system for grading odors. The Ingolstadt chemists had compared the test parameters and worked out a standard test specification for the odor test. And the effort has paid off — since 1992 this process has been adopted by all German manufacturers.

The benefit lies in the fact that car builders can use this system to compare their results, and suppliers now only have to have their components tested by one process.