(December 4, 2019) CREWE, England — Bentley Motors has announced that work has commenced on a state-of-the-art engineering test facility at the company’s expanding headquarters in Crewe, England. The new center is the latest phase in on-going development at the Pyms Lane site where all Bentley cars are hand-built.

With completion due next autumn, the new building will cover more than 15,000 square feet over two stories. Included in this figure will be 2,536 square feet of office space and 5,085 square feet designed for the installation of a single climate-controlled chassis dynamometer, operating across a range of temperatures from -10°C to +40°C.

There will also be a dedicated laboratory to run Real Driving Emissions (RDE) using the latest state of the art portable emissions measurement systems. Bentley’s Technical Conformity department will be based in the test centre, with over 100 people working in the building.

The center will allow Bentley to meet increased consumer demand for its current range of ultra-luxury vehicles, including the all-new, performance-orientated Flying Spur, the Continental GT and the new Bentayga Hybrid SUV, which marks Bentley’s first step towards electrification.

It will also play a key role in Bentley’s journey to become the world’s most sustainable luxury automotive manufacturer, giving the business capacity to grow as it diversifies into hybrid and electric models. The British marque has already confirmed that it will offer hybrid or electric variants of all of its models by 2023.

The building project, which includes an outdoor fuel filling station for test vehicles, complements Bentley’s advanced new research and development headquarters, industry-leading training centre, engine production facility and paint shop.

It will also allow Bentley to carry out the latest WLTP fuel and efficiency test procedures more swiftly in-house. The World Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Procedure consumption and CO2 emissions from passenger cars, as well as their pollutant emissions. It was developed as a global benchmark for all cars and came into force in 2017.