Introducing Krzyś Rygielski and the Testing & Homologation Team
Our Head of Vehicle Testing & Homologation, Krzyś Rygielski, joined Charge Cars in February of 2020. Coming from Jankel, which specialises in armoured and military vehicles, Krzyś brought a wealth of experience to the company. We dive deeper to find out more about him and his team.
“For as long as I can remember I’ve loved cars, which is odd as no one else in my family is a petrolhead. As a kid on long family roadtrips I would be more interested in looking out of the window at the cars rather than the scenery itself and would pretend to drive my mum’s Peugeot when it was parked. I always knew I wanted to work with cars, as I figured if I’m going to spend most of my time doing one thing it has to be something I’m passionate about, so I ended up studying Automotive Engineering at university. My first real automotive job was a one year placement in a crash laboratory, sled testing vehicle bodyshells with crash test dummies to test seatbelts, seats and airbags and from that moment on it confirmed for me that this was what I wanted do. Since then I have worked with a variety of vehicles ranging from bespoke sports cars, armoured military vehicles, trucks and even a street sweeper, conducting handling and braking tests on tracks, freezing and baking them in environmental chambers, driving them off road and blast and ballistic testing to assess vehicle armour.”
“There were a few things that attracted me to Charge Cars. I’ve felt for a while that the future is electric and wanted to get exposure to this technology. Once Charge popped up, it grabbed my attention immediately. I love the company and the car that Charge is working on; it’s very different to anything else that exists at the moment, from the company experience to the product itself. Additionally the link with Arrival made it clear that this is a big opportunity.”
“As Head of Testing & Homologation at Charge, I am responsible for everything to do with making sure the vehicle is completely road ready from a development and sign-off point of view. There are two areas of responsibility; the testing side of things which is coordinating all testing activities on component and vehicle level to make sure everything functions as intended, and homologation aspect which ensures that our Electric Mustang product meets all the necessary certification requirements for it to be sold in different markets.”
When customers purchase cars, they might not be aware of the amount and types of tests that have to be run, for their car to be fully functional and serve them for a long time. Krzyś talks about some of the tests his team has to complete for the car to be road ready:
“Some of the examples of what we do is track work, where the car is taken to a test track and aspects such as acceleration, braking, noise and suspension behaviour are assessed and developed. Furthermore we perform lab tests where we evaluate EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) to understand how all the components react when subjected to magnetic fields and understanding if any generate undesirable EMI (electromagnetic interference), as well as lab based high and low temperature tests to ensure the vehicle functions in extreme weather conditions with no faults.”
“We are now expanding our Testing & Homologation team which is great as with more personnel we have better instrumentation capabilities, meaning we are able to record more vehicle parameters than ever before, such as: suspension characteristics, torsion, temperatures changes, fluid flows, g-levels and more. Reviewing all of this data not only helps us in developing the product but also feeds into several departments such as mechanical and production teams as it can can input into their processes.”
“Many customers don’t usually think about the number of tests and requirements the car has to pass before being production ready. Even when I started working in the industry, I didn’t realise how much testing happens behind the scenes. Something as small as a window switch will undergo repeated durability, vibration and climatic testing, ensuring that it still functions after repeated cycles and that the surface finish isn’t compromised. The backlight levels would be measured and ergo studies conducted for location and force requirements. To put this in perspective, this is just one small component of the whole vehicle, and there are hundreds of smaller components in a car that need to be tested. We have to guarantee that the product is robust and performs in a way the customer expects. It’s usually the case that if everything works in a vehicle without drama or fuss, it means we’ve done a good job.
What we are doing here at Charge has never been done before. We’ve seen a lot of restomods converting old cars and new vehicle OEM’s emerging like Nio, Rivian etc. but no one has ever taken a classic shape and completely redefined it for the future. Meeting all the modern requirements with a ’67 Electrified Mustang isn’t the easiest of feats, as all the batteries and other modern systems have to be incorporated into an existing shape, rather than designing the body from scratch with them in mind. In terms of testing the difficulties are similar to any other vehicle testing process, meaning we have to go through testing and development loops, sometimes with several updates in between. Luckily we have an incredibly adaptable team of people who push through solutions very quickly.”
“For me the most exciting part is when a new test vehicle first comes alive. This year we’ve had our XP03 vehicle come online. Seeing it being built from start to finish and us conducting a demonstration drive for the senior level executives at Millbrook Proving Ground was amazing. We’ve managed to get the vehicle ready in record times which was rewarding. The best feedback I’ve received while driving it dynamically around the alpine circuit at Millbrook was the passenger saying,“The original Mustang would never be able to do that” whilst changing direction rapidly in corners, which was an amazing thing to hear as we are redefining the classic car for today.”
