Audi 2015 Annual Report Download - page 64

Sylvia Droll has a fairly extreme idea of what
constitutes perfect weather for her work :
blazing heat, bitter cold, pouring rain. After all,
as Head of Materials Engineering in Audi Quality
Assurance, she subjects every material, every
component, every vehicle to a marathon
of endurance testing. Ultrarunner Anne-Marie
Flammersfeld also subjects herself time and
again to these kinds of endurance tests. The two
women are hiking in the Karwendel mountains
in Austria. Between jagged rocks the path
becomes rockier and more challenging with
every step. It is a place where you also quickly
realize where your limits are …
DROLL : Our Audi models also have to scale new heights.
Before we fi nally release a vehicle in Quality Assurance, it
has to go through a wide range of tests, including weather
con ditions. For this we use secret sites in Africa and in the
United States, where we expose new vehicles to the blazing
sun for two summers. We test the e ect heat has on the sur-
faces, the colors and the appearance. That is the most grueling
test for plastic, paint and leather. But we also drive the cars in
cold countries such as Russia in the testing phase. Or in Dubai,
where sand, alongside the heat, is also a vehicle’s main enemy.
The aim is to ensure that all materials and models boast the
same quality wherever they happen to be in the world.
FLAMMERSFELD : I’m familiar with the problem of di erent
climatic conditions. In the “ Deserts Race Series” I ran through
the driest, windiest, hottest and coldest desert. I managed
to prepare myself well for the race in Antarctica, since tempera-
tures drop to minus  degrees Celsius where I live in St. Moritz
in winter. But what about preparing myself for the Sahara ? My
solution : training on a stepper at  degrees Celsius in the sauna.
PHOTO : Niels Schubert