Morocco to host Africa’s 1st automotive testing center

French group Utac Ceram and German FEV have chosen Morocco to set up Africa’s first automotive development and testing centre to be operational in 2nd semester 2021.

Utac Ceram, a service provider in all areas of land transport, and FEV, a globally leading service provider of vehicle and powertrain development for hardware and software, announced on Thursday the setting up of a joint-venture tasked with the building and management of this centre which will be located in Oued Zem, 150 km southeast of Casablanca.

“Morocco has not only been our gateway to Africa but also to our European customers ever since we’ve opened our engineering office in Casablanca in 2018”, said Nadim Andraos, Executive Vice President for FEV in France, Spain and North Africa.

“The country provides a great access base to other regions with a quick connection to Europe, which means we are able to develop genuine synergies”, he added.

For his part, CEO of Utac Ceram Laurent Benoit said: “the decision to choose Morocco was due to its countless advantages and the dynamic policies implemented by the Kingdom with the aim of turning the country into a global hub for the automotive industry.”

The centre will carry out complete endurance and reliability tests on rigs and test tracks, vehicle dynamics testing, coast down tests on a 4 km track (unique in Europe and Africa), acoustics development & testing, ADAS development, validation & testing.

Its mission also includes several other technical testing for electric, hybrid and internal combustion engine vehicles, real driving emissions (RDE) testing…