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Benchmarking Center Aachen - a workshop hall with car components for benchmarking
Benchmarking Center Aachen - a workshop hall with car components for benchmarking
Benchmarking Center Aachen - a workshop hall with car components for benchmarking
Benchmarking Center Aachen

Benchmarking

From benchmarking to actionable innovation

We not only show you how it looks,
we explain why!

Innovative technologies are reshaping mobility worldwide, creating exciting opportunities as traditional products decline. At FEV Consulting, we help you understand emerging technologies, uncover new business opportunities, and develop innovative technical solutions. Our global benchmark centers give you hands-on access to the latest hardware, inspiring ideas for tomorrow’s innovations.

With over 30 years of experience, FEV operates four benchmark centers worldwide, more than twelve technical centers, and extensive test facilities to deliver comprehensive benchmarking programs. Our teardown and design benchmarking studies give you complete transparency into the latest vehicle architectures, product designs, features, and technical specifications. Cost benchmarking studies identify best-cost solutions, and our Benchmarking Academy provides a collaborative environment for you to discuss hardware, generate ideas, and explore cost reduction opportunities.

All benchmarking data is accessible in our professional database, “carat,” allowing you to analyze insights efficiently. Through our structured “innovation lab” process, we help you turn benchmarking insights into actionable product opportunities, enter untapped markets, diversify portfolios, and drive sustainable growth.

Worldwide Benchmarking Centers
Worldwide Benchmarking Centers
Worldwide Benchmarking Centers
Worldwide Benchmarking Centers

Four key benchmarking services

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Performance benchmarking

FEV’s engineering experts conduct extensive vehicle performance tests using advanced sensor instrumentation. We provide you with detailed reports containing original measurement data and in-depth analysis on energy consumption, control strategies, powertrain efficiency, charging performance, thermal management, NVH, ADAS/AD functions, and vehicle dynamics.This benchmarking data equips you with actionable insights for simulation tools and supports the development of next-generation mobility solutions, helping you innovate with confidence and precision.

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Icon car parts

Design benchmarking

For in-depth insights, vehicles undergo thorough disassembly, focusing on major cost-driving systems such as HV batteries, fuel cell systems, electric drive units, and power electronics. Each part is documented with professional images and listed in a comprehensive bill of materials (BOM) with key data. Exploded views clearly illustrate component structures, giving you full transparency. Our engineering experts deliver detailed technical assessments from system to component level. Reports and our database showcase system architecture, layouts, key design criteria, and relevant KPIs. Additional in-depth analyses are available on request, ensuring you gain the insights needed to optimize design, cost, and performance.

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Icon Money

Cost benchmarking

The findings from our technical assessments form the foundation for you to understand vehicle costs in detail. Our cost engineering experts perform bottom-up should-cost calculations, using defined boundary conditions such as production location, volumes, and supply chain assumptions. Leveraging extensive expertise in manufacturing processes, we evaluate material, manufacturing, and assembly costs, along with relevant overheads. All component cost data is presented in a costed BOM and summarized in a system cost breakdown. This approach provides you with full cost transparency, highlights cost-driving components, and enables meaningful comparisons between vehicles and design solutions.

 

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Benchmarking Academy & Innovation Lab

Within our Benchmarking Academy, you can explore components from our teardown studies in our parts exhibit and participate in interactive workshops with FEV experts. Using original hardware, we explain benchmarking results and the latest technologies in detail, inspiring you to generate new design concepts and cost-saving ideas. At the FEV Innovation Lab, we help you push the boundaries of product and service innovation. Through a human-centered, collaborative design process, you engage in ideation, co-creation, and experimentation to solve complex problems. Our goal is to equip you with the tools and techniques to boost creative confidence and bring valuable innovations successfully to market.

Available benchmarking programs

FEV has benchmarked a large number of interesting vehicles. These include multiple propulsion types such as battery electric vehicles (BEV), hybrid vehicles (HEV, PHEV, REEV), and fuel cell vehicles (FCEV). Our analysis covers several vehicle categories: passenger cars, light commercial vehicles and medium- to heavy duty commercial vehicles, as well as off-highway vehicles and applications.

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And get an overview of available benchmarking studies and benchmarking modules:

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FEV benchmarking partnership and database “carat”

FEV has developed a professional benchmarking database solution called “carat”. Carat is cloud-based and globally accessible through your web browser. Through carat ,you have direct access to our valuable benchmarking gems!

To gain access to carat, clients enter into a benchmarking partnership with FEV. The beauty of carat lies in its customization options; clients can build their own database by adding selected benchmarking modules according to their areas of interest. Access to benchmark data is maintained as long as they remain a benchmarking partner.

In carat, customers have access to a large number of vehicle profiles and can view the vehicle architecture and key drivetrain components with initial specifications. The detailed benchmarking data for the selected and procured modules of our analyzed vehicles are available for deep dive analysis. In carat, clients see complete photo documentation, structured bill of materials with key component data, supplier information, and our deep engineering assessment results on layouts and design characteristics. With one or two clicks, images and KPIs can be analyzed and compared in specific views and graphs. FEV’s renowned scatter bands are also available allowing for competitive analysis, such as comparing the performance of HV batteries or electric drive units.

FEV Benchmarking Partnerships
FEV Benchmarking Partnerships
Capabilities - Benchmarking - Benchmarking partnerships
Capabilities - Benchmarking - Benchmarking partnerships
Capabilities - Benchmarking - Carat database
Capabilities - Benchmarking - Carat database
Capabilities - Benchmarking - Carat database
Capabilities - Benchmarking - Carat database

Our carat portfolio

  • >700 Level-0 vehicle profiles
  • FEV deep technical benchmark data for >30 vehicles (+5 p.a.)
  • Full benchmarking results online available:
    – Detailed pictures
    – BOM & tree structure
    – Weights, dimensions, materials, joining technics, …
    – Supplier information
    – Illustrations on architecture and layout sketches
    – Design features & details
  • Smart analysis functions:
    – Easy parts and KPI comparison
    – FEV scatter-band generator
    – Data analysis in different chart types
  • Additional features:
    – Tech-nuggets
    – News & benchmarking roadmap

Case studies

Exemplary benchmarking studies

Technology is complex, multi-dimensional, and multi-faceted. It has become increasingly difficult (if not impossible) to view most components as single entities performing isolated functions. Many moderate- to high-impact components have multiple functions, and only by understanding the complete system can reliable comparisons be made and best practices and recommendations be established. At FEV, we decompose technology to truly understand its advantages and disadvantages. We address key questions to understand the what, the how and the why. “We not only show you how it looks, we explain why!”

We assisted our client, a European supplier primarily focused on manufacturing ICE-related components, in the evaluation of new product ideas in the field of battery technology. The objective of the benchmark conducted by FEV Consulting was to compare different concepts for underride protection plates, ranging from aluminum sheet metal up to fiber composite solutions.

For an Asian passenger car OEM, FEV Consulting investigated how a competitor has integrated a V2L function into the vehicle. In addition to the question of which components contribute to the function at the vehicle level, we went deep into the technology to work out functionalities within the on-board charger down to the PCBA level.

Based on benchmark hardware of various powertrain and vehicle concepts on display, we spent several days brainstorming with our customer, a medium-sized automotive supplier, about which potential products would fit into their portfolio. Together, we created a longlist of over 50 ideas and evaluated and prioritized them based on criteria such as market attractiveness and investment requirements.

The compressor is an essential component in the air path of the fuel cell system and is responsible for the performance of the system. We analyzed a competitive compressor for our customer (European Tier 1 supplier) to make the cost structure transparent and compare it with an air bearing solution.

 

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Capabilities: Business Strategies

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with our team

Christian Speuser Director FEV Consulting
Christian Speuser Director FEV Consulting

Get in contact with Christian