China's Largest Indoor All-Season Ice and Snow Automotive Test Facility Breaks Ground in Inner Mongolia

On May 8, 2024, China’s largest indoor all-season ice and snow automotive test facility officially broke ground in Yakeshi City, Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia. The project, invested in by China Automotive Technology & Research Center (CATARC) Automotive Test Field Co., Ltd. with a total investment of RMB 1.2 billion, spans approximately 1,000 mu (about 165 acres) and is scheduled for completion in 2028. With a refrigerated area of 146,000 square meters, the facility will become the world’s first indoor ice and snow test track capable of simulating artificial snowfall scenarios upon completion. It will support over 60 cold-climate testing conditions, meeting the demand for testing intelligent connected new energy vehicles (NEVs) under low-temperature, icy, and snowy environments. The base will feature five core functional zones: calibration of NEV “three-electric” systems (battery, motor, and electronic control), low- and high-friction calibration of chassis systems, simulated snowfall scenario testing for intelligent connected vehicles, and China’s only cold-climate test site dedicated to flying cars. Currently, the development cycle for intelligent connected NEVs has been shortened from the traditional 48 months to just 18 months. However, conventional winter cold-climate testing—limited to an effective window of only three to four months per year—has become a bottleneck for R&D efficiency. By replicating extreme natural conditions indoors, this facility will enable year-round, uninterrupted, and fully controllable testing and validation, eliminating reliance on natural climate conditions for whole-vehicle cold-climate testing, reducing testing costs, and accelerating R&D cycles. The project will also establish an integrated service network combining “seasonal outdoor testing” with “all-season indoor testing,” offering standardized, all-weather extreme-environment testing capabilities. It will spearhead the development of a comprehensive standard system for whole-vehicle testing in extreme environments. Meanwhile, Yakeshi City is leveraging its uniquely frigid climate and existing automotive testing industry infrastructure to transform its “cold resources” into a “hot economy,” fostering full-chain integration from testing and R&D to industrial application.