The new base will provide an improved level of service for customers operating within Asia, with a dedicated engineering team offering local language technical support.
The Yokohama facility will form part of rFpro’s international sales, engineering and support team. It will be supported by the company’s technical centre in the USA and the headquarters in the UK.
Peter Daley, Managing Director of rFpro, said:
Simulation is revolutionising the automotive industry and the technology providers in Japan are at the forefront of this. With simulation forming a critical part of vehicle testing and validation, we want to have a team on the ground ready to support our customers and technical partners in the region. Our Japanese base gives rFpro a truly global reach with facilities now in Asia, North America and Europe.
rFpro has experienced significant growth in Asia, with revenues up by more than 100% in the region over the last four years. This has largely been driven by the accelerated use of simulation in automotive applications, including ADAS and autonomous vehicle technologies.
Tatsuji Moriwaki has more than 10 years’ experience in the automotive industry and will be rFpro’s business development lead in Japan. “rFpro is the world’s leading simulation software provider so it is an honour to be joining the company,” said Moriwaki, Technical Sales Manager, rFpro. “We are at the leading edge of vehicle development, particularly for autonomous technologies. This has led to extraordinary growth in the region and we are aiming to continue this going forward.”
rFpro provides a highly accurate, engineering-grade simulation environment for the automotive and motorsport industries. It is used for the development and testing of vehicle dynamics, ADAS and autonomous vehicles. rFpro is agnostic and compatible with the leading vehicle model, traffic solution, real-time hardware and motion platform providers.
rFpro has the world’s largest library of high-fidelity digital models, including race circuits, proving grounds, city centres and public roads. Included, is a digital twin of Tokyo’s famous Shuto Expressway, Inner Circular route. The 35km section of road has been modelled using survey-grade LiDAR scan data to create a vehicle dynamics grade road surface, which is accurate to within 1mm in the vertical direction. This is key to accurately simulate the effects of every bump, drain cover and expansion joint around the full route.