CATIA used in the development of over 80 percent of all the vehicles on display at the 2010 LA Auto Show

LOS ANGELES - Dassault Systèmes today announced that CATIA, the company’s solution for virtual design, was used in the development of over 80 percent* of all the vehicles on display at the 2010 LA Auto Show, open to the public through December 13, 2009. The use of the CATIA solution has proven exceptionally strong (85%) in the Green Ride & Drive vehicles, which are experimental models that offer high efficiency, low environmental impact or run on a variety of alternative fuels. The Green Car Journal’s 2010 Green Car of the Year, as well as the 2010 International Car and Truck of the Year awards announced during the LA Auto Show were also all designed in CATIA.

It has long been recognized that implementation of CATIA allows automakers to reduce vehicle development cost and bring product to market more quickly. In addition to bringing efficiency to the process, CATIA allows more time for innovation and testing of different design features that can help reduce energy consumption, such as rolling resistance, aerodynamics, and vehicle weight, to name a few.

As automakers endeavor to meet today’s aggressive emission standards, vehicle system complexity will continue to increase as hybrid and other advanced powertrain technologies become increasingly prevalent. To help with this, Dassault Systèmes next generation V6 platform provides an integrated, multi-disciplinary approach to product development where all engineering domains and solutions are linked together in a common and dynamic engineering template. Components from multiple disciplines, as well as the numerous interactions between them, are modeled in the authoring environment of CATIA to enable dynamic simulation of the complete system via a virtual prototype. This allows all systems (mechanical, electronic, software) to be dynamically tested and validated together to improve system performance, reduce cost, and maximize reliability of these critical systems.

The L.A. Auto Show runs from December 4 – 13 and takes place at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

*Numbers based upon LA Auto Show confirmed vehicles as of November 23, 2009