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The attention to the perceived quality, e.g. the quality as it is evaluated by the final customer, is becoming more and more important for the car makers. The paper will describe how such aspects of handling and steering system feel may become manageable by an engineering process, through some fundamental steps: definition of measurable performance for the subjective aspects; identification of the target values for such aspects coherent with product positioning; deployment of such overall values generally fixed at vehicle level into functional requirements for the different subsystems and design specifications (sub targets level quantities). This new approach at car advanced design represents an evolution of the traditional one based on some general criteria and experienced designers; it has the aims of reducing time to market and guaranteeing a “customer oriented handwriting” in handling behaviour and steering feel.

One of the objectives of the Atena project was the definition of methods for the predictive evaluation of the environmental impact of different types of vehicles used in an urban scenario. The target is to obtain a methodology that allows the decision maker to verify in simulation the effects of possible measures like the law enforcement to the access restrictions or vehicle fleet composition. The main obstacle is the realization and managing of real driving cycles in order to overtake the limits derived from the utilization of typical cycles (i.e., ECE + EUDC) or the simple consideration of average speed. The starting point is a digital representation of the urban network where all the roads are represented with one or more arcs and for all these arcs are available an estimation of the traffic variables like the vehicle flow (vehicles per hour) or the average speed (kph). Every arc is described in terms of traffic parameters like the type of road (i.e., highway, district road).