Audi’s ‘Nose Team’ sniff new cars to make sure they smell right!

Who doesn’t love that new car smell? Like many carmakers, Audi has strict quality assurance measures to make sure every model that it produces lives up to high expectations – but did you know it employs a team of professional scientists whose job it is to smell car interiors to check that they are odor free?

This isn’t anything new either – it’s been happening for over 30 years. Since 1985, Audi has a “nose team” who ensure the smells of materials and chemicals used in the production process of each car are as neutral as possible.

Around 500 different components are analyzed by the team of five lead by Audi chemist Heiko Lussmann-Geiger at the German brands Bavarian Quality Center. He explains how vehicle comfort factors should be seen as a "pyramid" and that bad smells can affect a customer's perception of other comfort features. "At the tip of this hierarchy pyramid is the well-being of the customer, right at the base is the smell. If the customer is now irritated by this odor from below, he will no longer correctly perceive all the other positive comfort properties of the vehicle. He is too irritated by the stress brought about by the odor."

Each smell is graded on a scale from one ("odorless") to six ("unbearable"). Only materials such as glass, ceramics, and metals are rated odorless since they are classed as core components, but other materials need to be rated below four ("irritating") to pass Audi's strict smell test.

"It can be the case that a supplier after a certain time employs a slightly different material composition or uses another manufacturing process, and suddenly we have odors in the vehicle that are undesirable," explained Lussmann-Geiger.

Not only do new Audi models need to pass the smell test but the German car manufacturer often pulls random production vehicles into its laboratory to make sure they keep smelling fresh even after leaving dealerships. If they don’t smell so great, the team will look for changes in the manufacturing process that could have had an impact or look to see if a parts supplier is using new materials.

Love your 2020 model Audi’s new car smell? You can thank the nose team for that.