From first use case to engineering capability: OPmobility’s AI transformation with Neural Concept
- Customer
- OPmobility
- Industry
- Automotive
- Application
- Fuel tank acoustics (sloshing noise)
- Outcome · Time to insight
- From 12 hours to seconds per design
Overview
At CES 2025, OPmobility and Neural Concept showcased the results of a collaboration that began in 2021, when the Group was still Plastic Omnium. Product development teams across OPmobility’s business units now use Neural Concept’s platform. One result on show: a quieter fuel tank for hybrid electric vehicles, with design insight in seconds instead of 12 hours per simulation.
Challenge
A transforming market rewards speed. Simulation was setting the pace.
OPmobility, a world leader in sustainable mobility and technology partner to OEMs, develops solutions across every powertrain, from combustion and hybrid to battery-electric and hydrogen. In a market that is rapidly transforming, the Group is accelerating to consolidate its competitive advantage, and putting AI at the heart of its development.
Electrification also creates new engineering problems. In hybrid vehicles, engine noise no longer masks other sounds, so fuel moving in the tank during acceleration and braking becomes audible. Predicting it means simulating fluid dynamics and acoustic pressure together: around 12 hours per design, which made rapid iteration and optimization impossible.
Solution
From waiting on simulations to deciding at speed.
With Neural Concept’s AI platform, OPmobility’s engineers get immediate multi-physics insight into how a tank design behaves, in seconds instead of hours. Design iterations speed up and decisions become data-driven, so the team can minimize noise while reducing time to market.
The fuel tank was the first successful application, and it proved the value. OPmobility then began exploring broader applications. Product development teams across its business units now use the platform to embed Engineering Intelligence into their engineering processes, integrating generative AI to accelerate innovation, enhance design robustness and reduce both cost and time to market.
“OPmobility’s partnership with Neural Concept has provided its teams with a platform which boosts product development and innovation thanks to 3D Deep-Learning and simulation capabilities. This partnership has enabled OPmobility to improve the optimization of its products and development processes using collaborative tools. This reduces design times and improves the performance of the products provided to the Group’s customers.”
Impact
2021Start of the partnership
From 12h to secondsFirst use case: time to insight per fuel tank design
Showcased on OPmobility’s booth at CES 2025, the quieter fuel tank shows what changes when simulation stops being the bottleneck: faster iterations, lower noise and a shorter path to market. At the same show, the partnership also presented AI-driven designs for hydrogen systems and complete vehicle bodies.
What’s next
As of CES 2025, the partnership had entered a pivotal stage: training OPmobility’s top CAE and simulation engineers not only to use AI effectively, but to adapt and customize it to their own requirements, independently.
Related content
- OPmobility press kit Embracing the future of mobility thanks to Artificial Intelligence & High technology (CES 2025)
- Tech.eu How Neural Concept’s 3D AI platform is redefining engineering workflows in OEMs
- Press release Long-term Collaboration between Plastic Omnium and Neural Concept (2021)
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