WATERLOO - Researchers at a new automotive lab at the University of Waterloo believe their work today will help to design the cars of tomorrow.

The new $10-million Green and Intelligent Automotive (GAIA) Research Facility officially opened Wednesday in completely renovated space in the Engineering 3 building.

It's the latest addition to the Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research, or WatCAR, touted as the largest university-based automotive research centre in Canada.

The new facility will support the work of eight professors in four departments and more than 100 researchers.

"In GAIA, we will develop the next generation of hybrid and electric vehicles, powered by new batteries and fuel-efficient engines, connected to the Internet and to each other to create a smarter and safer ride with little or no emissions," said John McPhee, a systems design engineering professor and head of the GAIA facility.

Gaia is the name for the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth.

The 4,000-square foot facility has three integrated test labs, or cells. In a battery test lab, new batteries that hold a charge much longer and power electronics that allow electric vehicles to transfer energy back to the electrical grid will be studied.

A powertrain test cell will study new computer algorithms that control power flow in a hybrid vehicle, using less fuel and producing fewer emissions, McPhee said.

And full vehicles can be tested on a rolling dynamometer to simulate real-world driving while researchers examine such things as new driver assistance and fully autonomous systems.

At Wednesday's opening, a plug-in hybrid Toyota Prius was on display, outfitted with four vehicle measurement systems, each with 15 different sensors and measuring devices.

All three labs are connected via wireless sensors and communication.

Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada has long partnered with UW, and provided the initial $1-million investment for the facility.

As connected vehicle and vehicle automation system are being introduced for safety purposes, there's an opportunity to use that information to reduce energy consumption, said Ken Butts, executive engineer at the Toyota Technical Center in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Green powertrain research at the facility will help Toyota improve internal combustion engines and hybrid vehicles as a bridge to the ultimate development of fuel cell vehicles, Butts said.

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"We're just now discussing what we might do as a followup project," he said.

The federal and provincial governments contributed more than $2 million each to the facility, through the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Research Fund.