Corporations Use Cold Weather for Testing
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: It's January, after all, but baby, it's cold outside. A freezing wintry mix with unseasonably cold temperatures and a rare snow storm in North Carolina. And if you think it's cold where you are, this should give you the chills. Jeff Flock in Baudette, Minnesota -- Jeff, the things you do for us, my friend.</s>JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I might give you the chills anyway, Kyra, but particularly today. I'm in a place called Baudette, Minnesota. This is just to the west of International Falls, and it's so cold here that this is a place people come from all around the country to test various different products. I want to show you a picture live at a vehicle being tested. This -- Jim Glutting of Bosch. You are one of the -- companies that test various different sort of products here. What are we looking at right now?</s>JIM GLUTTING, BOSCH CORPORATION: What we're looking at here, Jeff, is we are testing antilock brake system here, on this vehicle out here on the track right now.</s>FLOCK: So he is going -- how fast is he going right now?</s>GLUTTING: He is probably going about 65, 70 miles an hour.</s>FLOCK: First of all, before we get into that, why do you come here, to the north part of Minnesota where -- God, nobody ever wants to be?</s>GLUTTING: Well, Jeff, we need consistently cold weather for three or four months a year to get our winter testing done, and obviously, up here, the northern part of the country, it's consistently cold from November right through about March.</s>FLOCK: That is what you want. Now, I'm seeing this car go around here. Looks like he's cranking pretty good. You need to tell him to go ahead and put this into whatever he's going to do?</s>GLUTTING: Yes -- we can do that for you, Jeff.</s>FLOCK: Go ahead, go ahead.</s>GLUTTING: Ed, next time around we'd like to see an ABS stop, please.</s>FLOCK: And ABS -- I take it that is anti -- antilock brakes?</s>GLUTTING: Antilock brakes, that's correct.</s>FLOCK: And you're testing to see whether this functions in this extreme cold and how it functions on this -- is that just pretty much -- pretty much ice out there?</s>GLUTTING: That's correct. It's packed snow on the outside shoulder where Ed is running, and then we have a layer of ice on the inside of that.</s>FLOCK: So this is like the worst possible conditions you could be in in your car?</s>GLUTTING: That's for sure. We probably push the edge a little further than most people would in their everyday driving.</s>FLOCK: OK. Now, Ed is about to lock them up right now, so let's take a look at that. And Jim, go look over your shoulder, and see what he's doing, and see what this is going to look like here. What's he about to do?</s>GLUTTING: Well, when he comes around here, he's going to do an ABS apply, and the vehicle will continue to follow the radius of the circle instead of pushing straight forward like it would if you did not have</s>ABS. FLOCK: Whoa, he almost lost it. Hey, can we talk to him, Jim?</s>GLUTTING: Certainly we can.</s>FLOCK: Go ahead. Hey, Ed? Can you hear me? This is Jeff Flock from</s>CNN. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I can hear you.</s>FLOCK: OK. Go ahead. What was that you just did there? Did the car do what it was supposed to do?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The car actually performed flawlessly. You've got a mixture here of some loose powder snow with ice underneath it, and the car did everything it was supposed to.</s>FLOCK: Excellent, very good. And this is the place to have this sort of thing happen. Even if it's cold today -- I mean, we started out this morning about 20 below. Does it ever get too cold for you?</s>GLUTTING: We really don't need to be 30 below to test, but it's really -- anywhere from 30 below to 30 above is usually what we find for testing temperatures up here in Minnesota.</s>FLOCK: Got you. You know what -- we're going to -- tell Ed to go ahead and go back, and do what he has got to do. We'll get out of your way.</s>GLUTTING: ... another lap there, and we will continue to watch.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... another stop?</s>FLOCK: Yes, sure, do your thing there, Ed. Knock yourself out. The great thing about Ed is he's in a warm car with the heat on, no doubt.</s>GLUTTING: He's in better shape than we are.</s>FLOCK: Good deal. Kyra, that is the latest from here. Extremely cold here. And I'll tell you, this is even colder than we were at the lake, Rainy Lake earlier, and it wasn't as windy as it is out here. You really can't tell, but any kind of wind at all really gives you a nasty feeling to any exposed skin.</s>PHILLIPS: You never cease to amaze us. Now, what about the ice fishing? Did you get out there and catch some walleye for your fish fry?</s>FLOCK: Well, yes. We had a little walleye, it was about this big, so unfortunately we had to return that to its watery environs there. He was not legal. But we're working on finding one that we can actually eat.</s>PHILLIPS: All right. Our Jeff Flock, braving the cold. Thanks, Jeff.