BMW has taken space at Verne Global’s modular data center in Iceland to support a group of high-performance-computing (HPC) clusters that will be used by the automaker’s engineers to run simulations when designing new cars.

Mario Müller, VP of IT infrastructure at BMW, said the Verne facility will start by purely hosting 10 of the German company’s new HPC clusters. Eventually, however, BMW plans to establish a cloud infrastructure at the facility near Reykjavik, Iceland’s largest city.

“We will use it in the future as a private cloud,” Müller said.

The facility’s location makes it both economical to operate and environmentally friendly. It is powered 100% by carbon-neutral electricity (a mix of hydro and geothermal), and the weather enables IT systems inside to be cooled by outside air – without the use of mechanical chillers – for most of the year.

Verne uses data center modules by Colt to build out capacity within the buildings at its campus, which used to house NATO facilities. In addition to providing the modules, Colt has a network point of presence, or PoP, there, connecting the Iceland site to its European network.

BMW’s neighbors at the campus will include IT services provider Opin Kerfi and GreenQloud, a hosting company.

Müller announced BMW’s plan Monday at the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) conference in San Francisco. He acts as chairman and secretary of the alliance.

ODCA is an association of enterprises and vendors that works on communicating enterprises’ requirements for cloud solutions to solution providers in a unified manner. It does so through releasing documents outlining the requirements.