Czech car manufacturer Skoda plans to expand the data center located at its headquarters in Mladá Boleslav.

The facility, which will offer 15 petaflops of compute and 10MW of power capacity, is expected to become the largest and most powerful privately owned data center in the Czech Republic. The Volkswagen subsidiary's facility is currently maxing out at 1.6 petaflops.

The data center has a floor space of 700 square meters (7,500 sq ft), but this will grow to 1,700 square meters (18,300 sq ft).

Czech this out

At completion, the facility will house 500 racks and use 210km of electrical cable. Every hour, more than 4,200 cubic meters of water mixed with glycol will flow through the cooling circuit, the company said. Waste heat generated by servers will be used to warm nearby offices.

"To ensure maximum security of the data and biggest possible computing capacity, Skoda Auto needs a data center with state-of-the-art computing and storage capacity," Klaus-Dieter Schürmann, board member for finance and IT at Skoda, said.

"The expansion of the data center is proof that Skoda Auto is no longer just a car manufacturer, but is also one of the leading service providers for mobility in the Czech Republic.”

In addition to data storage, the company plans for its Technical Development and Production departments to use the facility for virtual reality visualizations and simulations. In the future, it hopes the facility will also store connected car data.