With the arrival of more
and more self-driving and electric cars, Audi is taking innovation to the next
level. Audi is creating a suspension that will recharge your batteries as you
go over bumps and potholes.
Audi has been working on
all-electric cars for a while now, and they have already succeeded with the
widely successful e-Tron. Now, Audi is trying to make it easier for you to
charge your car without taking up time at your charging station. By using the
motion already generated while your cars drives. Currently Audi using
Regenerative Braking to help recharge the batteries, but they are planning on
moving to a system that harnessing the energy generated by bumps in the road
and potholes that litter the streets.
Today, most cars use a
traditional coiled metal spring in tandem with a fluid-filled shock absorber
that controls the vehicles movement over bumps and around corners. On luxury and high end vehicles, they have
started using a variable-valve or magnetically controlled shocks. Audi has
changed the game with eROT (short for electromechanical rotary damper). This
uses suspension arms and a series of gears as leverage on an electric motor.
This new system has three main advantages to this
system.
1. The
system is more compact than existing suspension systems, and thus gives
designers more room for trunk and cabin space and close hugging bodywork.
2. Instead
of physically pushing oil through a shock absorber, this systems allows for
more flexibility allowing engineers to tune suspension via software.
3. And
finally the most significant is that the motor harvests energy with every bump,
storing kinetic energy to be used later.
"Every pothole, every bump,
every curve induces kinetic energy in the car. Today's dampers absorb this
energy, which is lost in the form of heat. With the new electromechanical
damper system in the 48-volt electrical system, we put this energy to use. It
also presents us and our customers with entirely new possibilities for
adjusting the suspension."
-Stefan Knirsch, Audi board member
for Technical Development
