Audi has Pothole Power

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

While it is still a ways off that Audi will implement this technology, we are looking forward to its arrival. Until then check out Audi’s current electric vehicle the e-tron and contact us to test drive your today!