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| Future trends in vehicle dynamics | |
June 2008 |
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| Prodrive Matt Taylor, vehicle dynamics chief "Regardless of a vehicle's personality, drivers find confidence in consistent behaviour. Engineers sometimes over-complicate things. A car is a mass with four force generating elements. Understand the tyre characteristics and you can make the best of any design freedom that’s available.
"Modern cars outperform almost all drivers so advancing high volume vehicles’ dynamic performance is folly. Instead, suspensions will focus on delivering the same performance for less cost, financially and environmentally. "I'm sceptical about the wider adoption of active damping, although it’s a core technology for Prodrive – I think it unlikely to find its way into high volume, low margin vehicles. "The integration of the car's microprocessor with chassis components will continue and focus on the potential to change perceptible ride and handling characteristics in the car's ride and handling. This will appeal to OEMs striving for more brand separation in their shared platforms. "The steering feel and driver confidence associated with EPAS is still compromised enough for many OEMs to persist with hydraulic systems for some of their range. The CO2 issue will push them to reduce hydraulic losses but it’s not yet clear whether hydraulic systems will be replaced completely before steer-by-wire starts to displace EPAS. "I think system developers who accept integration of their systems with others will be winners. Active toe systems, active driveline and four-wheel drive systems, active steering and brake intervention systems can all work more effectively if they’re integrated properly. We’re working with a partner to integrate our torque vectoring into a brake-based stability system. "We finished our first torque vectoring prototype in 1998 to an appreciative audience in North America and interest in the technology remains strong. Some of our work has found its way into production. We focus on the influence of drive torque on the longitudinal and lateral force generating ability of the tyres, not specific types of hardware. We’re working particularly on the performance of low-cost torque-on-demand devices."
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Matt Taylor,
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