I have spent a considerable sum of money to put a stiffer, lower coilover suspension on my BMW M car, along with low-profile pilot sport 4s, an aftermarket exhaust and engine air intake, a short throw shift kit for the 5-speed manual stick, beefier brakes and other doodads to make the car tighter, growlier and more responsive to carefully applied, conscious human direction.
If you want to drain all of the humanity out of driving, and turn your car into a rolling Barcalounger, complete with pushbutton remote control and dash-mounted video, you go right ahead.
None for me, thanks.
5
Then there was the Citroen 2CV, that connected the front wheels with the back - with a couple rods and a spring, so that the front of the car informed the back about bumps! The 1939 spec was for driving a farmer and wife the wrong direction over a plowed field without breaking their market load of eggs. That, plus a suspension travel so enormous that it’s actually difficult to change a tire, which were also newfangled radials. Of course, it’s not a ride that we might easily enjoy, but it was, along with the other engineered wonders, a pointer for the cars of our future, with not much fuel and decrepit miserable roads looming. 50 mpg in 1949. Back to the future, folks.
7
When I have to go to war with the auto correct on my phone over apostrophes, and I get three messages from Google every single day telling me to turn on voice and video that I choose not to use, and Maps keeps trying to send me down the I5 and won't give my usual chosen route any respect, and Facebook etc, and how many S9 Plus phone wallets am I really going to buy, Amazon, maybe time to stop feeding me those ads? ---
No way is anyone going to get me into a self-driving car.
I like the safety features on my new hybrid Highlander. But I'm the driver and that's the way it's gonna be.
6
if 70mph is 103 feet per second or 1232 inches per second, then that's 1.2 inches per millisecond.
if you can respond to hitting a bump in a millisecond that's pretty impressive
I would guess the pneumatic tyre is the first line of absorption of such sudden shock - as evidenced by the difference in comfort between normally-tyred cars and very-low profile tyres chosen by sports-car enthusiasts who can be seen juddering along a fairly normal road enjoying a teeth-chattering experience – feeling ‘sporty’.
4
Dump enough power into an active system, and you can work even faster, maybe even eliminating the need for pneumatic tires. Anything to waste gas attracts enthusiasts.
1
Cars today may be at the mercy of roads, but walkers and bikers are definitely at the mercy of motorists. When are we going to see cars made to protect everyone else around the vehicle, not just car occupants? Pedestrian and bicycle fatalities are shooting upwards, even as occupant deaths decline. Something is wrong with this trajectory.
15
Does the author realize how widely used active suspension is already? By my count there are 17 auto brands currently offering it.
The logical and unanswered question after reading the article is: how is the new company's stuff different or better?
4
This is a Bose technology from fifteen years ago.
4
The elephant in the room here is that lack of commitment to maintain roads in excellent shape. In my area (this includes San Francisco as well) strong rains bring about flooding on local streets and highways. That brings about hydroplaning. I can imagine how a cluster of automated vehicles would react to flash floods on our roads. I gather that all these toots and whistles in the Mercedes become less expensive as they get mass produced. Have studies been made over the effect of poor road and poor vehicle maintenance have on accident rates?
6