The chassis for the ultimate ride: smart motion control evolves

As the automotive industry transforms to the software-defined car and electric mobility, the chassis will be forced to evolve in tandem. It plays a pivotal role in enabling new drives, electronic architectures and increased levels of automation, and will undergo its own revolution in the pursuit of future mobility. How a vehicle reacts to road influences and the conversion of drive, steering and braking impulses to the road all centre on this pivotal area.

“The wider change taking place in the mobility industry entails significant changes in the chassis as well,” says André Engelke, Head of ZF’s System House Vehicle Motion Control (VMC). The move to an electric and highly automated or even autonomous future will still entail the need for some sort of vertical damping control, steering and brake control, but how that looks could be very different from today.