Race cars and many sporty street cars have had (near) infinitely adjustable suspensions for a long time now, but not so many can be so tweaked from behind the steering wheel -- and none outside of an international racing series can use GPS to auto-configure themselves to best suit any upcoming corner. That's what Spanish boutique automaker IFR is developing for possible future inclusion in the company's radical re-imagining of Colin Chapman's classic Lotus Seven, called the Aspid, and also for licensing to other marques. Drivers would use a "dial similar to that of an iPod" to tweak suspension damping to manipulate handling and could also modify the engine's timing and other parameters to make it torquier for short circuits or more powerful to blast down long straights. It's all rather conceptual at this point and there's no word on when any of this will come to reality, but if and when it does it'll make Nissan's gadget-laden
GT-R look rather pedestrian and should be enough to keep the most gadget-addled gearhead busy for... well, a few hours at least.
[Via
Autoblog]
posted Jul 29th 2009 9:20AM
me want nao!
Is that the new bat-mobile? yuk!
Seriously that car is hideous. neat idea horrific implementation...
Didn't Engadget have a regularly occurring spot of people that were led off road, or onto non-existent roads / bridges / islands by out of date GPS units? They did, I'm sure of it. So it seems to me that having my car automatically configure itself based on GPS coordinates is an extremely bad idea.
BMW now lets you infinitely adjust the suspension on the M level of trim.
So does the Porsche Cayenne and Volkswagen Touareg.
Oops! Forgot those! Porsche Cayenne and VW Toureg are the same care anyway!
Even Volvo allowed on the fly suspension adjustment (although it was to only three presets versus infinite) on it's R models.
Sure, but they don't use GPS to check the road ahead and tweak themselves, which is kinda the point here.
This is a fair bit more specific than those examples. AKA on a corner by corner basis as required by the track or for more power on straightaways. It should be interesting to see how it's implemented. I hope the integration at least appears more passive than it suggests. Seeing as this is pretty much a Lotus/Caterham 7 in new-millenium trim, it should be extremely fast, too.
HAHA!
That GPS better be well updated.
It's says rough asphalt ahead and then you get to it an realize it's just been complete repaved!
@kjb434
No joke, my gps still doesn't know what the speed limit is half the time.
lets just hope it can't crash. cuz you likely would as a result
And instead of $20,000, their Lotus Super 7 starts at $100,000.
Granted, it looks nice. But not $100,000 nice.
So when they say "dial similar to that of an ipod" do they mean the touchscreen? If it's just a touchscreen i don't see how it's "ipod like" when compared to any other touchscreen on the market. Is it for brand recognition maybe? I'm not apple-hating, i just don't see why if it's a simple touchscreen that they'd call it "ipod like". maybe i'm missing somethin
No, they meant the Original iPod dial, the one with the circle ;)
I don't think they're talking about a touch screen per se. I think they're referring to the older generation of I-pods, with the flowing click-wheel, rather. That would make a lot more sense than having a touchscreen anyway, since it only needs to go two ways, rather than all over a square surface. Turn one way to tighten suspension, the other to loosen it, right?
Sounds like a good idea. But I am only changing damper 2x a year. Changing ride height on the fly would be a plus so I am not changing the front lip so often.
beautiful car
The Plymouth Prowler's mutant brother.
Its already been developed and concidentally on another lotus platform (exige) with magentic shocks, nitron were looking at it too.
the track is mapped out, the engine management is preprogrammed for the track and conditions and the suspension is updated as you drive around.