Seeking a Smoother Ride, Whether You Drive or Your Autonomous Car Does

WOBURN, Mass. — The obstacle course was a series of speed bumps in a parking lot at the headquarters of ClearMotion, a supplier of high-tech chassis parts for production cars. The challengers were a late-model Mercedes-Benz and a 2016 BMW 535i equipped with the company’s technology — an electrically powered hydraulic device meant to complement the venerable shock absorber and keep the passenger compartment as level as possible.

The difference was stark. ClearMotion’s technology greatly smoothed the way, significantly reducing not just the movement up and down, but also the right-left lurch from bumps on either side. And while the system doesn’t make speed bumps obsolete, its goal is to become the kind of system that car owners won’t be able to live without once self-driving technology turns them from drivers into passengers.

Shakeel Avadhany, founder and chief executive of ClearMotion, said he had been inspired by the ride in Japanese bullet trains, which can reach 200 mph with little sensation of movement. “We are engineering ClearMotion to recreate that train experience in the car,” he said. “As autonomy matures beyond the basics, we will see the conversation shift to user experience. The sensation of stability and comfort will enable productive activity while in motion.”

The earliest cars didn’t bother with shock absorbers, but some way of reducing, or damping, spring movement was clearly needed as speeds increased on the bumpy roads that predated the interstates. Monroe debuted a hydraulic shock absorber in 1926, and then the groundbreaking Monro-Matic telescopic damper — “with automatic adjustment for all roads and loads!”

The innovations since have been variations — some fairly sophisticated — on those early breakthroughs. Packard, for example, offered Torsion-Level Ride in 1955 and 1956, and Citroën famously used a four-wheel hydropneumatic suspension and automatic leveling on its innovative DS 19, also introduced in 1955. But neither system was known for reliability. And now startup companies and established automakers alike are looking at modern technology to give consumers a smooth ride free of shake, rattle and roll.

ClearMotion’s Activalve system is an electrohydraulic unit the size of a softball that works with the car’s existing shocks, and counteracts road disturbances by putting pressure on the dampers in milliseconds.

Avadhany calls the technology “noise canceling for motion.”

So far, he said, ClearMotion has raised $180 million in equity capital, and six automakers have signed on. He said he expected the first cars equipped with the system to appear in 2020. Such systems are power hungry, requiring either the new 48-volt electrical systems hitting the market or the ability to convert 12 volts to 48 volts, so the devices may first show up in hybrids, electrics or cars equipped with start-stop technology.

ClearMotion’s headquarters is a Silicon Valley-like beehive of young workers, many of them from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company is gearing up to produce the Activalves itself at a small factory in nearby Wilmington. It also operates a motion sickness project, aimed at — among other things — reducing the queasy feelings that motorists may be more likely to get if they face backward in the living-room-like interiors of tomorrow’s autonomous cars.

But ClearMotion is far from the only company trying to smooth automakers’ road into the self-driving future.

Vibracoustic’s three-chamber air suspension system is available on the new generation of the Porsche Cayenne introduced this year. It allows the driver to dial in settings, and adjust ride height, appropriate for different road conditions. At high speeds, for instance, ride height is at its lowest setting to minimize drag and increase stability.

Jörg Böcking, chief technology officer at Vibracoustic, based in Germany, said air springs had been ascendant since Mercedes-Benz introduced such a system in 1998. Each of the three chambers can be switched on or off to change the volume of air inside — adding more increases the stiffness of the ride.

“Independent of load, we can change the leveling of the vehicle, and give a good compromise between ride and comfort,” Böcking said. Automakers are actively pursuing the holy grail of a level ride. Mercedes, of course, offers its Airmatic air suspension as a standard feature on some models, including the S-Class, and as on option on others. Mercedes also offers a Magic Body Control system, which uses a high-precision camera to scan the road ahead and prepare the suspension components at each wheel for the surface it’s about to encounter.

Keith Sharp, director of chassis engineering at Bentley Motors, said the new Bentayga SUV uses a 48-volt system solely to power motors on its active front and rear stabilizer bars to resist the roll motion of the vehicle.

“The system measures the disturbance of the wheel, then reduces the amount of force that would normally be driven into the vehicle itself,” he said. “The result is an increase in ride comfort.”

Sam Abuelsamid, a senior analyst at Navigant Research, said the new Audi A8 incorporates an electromechanical active suspension, enabled by the car’s standard 48-volt architecture. The system uses electric motors at all four corners, and a front camera for early detection of bumps in the road.

“It appears to do much of what ClearMotion offers, and it will also raise the side of the car if the sensors detect a pending impact,” he said. “Using sensors to look ahead for potholes can be beneficial, and that’s what Audi is doing.”

In the future, ClearMotion hopes to use its camera system to crowdsource maps of road surfaces to better prepare its system for what lies ahead of it, or to be ready the next time the car takes the same route.

“Cars today,” Avadhany said, “are at the mercy of the road.”