Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

If it is wise to believe in princes, this may be the best time. The words and elements that have represented luxury over the past few decades are becoming accessible in the hands of a new generation of car brands.

Once the golden rule of grading is zero acceleration, today it takes less than 200000 to run in 4 seconds; once envied the electric massage boss chair that this life is hopeless, today the price of a 3-series car can also let you be the boss; used to be adjustable suspension high-performance chassis such as alien technology, today quickly become more than 200, 000 to 300, 000 yuan standard

Under the superposition of electric, new car and intelligent tuyere, it seems that everything above is being delegated and can be delegated. Youdao is not money, as long as your car companies are willing to die, we consumers will be willing to bury, pay the bill to bury.

The high configuration above the high configuration, however, this vigorous affirmative movement to today, but also gradually show some hard bones difficult to gnaw. Not all high-end luxury configurations can be said to be devolved. There are still some things that can remain "high-end": if you glance at the configuration, you can blindly guess that most of the car is expensive.

For example, air suspension. Chassis system or then accurate to the suspension system, for ordinary consumers has always been a hard core and metaphysical mysterious sea, but there are always some names that people know at a glance that "not cheap", air suspension or air spring is one of them.

Many high-end business card configurations are also devolved today. The front double-arm and rear multi-link structure, which represents the performance, has been pulled to a range of more than 100,000 by newly built cars and independent manufacturers. On behalf of the electronically controlled cool techs's CDC adjustable shock absorber, the new forces have almost four hands regardless of level. Only the air suspension, the stable station 300000 yuan threshold refused to go down.

Cost and positioning are of course important reasons, but they are not absolute obstacles. For the domestic car companies flocking to compete for high-end imports, there is nothing that can not be solved by losing money at a loss. Even if it is a dozen or 200000 food-buying class, the configuration of millions of luxury cars will definitely go down.

In addition to the natural cost, complexity and maintainability of the high-end configuration, what prevents the air suspension from completely ordinary people's homes is that it must be equipped with a specific suspension structure. Generally speaking, the suspension types of many inexpensive models cannot adapt to air springs, or the cost-effectiveness ratio of forced adaptation is so low that it is not worth it.

The primary reason for choosing air spring for passenger cars is that it gives the adjustable characteristics of body height / ground clearance / spring stiffness, and the second may be to seek better stiffness curve, vibration filtering performance and so on. By changing the air volume in the airbag, the height of the car body can be adjusted.

However, for different types of suspension structures, the "side effects" of spring height changes are different.

McPherson structure, which is commonly used in the front wheel of affordable cars, because the spring damping strut is rigidly connected with the steering knuckle, the change of the spring length of the front suspension will directly lead to the change of the inclination angle of the front wheel. Because the track drawn by the lower arm is an arc, the variation of the front wheel inclination angle with the spring length is nonlinear.

The spring column must be hard connected to the steering knuckle, and the spring shortens the tilt angle of the wheel; the lower swing arm sweeps across an arc, so when the modern air suspension is used in the front suspension, it is almost certainly matched with the front double fork arm / front five link structure. For this kind of structure, due to the existence of the upper and lower fork arm and the active connection between the fork arm and the steering knuckle, the change of the front wheel inclination angle is still more linear and controllable, and the range is usually smaller.

In addition, due to the spring damping structure commonly used in the front suspension, the McPherson structure requires the spring to bear part of the lateral stress, which increases the hidden danger of reliability for the delicate air spring. In the double fork arm structure where the spring shock absorber only bears the longitudinal force, the situation of the air spring will naturally be much better.

The use of McPherson structure in the front wheel with air spring is rare, but not extinct, the most recent is the Mercedes-Benz V-Class MPV. However, due to the structural limitation, the difference between the three heights of the air suspension, the standard mode and the motion mode is only 10mm, while the standard mode has a speed limit of 110km / h, while the lifting mode of raising 35mm is only allowed to run to 30km / h.

On the i4 and the new i3, BMW uses air springs on the rear axle to improve the front and rear balance of the vehicle under heavy loads. However, because the front axle uses the same McPherson structure as the 3-series / 4-series, it does not challenge the difficulty of the air spring, so it has become a rare model with rear air suspension.

The principle of the rear wheel is similar. To ensure that the geometric parameters of the rear wheel change linearly when the body height, that is, the length of the air spring changes, for most passenger cars today, independent five-link or trapezoidal integrated connecting rod (H-arm) will be a more suitable rear suspension structure with air spring.

Therefore, today we can see that almost all the models equipped with air suspension are the front and rear suspension structures for the above categories. Air suspension essentially forms two thresholds, first of all, it is necessary to use a higher cost positioning of the front and rear suspension structure, on which we can talk about whether to use air springs.

For example, in the ideal brand, the ideal ONE is the front McPherson and the rear E-type multi-link structure, so there is no possibility of enjoying the air suspension (or very little necessity), or even the opportunity to add money to the optional installation; it is necessary to upgrade to the L9 with front double fork arm and rear five-link suspension structure in order to easily realize the standard air suspension.

The dividends of the pure electricity era, of course, as we often say, there are no barriers that can never be broken, and models with simpler and cheaper suspension structures and air springs are not available, but they are limited to a small number of alternative and some ancient models. Basically disappeared in the mainstream market.

When entering the era of pure electricity, the advantages of air suspension can even be said to be magnified.

It is well known that electric vehicles need to arrange battery packs under the car, which will occupy a certain thickness / height direction of space. In our low-demon world, space cannot disappear into thin air, and the battery pack can either squeeze the ride space up, raise the height of the floor, or encroach on the gap between the ground and the ground.

If the thickness of the battery pack is all added to the height of the whole vehicle, it will not only increase the windward area and increase the wind resistance, but also increase the bloated appearance of the car, and it is easy to encounter the problem of height limit for SUV and MPV. This is also one of the reasons why many pure electric cars prefer to expose their owners rather than add sunshades to the panoramic canopy.

A more perfect solution, using air suspension to achieve a height adjustable calculation. It can not only reduce the height of the car when getting on and off, driving at high speed, and passing the height limit, but also temporarily increase the ground clearance when it needs to pass, which is good news for any type of pure electric car body, which is more sensitive than the fuel car.

Pure electric vehicles no longer have engine noise and vibration, and the higher requirements for NVH performance also make the benefits of air suspension more perceptible. Compared with the ordinary steel spring, the air spring has no noise caused by mechanical friction, and the air natural frequency does not change with the increase of load, which is more friendly to improve the performance of NVH.

When the role and value of air suspension is easier to perceive than in the past fuel vehicle era, the hierarchical role of air suspension in the electric era has become more and more prominent. Considering that giving full play to the efficiency of the air spring and the need for a relatively high-cost suspension structure, car companies are more willing to use it as a distinction between high and low levels.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: autocarweekly (ID:autocarweekly), author: ao'hu

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.