Photo: Car and Driver
At the moment, as we all know, the most popular gearbox in the entire BMW line-up is the majestic 8-speed automatic from ZF. We had the chance of driving several cars fitted with this gearbox and we really can say that it is simply amazing.
That's not the only amazing piece of equipment ever to come out of the German company's assembly lines. Over the years a lot of BMWs and other manufacturers' cars were fitted with ZF parts and all of them were impressive (to say the least).
Now, it seems like the next frontier for the gearbox specialists is getting involved in energy recovering suspension systems. As previously reported by various publications, the system regenerates energy using the oil flow in the damper, converting kinetic energy into electricity, activated by wheel travel.
We won't get into too technical details but the prospects look promising. The energy provided by these systems doesn't look like it's going to be massive but any bit can help, just like regenerative brakes do at the moment.
Furthermore, as BMW is currently looking to save energy by any means necessary, launching more and more cars using the eDrive module that was initially developed specifically for the i3, this could also come in handy, helping to reduce the fleet CO2 average emissions.
The only real problem now will be the cost of this technology compared to the benefits. At the moment, the tech is in its incipient stage, so we don't have exact numbers right now, but if it will become feasible, we might as well see adaptive dampers from ZF with energy recovering technology on future BMWs.
Now, it seems like the next frontier for the gearbox specialists is getting involved in energy recovering suspension systems. As previously reported by various publications, the system regenerates energy using the oil flow in the damper, converting kinetic energy into electricity, activated by wheel travel.
We won't get into too technical details but the prospects look promising. The energy provided by these systems doesn't look like it's going to be massive but any bit can help, just like regenerative brakes do at the moment.
Furthermore, as BMW is currently looking to save energy by any means necessary, launching more and more cars using the eDrive module that was initially developed specifically for the i3, this could also come in handy, helping to reduce the fleet CO2 average emissions.
The only real problem now will be the cost of this technology compared to the benefits. At the moment, the tech is in its incipient stage, so we don't have exact numbers right now, but if it will become feasible, we might as well see adaptive dampers from ZF with energy recovering technology on future BMWs.
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