Well this is weird, even if Michelin is calling it revolutionary. What this is is a both a complete electric drive system AND a suspension that fits within the wheel of a car.
Putting electric drive motors within the wheel itself is one of the potential engineering advancements that electric cars could offer. Mainly due to making packaging all that much easier, it also makes doing things like all wheel drive much easier to accomplish. True, there will be a performance offset with raising the unsprung weight, but you now, the Lord giveth & the Lord taketh away.
At any rate, Michelin adds to that by also packaging the entire suspension within the wheel (along with the motor).
Huh, I wonder how that’s going to work? I can definitely see the packaging advantages there, not to mention if you get the dampers and actuators small enough, then you could do really interesting things with a full-on active suspension, but I still want to know about the mounting of the suspension/motor/wheel assembly to the chassis.
In the picture, it looks like they’re bolting it on via one big boss, which works, I’m sure … but how to they counteract all of the tangential loading when the vehicle is in motion? There’s a good reason why, ideally, you have upper and lower “A” arms keeping a wheel where you want it. Mounting it on one given point on the chassis versus five + the shock mounting? Like I said, I wonder how that’s going to work?
Source: GizModo
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