Since the turn of the century, the landscape of automotive features and marketing has changed. Gone are the days when speed and power are the main selling point of a car. Instead, modern consumers are shifting their focus more and more to considerations such as comfort, efficiency, safety, and technology. In this article, we take a look at how the attitudes of automotive consumers have changed over the years, and why manufacturers are adjusting their focus to capture their attention in new ways.
The 20th Century: Power and Performance
From the early days of the automotive industry, speed has been a primary focus for both consumers and manufacturers. When cars first hit the market, people wanted vehicles that could go faster than conventional transport before. This demand drove engineers and manufacturers to continually push the boundaries, resulting in faster, more powerful vehicles over the decades. Even as electric vehicles emerged in the 21st century, the emphasis remained on performance, with models like the Tesla Model S highlighting acceleration and power as key selling points.
The 21st Century: Efficiency and Comfort
In more recent times, a shift in consumer attitudes has been seen, revealing they are more focused on comfort, safety, and efficiency. Speed still plays a large role in the industry and in the minds of consumers, but it has largely become standard, and is no longer a differentiator when purchasing a vehicle.
Fuel efficiency ranks as one of the main factors that people consider when choosing a vehicle. This makes sense, as it directly affects the total cost of ownership of the vehicle, as well as the environmental impact of using the vehicle. Comfort while driving also ranks high, with consumers increasingly expecting driving aids and a high-quality ride.
The importance of these factors will likely increase even more in the coming years, as manufacturers place more focus on developing and marketing them. Even now, an increasing number of manufacturers are highlighting efficiency in marketing material, and features designed to reduce demands on the driver, making the driving experience easier, safer, and more comfortable.
Domin’s Active Suspension, the Ultimate in Comfort and Handling
One important aspect of driver comfort is the suspension system. Suspension systems help ensure that driving is smooth and safe, improving steering stability, handling, and shock absorption from road conditions.
At Domin, we have used our expertise in hydraulics to create an active suspension system to provide the ultimate in ride comfort and handling. We make the world’s best-performing high-speed servo valves. We have combined these with our innovative, compact hydraulic pumps to create an active suspension system that is lightweight and efficient, while providing unparalleled performance.
Our advanced valves provide infinite variable damping, allowing the system to adapt instantly. This system does not use power when holding a position, but only to adjust, which dramatically reduces energy consumption. This high-speed, variable damping helps reduce transmission of unwanted road inputs, and can help reduce motion sickness in vehicle occupants.
With our high-speed switching valves and discrete onboard accumulators, we can achieve a spring rate that is instantly adjustable. This enables millisecond-scale transitions with extremely low energy consumption, allowing you to tailor the vehicle to the desired stiffness, resulting in an intelligent, flexible system.
Our high-pressure pumps dynamically supplement the suspension forces of the system to facilitate precise height adjustment with zero holding power. Combined with a low-pressure reservoir, this gives us the capability for precise, rapid, and low-energy ride height adjustments at each corner of the car, allowing for an adaptive posture, reducing aerodynamic drag, and improving stability at high speed.
All of these features are controlled by our bespoke embedded software in each of the suspension units. This enables us to automatically and dynamically respond to the road and the driver to achieve world-class comfort and handling characteristics, completely eliminating the need for driver-selectable modes or compromises between ride quality and performance.
Domin’s active suspension solution takes driver comfort and car performance into new realms. An intelligent and integrated system that adapts to any road, Domin active suspension can open the door for automotive manufacturers to provide the differentiator: superior ride and handling.
