The Chinese EV maker Nio has become the first customer for U.S. startup ClearMotion’s active chassis technology, which cancels unwanted vibrations to help ensure a smoother ride.
ClearMotion will install 3 million units of its ClearMotion1 technology across Nio’s lineup, starting with the ET9 flagship sedan, covering 750,000 vehicles. Nio Capital, the automaker’s venture capital arm, is also an investor in ClearMotion.
The components will be made at ClearMotion’s first production facility, in Changshu, China. The plant will make up to 1.5 million units annually, with deliveries starting in the fourth quarter of this year.
"Now we are working with our first customer and are really in industrialization mode," Zack Anderson, founder and CTO of ClearMotion, told Automotive News Europe.
ClearMotion1 works by taking control of a vehicle’s motion, reducing unwanted vibration and movement – what it calls pitch, roll and heave – by up to 75 percent compared with current technology, resulting in a smoother, more comfortable driving experience, the company says.
"ClearMotion1 does for motion control what noise-cancelling headphones do for noise. We basically read the road and cancel out unwanted vibrations," Anderson said.
'Epiphany moment'
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The 37-year-old Anderson started the company in 2012 after leaving the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied electrical engineering and computer science. It was while he was sitting in the back seat of an Uber in New York City trying to work on a laptop when he had an "epiphany moment," he said.
Anderson said he realized how controlling the car’s chassis could be essential to delivering an "airplane-like experience" for passengers.
"People spend a huge amount of time in cars today, and that time is unproductive, and I would say at worse it’s actually nauseating, and we deserve better," he said.
It took about eight years to develop the technology that became ClearMotion1, he said.
The hardware that the company sells is a "smart actuator" with a built-in controller that it ClearMotion calls the Activalve, which monitors, processes and responds to road conditions. The actuator can be integrated into an existing chassis at each corner, much like a suspension component.
"It’s impractical to assume with a mass product that you could ask automakers to change the fundamental design of the chassis," Anderson said.
ClearMotion also supplies the software that controls the Activalves. Data from the vehicle is uploaded to the cloud and is then used to improve suspension performance in real time.
Another product is called RoadMotion, which uses crowd-sourced sensor data to generate a high-definition road surface map that delivers predictive data to the vehicle, which can anticipate conditions ahead.
More factories planned
In addition to Nio, the company is working with several other customers worldwide, Anderson said, with more plants planned for North America and Europe.
“Our strategy is producing in the region for the region, so we will eventually have multiple production facilities in North America and China, close to our customers there,” he said. For now, ClearMotion plans to supply initial volumes for other regions from China.
Anderson said ClearMotion’s technology could lend itself to “pretty innovative models around subscription services features and functions” and is especially suited for self-driving cars.
“As cars become more automated and ride-sharing becomes more prevalent, the passenger experience matters more,” he said.
He described a car’s motion as being on three axes, with X being acceleration and deceleration, Y being steering, and Z being the suspension. Digitizing the Z dimension through a fully active suspension is “sort of the last frontier,” he said, “if you want to give back time to people” and allow them to work comfortably and productively.
“The vertical dynamics controlling the Z dimension of the car are essential to delivering an airplane-like experience,” Anderson said.
ClearMotion’s technology also contributes to safety by rapidly vectoring the vertical force on each tire to ensure optimal traction, he said. It could shorten emergency braking distances, the company added.
“I think we were ahead of the market when we came up with the concept,” Anderson said about ClearMotion1. “We wanted to make something that could truly be scalable, that wouldn’t be limited to luxury cars but could eventually go into the mass market.”
