Americans have no idea how far advanced the Chinese car market is.
The big feature 2 years ago was car starting to sprout LIDAR bumps but now that feature has become de rigueur enough that car brands need to figure out something new to stand out, hence the big push to advertise their active suspension.
Nio's new ET9 is showing off their car doing tricks like bouncing a soccer ball (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3Ezjmz63U8), driving with a stack of glasses on it's hood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEr_sNp7XLM) and syncing the suspension to a movie (https://www.tiktok.com/@autogefuehl/video/745225999151335350...). Yangwang is showing it leap the car in the air. At the end of the day though, the more Hertz and more acceleration your active suspension system has, the smoother it can dampen movement inside the cabin and Chinese consumers are already getting very picky about how well specced the active suspension systems are.
In another 2 years time, Nio/Yuanyang style active suspension will have trickled out into enough midrange cars that it's no longer an exciting feature and Chinese car brands will figure out the latest new thing to compete. Meanwhile, American car brands will be barely half way through their model cycle refresh and just starting to think about incrementally adding a single feature or two and maybe adding a new curve to the body somewhere.
>Americans have no idea how far advanced the Chinese car market is.
Americans have no reason to care about that. Their legacy car industry is now only a vestigial part of their economy. It's an acceptable casualty when the brunt of their economy is finance, tech and services, plus owning the printer to the world reserve currency and the largest military in the world by a long margin along with large fossil fuel reserves, giving them leverage over China and the Chinese economy in other more important areas while their car industry can coast into irrelevance letting their allies Japan, Korea, Germany race to the bottom in selling American consumer cheap cars in exchange for those sweet USD. They'll be fine.
On the other hand, countries like Germany where the legacy ICE auto sector is a large slice of the economy and don't have energy independence, don't issue the world reserve currency, don't have a strong military, don't have a leading finance and tech sector, but have a ballooning welfare deficit and unions fighting against the inevitable change to EV, will be less fine and more at the mercy of bullying from world powers along with a reduction in standard of living of their workers/citizens.
There's considerable risk in that strategy if taken to the extreme. Because you could eventually outsource virtually everything, including critical dependencies, and then just be left with a sort of pure military-financial hegemony, but that can be a rather unstable equilibrium.
Not saying there's no tasteful way to stably approximate that state though (and even not requiring stepping on other's toes, which may actually help in combination with the right narrative).
No idea where you get your news on Germany, but the only valid thing was the part about the auto industry being legacy. As someone working in the energy sector, I can gladly tell you we got rid off most dependencies, we’re 95% independent regarding electricity. Oil and coal are still a problem, but we’re getting there. That ballooning welfare deficit you talk about must be a joke, what are you even saying? Germany has a zero deficit policy in it’s constitution (which what’s actually causing trouble right now, especially regarding Ukraine help funding). Please also point me to information on unions fighting EV because I haven’t heard anything about this (being active in the largest German union).
As everyone that watched Knight Rider knows, a jumping car solves ALL your problems. Even a heavily armed gang of thugs can easily be defeated by a jumping car without a single drop of blood being shed.
Haven't lowriders worked on this for years now? I think they are further concerning angle of attack and elevation but behind the whole "while driving" thing. It's not really my field of expertise.
In France, « dos d'ânes » (“donkey's backs”) are supposed to be 10cm high, with other measurements we'll defined, but about 80% are way more “violent” as a defensive tool used by municipalities.
I guess they can't get away with just claiming to add rocket thrusters to their cars to hype their brand. I don't even know who the CEO is. Still a silly idea, unless your customer is batman.
I barely know any CEOs and I am happy when I can buy a product without knowing all political affiliations and personal opinions of the CEO that may or may not have an effect on their business decisions or on the business output.
I think the OP was making a sarcastic dig at Musk’s history of promises and cult of personality, by comparing to a company that is comparatively just quietly executing.
Ah, the benefit of having a Chinese CEO, they tend to want less public attention to themselves. "Man don't want to be famous, like pig don't want to grow big" as people say.
That, plus the fact BYD's founder/CEO (same guy) was not as flashy (reads "Unhinged") as Elon Musk.
When I hear Chinese CEO, I think they may be easily replaced and in the end the real CEO is Xi Jinping. I am sure it is a bit more complicated and I may have some prejudice, but how far am I? I would expect for a Chinese CEO that would behave like Elon Musk to disappear quite quickly. Am I wrong in this assessment as well?
It's a concept for R&D to try stuff out and for Marketing to get people to talk about the brand. I would be surprised an active system like this would survive the lifetime of a car without an unpalatable amount of maintenance and parts replacement.
Software adaptable suspension is nothing new. All this does is add some camera feedback and software smartness to the mix so it can anticipate obstacles and make real time adjustments to minimize their impact. That software will run fine for as long as the chips last. And technically the whole point here is to reduce shock impact which probably helps reducing the amount of wear and tear on the parts.
It does look cool though and probably having a lot of cars jumping over things on the highway would not end well. But it is neat technology.
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The big feature 2 years ago was car starting to sprout LIDAR bumps but now that feature has become de rigueur enough that car brands need to figure out something new to stand out, hence the big push to advertise their active suspension.
Nio's new ET9 is showing off their car doing tricks like bouncing a soccer ball (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3Ezjmz63U8), driving with a stack of glasses on it's hood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEr_sNp7XLM) and syncing the suspension to a movie (https://www.tiktok.com/@autogefuehl/video/745225999151335350...). Yangwang is showing it leap the car in the air. At the end of the day though, the more Hertz and more acceleration your active suspension system has, the smoother it can dampen movement inside the cabin and Chinese consumers are already getting very picky about how well specced the active suspension systems are.
In another 2 years time, Nio/Yuanyang style active suspension will have trickled out into enough midrange cars that it's no longer an exciting feature and Chinese car brands will figure out the latest new thing to compete. Meanwhile, American car brands will be barely half way through their model cycle refresh and just starting to think about incrementally adding a single feature or two and maybe adding a new curve to the body somewhere.
There's a 100% tariff on Chinese cars. Of course we have no idea.
Americans have no reason to care about that. Their legacy car industry is now only a vestigial part of their economy. It's an acceptable casualty when the brunt of their economy is finance, tech and services, plus owning the printer to the world reserve currency and the largest military in the world by a long margin along with large fossil fuel reserves, giving them leverage over China and the Chinese economy in other more important areas while their car industry can coast into irrelevance letting their allies Japan, Korea, Germany race to the bottom in selling American consumer cheap cars in exchange for those sweet USD. They'll be fine.
On the other hand, countries like Germany where the legacy ICE auto sector is a large slice of the economy and don't have energy independence, don't issue the world reserve currency, don't have a strong military, don't have a leading finance and tech sector, but have a ballooning welfare deficit and unions fighting against the inevitable change to EV, will be less fine and more at the mercy of bullying from world powers along with a reduction in standard of living of their workers/citizens.
Not saying there's no tasteful way to stably approximate that state though (and even not requiring stepping on other's toes, which may actually help in combination with the right narrative).
Active suspension apparently quietly was in luxury cars for a while...
I see this as hyped research, that's all, and it's good for everyone.
But that's nothing compared with mexican topes.
This is insanely cool.
Not mentioning the implied tech.
Of course you know it's a Chinese brand. The internal mindset shifting happen so naturally...
Forgive my cynicism, but I dislike products like that because it represents the polar opposite of what the world needs right now.
Your assessment of anti-sinoistic sentiment is on point tho.
In 2025, this has to be a praise.
Ah, the benefit of having a Chinese CEO, they tend to want less public attention to themselves. "Man don't want to be famous, like pig don't want to grow big" as people say.
That, plus the fact BYD's founder/CEO (same guy) was not as flashy (reads "Unhinged") as Elon Musk.
FYI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Chuanfu
A car can't be steered when it is airborne.
It does look cool though and probably having a lot of cars jumping over things on the highway would not end well. But it is neat technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXZaAuyuYmQ