Episode 19: The Future for Vehicle Springs
Hello everyone. It is much warmer these days as we “bounce into spring,” and that’s the time we like to do outdoor activities. I’m sure you’ll agree that on nice days, we all like to take cruise in our cars. As a matter of fact, today I want to talk about the future of vehicle springs.
You realize that now many many nations of the world are taking serious steps to reduce the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere.
And you realize that those efforts are to protect our natural environment. You know, even in our mundane daily lives, we produce high levels of CO2 without even knowing it. CO2, after all, is produced by the burning of various fuels. Human beings breath in oxygen which we internally consume and convert to energy. The by-product of our respiration is CO2. Maybe you never realized that just by breathing, we are creating CO2.
I wonder if any of you have recently begun hearing words like eco-car or hybrid car…? I think there may even be many people who already own such vehicles.
The vehicles are rapidly becoming popular all around the world. They have greatly contributed to the expansion of mankind.
As you well know, most vehicles can move by burning a petroleum product (gasoline or gas oil) or gas (most of the taxis in the metropolitan area run on propane, however) which is one type of fossil fuel. These convenient forms of transportation produce large amounts of CO2.
So automobile manufacturers have begun actively doing research and development based on the theme of actively reducing CO2 emissions. The result has been the development of a vehicle that is not completely electric, nor gasoline-powered. That’s what we call a hybrid vehicle.
The most important element for any hybrid vehicle is that it is light-weight. The lighter the vehicle is, the less electric power or gasoline it will consume, and it can travel for longer times and distances.
They have had to implement lighter weights for hybrid cars from a variety of angles. The body must be solid and robust even though it is light. Because the mechanical parts such as the engine or the harnesses (cables) for the electrical system take up a large share of the overall weight of the vehicle, they must be made to be as light as is possible.
In addition to them, there are many other components used in a vehicle. One of those many components is the spring! The springs used in hybrid vehicles must be even lighter. Some conditions have become essential, such as using resin-based springs rather than metallic ones, and using small springs rather than big ones. Some representative metallic mechanical components are the combustion system such as an engine, the drive system which transmits motive power from the combustion system such as an engine to the wheels, and the control system, such as the brakes.
These areas use tough metallic springs, but these will be replaced by smaller, lighter-weight metallic springs. Other than those places that must have metallic springs, in the future resin-based springs will be used with ever greater frequencies. They will be tough, but light-weight resin-based springs.
That’s it for now.
I have found that hybrid vehicles have more power than you might expect, and they are very quiet indeed. They will certainly help reduce city noise in addition to reducing CO2. In the future, not only will there be hybrid cars that run on both gasoline and electricity, but also vehicles that use other completely different fuels instead of gasoline. I am really looking forward to that day!
See you next time!
Written by Banekko (a child of spring)