Why does new energy vehicles seem to solve the chassis technology problem all at once?

When buying a fuel car, we emphasize the "three major parts", namely the engine, transmission and chassis. In the era of new energy vehicles, everyone doesn't seem to emphasize the chassis much, and more emphasis is placed on the "three electrics", that is, the battery motor electronic control, as well as the "new three parts", the refrigerator color TV sofa.

New energy vehicles do not need an engine gearbox (plug-in hybrid and extended range engines are more like a range extender, and the difficulty is relatively not so high), but the chassis is still needed.

It is inherently easy for new energy vehicles to make chassis

In the era of fuel vehicles, except for some sports cars, the engine and gearbox of most vehicles are in front, and these "two big pieces" are very heavy, so the natural counterweight is unbalanced for fuel vehicles, and you will feel a strong force twisting you when cornering, so you need chassis tuning to fight against this shortcoming.

At the same time, we also see some sports-oriented brands, such as BMW, often emphasize a 50:50 weight ratio between the front and rear, but such cars generally have a longitudinal engine and gearbox, the front end is relatively long, and the space utilization is not high.

When it comes to new energy vehicles, there is no such trouble at all, not only without the gearbox, but also a large and heavy battery pack in the center of the bottom of the car, which not only solves the problem of imbalance in the front and rear counterweights of the vehicle, but also lowers the center of gravity of the vehicle, and it is easy to achieve the state of "high-speed stability, no fluttering".

You must know that the horizontally opposed engines of Subaru and Porsche are blown because of the low center of gravity of the engine, and if the center of gravity is low, it will definitely be directly killed by electric vehicles.

In addition, from the engineer's point of view, chassis tuning is essentially a test, the traditional car engine + gearbox is more mechanical, while the electric drive can be precisely controlled by software, you can use a motor with much more power than planned, and output a variety of required power characteristics through software control.

At this time, the essence is the iterative speed of mechanical and electronic hardware competition, and its development efficiency and speed are not in one dimension, fuel vehicles may only be tested 1000 times in 3 years, and electric vehicles can be completed in 3 months. We see that the development cycle of new energy vehicles is shortened by nearly half compared with traditional fuel vehicles (6-7 years), and this is partly due to this reason.

Hardware improvements: double wishbones, five-link, CDC, FSD, and air suspension began to become popular

I don't know if you have found it, many of the current electric vehicles are the "top configuration" of the front double wishbone rear five-link, and some are only at the price of hundreds of thousands, such as Leap C11 and BYD Song L, which are at least at the level of BMW 5 Series on fuel vehicles, and the basic ones below this level are MacPherson.

On the one hand, it is due to the cost, on the other hand, the traditional fuel vehicles within 250,000 are basically the layout of the engine transverse, and it is difficult to stuff into the double wishbone that occupies more space, and the motor of the electric vehicle is relatively smaller, and many of them are rear-drive motors in the back.

Although the chassis also needs to be "tuned", it is likely that it will not be bad if it is congenitally equipped with the hardware of the front double wishbone and the rear five-link.

In addition, with the maturity and progress of the domestic supply chain, air suspension and CDC active hydraulic suspension have become more and more popular, such as the ideal Pro and Max series are equipped with air suspension as standard, and they began to look for overseas suppliers, but it turned out that not only the price is expensive, but the matching cycle is still very long, and finally Li Auto chose to cooperate with a domestic supplier - Kong Hui Technology, In 2022, Li Auto bought more than 200,000 sets of air suspension from Kong Hui Technology, so that this company was only established 5 The young company has become a new leader in the air suspension industry, with a market share of nearly 40%. In addition, NIO's air suspension has also switched from overseas suppliers to domestic Baolong.

Obviously, the price of domestic air suspension is much lower than that of overseas giant suppliers, such as Continental and Vibrator, so at present, we can see that many cars of more than 200,000 have also begun to be equipped with air suspension, such as ZEEKR 001, VOYAH Free, Xpeng G9, etc.

And on the fuel car, basically only to the BMW 7 series of this level can be optional, now two or three hundred thousand new energy vehicles began to have air suspension, the same price is still using MacPherson BMW 3 series is considered a dimensionality reduction blow?

In addition, to give another example of BYD, BYD's suspension has been complained about as "chopstick suspension", but in many models have been upgraded "FSD" variable damping suspension, which uses a special damping valve technology, which can automatically adjust the vibration damping of the body under different conditions to achieve better suspension performance and driving comfort.

A Song PLUS DM-i user bought an FSD suspension upgrade package at a local 4S store by himself, spending 2960 yuan (cheaper than the official website), and after upgrading the suspension, it means that the roll, vibration suppression, brake nodding, and high-speed driving texture are much better than the original.

We often discuss how well a car suspension is tuned on the Internet, but in the face of the absolute lead at the hardware level, these tunings can only be regarded as micro-operations, as long as they are willing to "feed", the texture of the chassis can be qualitatively improved, of course, thanks to the progress of the domestic supply chain.

Buying a car chassis is actually not that important

As mentioned above, it is relatively rare for BYD to spend 3000 yuan to upgrade FSD suspension, and most BYD owners do not have much opinion on "chopstick suspension", BYD's best-selling cars, Song PLUS DM-i, Han, Tang, etc., while BYD is recognized as the best chassis seal EV, but it has fallen into the dilemma of selling one or two thousand units a month.

It can be seen that everyone does not care so much about the chassis when buying a car, and the author summarizes 2 reasons for this:

First of all, the roads in China are getting more and more perfect, more and more smooth, most of the villages have cement roads (our village has been open for 4 or 5 years), even if it is a very general chassis, there is no problem in driving.

In addition, most of the current domestic car purchases are still for families, and the number of cars owned by thousands of people in mainland China in 2022 is 226, that is, there is only one car for every 4 or 5 people. As for whether the high-speed corners are stable or not, it really doesn't matter how well the elk test scores.

Since it is for the family, the first thing to pay attention to when buying a car should be whether the space is large, and then whether the seat is comfortable, whether the air conditioner is not strong, whether it is safe, whether it is fuel-efficient, whether the configuration is high, whether the failure rate is low or not, and how to maintain the value......

Generally speaking, it is inherently easier for new energy vehicles to do a good job in the chassis, coupled with the upgrading of hardware, most of the current new energy vehicle chassis is not bad, and everyone does not pay so much attention to the chassis when buying a car, and many cars with the chassis as a selling point are dead.