What's the news?
The all-new Audi A8 broke cover today (July 11) and among the 'host of innovative new technologies' packed into its 58 per cent aluminium bodywork is active suspension.
Using forward-facing camera technology and the 48-volt electrical system as seen on the Audi SQ7 (albeit, here on the A8, this is the main electrical circuit, not the secondary item), the big Audi saloon features individual electric motors on each wheel, which control the 'damping', in effect. With a set of gears and a rotary tube, together with an internal titanium torsion bar and a lever that exerts up to 1,100Nm on the suspension via a coupling rod, Audi reckons the A8 can glide over bumpers and hunker itself down for corners, without the driver having to so much as flick a switch.
The electromechanical suspension can read bumps in the road ahead and then react in a few milliseconds, with the camera generating information about the condition of the road surface 18 times every second.
Anything else?
Clairvoyance in cars isn't actually as new as Audi is making out - the Mercedes-Benz S-Class has had this predictive ride control technology since 2013 and, in the same year, Rolls-Royce announced that its cars would use various on-board functions to pre-select gears according to the topography of the road ahead.