The Hindu : Business : Bose dares auto world with smart suspension

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 28, 2004

Business

Business

Bose dares auto world with smart suspension

By Anand Parthasarathy

FRAMINGHAM (Massachusetts, U.S.), AUG. 27. Car owners who boast of a Bose music system in their vehicles may soon wish they had another product from the company working beneath the floor board. In a demonstration that drew gasps of surprise from the generally hard boiled global media assembled here, today, at the Bose corporate and research headquarters, the 74-year-old founder-Chairman, Amar G. Bose, personally unveiled a radically new vehicle suspension system that makes light work of the biggest bumps, undulations and potholes you can find on the road, giving occupants a glide that no car — from sports car to luxury sedan — can match today.

The system shuns conventional springs and hydraulic/pneumatic shock absorbers for an electromagnetic alternative. The key new hardware is a linear motor with a stroke of almost 20 cms, which reacts in a fraction to a second to the road profile, thanks to a mathematical algorithm which Dr. Bose has been honing for 24 years. Result? The vehicle's wheel base makes the adjustments, leaving the body of the car oblivious to the most bone-breaking road conditions.

Dr. Bose and his small team of co-engineers have plaid the details of the Bose suspension system close to their chests since the early 1980s — codenaming it to look like another audio project. Indeed patents were not filed till very recently lest they ran out before the idea was ready to exploit.

This correspondent was enabled to `ride' a car on a specially created test bench, where four posts simulated pre recorded bumpy road conditions. The normally uncomfortable ride morphed into a luxuriously smooth passage once the simulator kicked in with the Bose suspension.

Speaking later to the India media contingent here, Dr. Bose said he hoped to interest at least one major auto manufacturer by year end and work closely with the party — so that the Bose suspension cold appear as a commercial option in 3-4 years. He revealed that the company was now looking to set up a new manufacturing facility in China. It was also planning to have a development presence in India particularly in the software arena.

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