Some clever students at MIT should get the "why didn't I think of that" award, for inventing automobile shock absorbers that generate electricity from the bumps in the road, increasing a vehicle's fuel efficiency by ten percent.
There are so many moving parts in a vehicle that energy is constantly being lost through friction, ultimately turning fuel into useless heat, instead of the motion to get your car from A to B.“We wanted to figure out where energy is being wasted in a vehicle," said Zack Anderson, one of the students that invented the system." Supporting and moving with the vehicle's entire weight, the shock absorbers turned out to be a great candidate for revision.
According to the University, the United States Military and several truck manufacturers have shown
interest in the technology.
The new shocks would be best for large trucks and military vehicles, but, with how quickly green technology is being invented and streamlined these days, it's not hard to imagine these being fitted for your Toyota Camry before a decade is up.
While the suspension system generates electricity, it also smooths your ride better than conventional shock absorbers. And, if the electronics fail for whatever reason, no worries. The new shocks will just act like old shocks until they are repaired.
This system uses same kind of thinking as regenerative braking, another clever idea, already in the market, that generates electricity from brake friction. These technologies are forming a trend. The focus is no longer just on new sources of energy, but on conserving more of the energy the vehicle has always generated.
According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, as of 2007, there were over two-hundred fifty million registered vehicles in the United States. If this technology made it into our own garages it would make a big difference in overall emissions. As old vehicles are replaced with new models sporting hybrid engines, regenerative braking, and this new suspension system, we may get a very different idea of how far a unit of energy can move a car.
Our entire modern way of life is supported on a foundation of tires on asphalt, nearly everything the average person buys having been driven hundreds to thousands of miles. Not to mention that any product's constituent parts have likely come much farther, in a long spiderweb leading ultimately to mines, oceans, farms and forests. And most of the trip from the iron mine to your silverware drawer is made on suspension systems that could be generating energy, instead of wasting it.
