Electrification of powertrain and chassis components as opportunity for efficient and user-centric road transportation – Insights of the R&D projects HighScape, EM-TECH, and SmartCorners

During the last 15 years, the automotive domain has been subject to several disruptive transformations, impacting the full supply chain and enabling the uptake of new services and solutions around road-based passenger mobility and freight transportation. Electrification, CCAM, and SDV are leading to a total redesigning of the vehicle and its components, and very equally to a rethinking of how to deliver value. While software is playing a key role for value creation, it strongly relies on innovative mechatronics platforms and smart powertrain and chassis components as foundation for the SDV of the future. Target of this paper is to introduce the results of the three complementary research projects HighScape, EM-TECH, and SmartCorners, with the focus to deliver consistent innovation along the three following pillars: (a) electrified powertrain and chassis components, (b) vehicle platform and highly integrated corner solutions, and (c) novel control algorithms making use of smart components.