Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Vehicle Energy Harvesting and Intelligent Sensing

As vehicle intelligence and automotive electrification advance, the extensive deployment of distributed sensing nodes for comprehensive monitoring has grown rapidly. This poses severe challenges, such as rising onboard power consumption and the inability of conventional centralized power supply systems to sustain these sensors. Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), an emerging technology for energy harvesting and self-powered sensing, exhibit great potential to address the above challenges. This review systematically summarizes research on TENGs for vehicle energy harvesting and intelligent sensing, covering their fundamental working principles and applications in diverse vehicle scenarios. First, the basic principle and working modes of TENGs are described, and their suitability for complex and variable vehicle environments is evaluated. Subsequently, existing applications are categorized into three domains: vehicle vibration systems, wheel–road systems, and intelligent vehicle systems. Studies on various topics are reviewed, including vibration energy harvesting and sensing, vehicle collision monitoring, tire energy harvesting, road sensing, smart cockpits, human–machine interaction, and vehicle fluid monitoring. Emphasis is placed on their technical approaches and application prospects. Finally, the state-of-the-art research and prevailing technical bottlenecks are summarized, and potential solutions and future research perspectives are discussed. This review aims to support the reliable practical deployment of TENG technology in vehicle engineering and to provide a technical basis for energy-saving strategies and in situ sensing technologies for future intelligent vehicles.