How “steer-by-wire” is set to transform the car of the future.
In the factories of the future, man and robot will work even more closely together, on one and the same production line. But robots can present a danger to people and are therefore usually locked up. In its Florange steering factory, thyssenkrupp has freed one of its machines. And it’s not just the company that profits, but the workers, too.
The crankshafts in the Porsche 911 Carrera S, the steering column in Tesla’s Model X and the semi-active dampers in the BMW i8 have one thing in common: They are all made by thyssenkrupp. These are facts that even trade journalists don’t always know. So thyssenkrupp invited them to gain some high-speed insights.
Thanks to digital assistant systems, car drivers can just lean back and relax in more and more driving situations. Developers worldwide are currently even working on making the steering wheel obsolete altogether and turning the interior of the vehicle almost into a second living room. It may sound like science fiction, but at thyssenkrupp in Budapest, this is becoming science fact.
According to an old German saying, nothing is too difficult for an engineer. But how are engineers supposed to develop automotive parts when nobody knows what vehicles will be like in the future, what will power them, or who’ll be driving them? Innovation Manager Falk Heitling and his colleagues in the technology department have been searching for answers.
