While cool as a shower thought, in reality, having a 1200HP car jump and go airborne while you're swerving to avoid a pothole is just about the last thing you want it to be doing. Traction control is pretty good these days, but not that good that you want to lose all traction at 120km/h (75mph, the speed shown in the video).
Both this and the Bose linear actuator one lift just the wheel that needs lifting, just enough to clear the obstacle, keeping everything perfectly steady, it's incredible.
The fact that it can also do silly jumps for marketing reasons is a different topic.
A more impressive demo is that it can do precise turns in place without skidding.[1]
That's the U8, BYD's answer to Rivian. The U9 can do that too.
Rivian did demo a turn in place, but they were spewing dirt all over.[2]
Rivian took the feature out.
Now, those are BYD's high end supercars, to show off the technology. The high-end volume vehicle, the U7, just came out.[3] That is under US$90K (depending on what tariffs are on this week) and competes with Tesla's higher end products. All the fancy torque and suspension control of the supercar, but at a lower price point.
BYD isn't offering it in the US. Just the rest of the world.
Rivian is spewing dirt around because someone is flooring it in the mud, undoubtedly part of someone's marketing vision. There is similar video of U8 slinging sand around while doing 360 in the desert.
Seems BYD really put some engineering behind this gimmick to make it as graceful and controllable as possible, while Rivian just winged some pointless demos and G-Wagon one is rough and very situational (sand/snow/wet).
Even though they're the cream of the crop of a country of over a billion people, those silly engineers at BYD don't know what they're doing. We'd all be better off if they took tips about this problem they've spent years developing from random guy on the internet.
> While cool as a shower thought, in reality, having a 1200HP car jump and go airborne while you're swerving to avoid a pothole is just about the last thing you want it to be doing.
Surely the system takes cornering into account. Having a suspension that can use predictive motions to compensate for a pothole would ideally produce better handling by minimizing the disruption of a pothole imparting a massive disturbance to the vehicle.
If you're swerving in that car and clip any portion of that pothole, you're almost certainly going to lose control anyway. And if you've swerved around the pothole successfully, there's nothing for the suspension to have to jump. ;-)
