Pothole damage can also be costly, with urban drivers spending more than $500 a year, according to Ford, citing research by transportation group TRIP.
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Ford’s all-new Fusion V6 Sport is the type of vehicle that can protect itself and your wallet from those damaging potholes that often plague some of our most traveled on roads.
Ford is rolling out a computer-controlled shock absorber system, which helps to significantly reduce the unpleasant feeling you get when you’re driving down a riddled road.
“We tested and tuned this system by driving over countless potholes – subjecting Fusion V6 Sport to the brutal, square-edged potholes of our Romeo Proving Grounds to finesse the software”, commented Jason Michener, Ford continuously controlled damping engineering expert.
Some luxury cars have similar technology, but Ford says the 2017 Fusion is first mid-sized vehicle in its price range that has offered the feature.
The all-new Fusion V6 Sport with continuously controlled damping and pothole mitigation technology arrives at Ford dealerships this summer. It starts operating as soon as the vehicle encounters the lip of a pothole – faster than the blink of an eye – making the shock absorber stiffen so that the front wheel won’t fall into the hole. Because the tire and wheel don’t drop as far, they don’t strike the opposite side of the pothole as harshly. In the past three years alone, Ford engineers’ search for scary road hazards has taken them to Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, as well as Asia, Australia, North America and South America. One of the places that Ford had tested on some major terrains was at Belgium, where it’s been deemed to have the world’s worst potholes and other extreme surfaces.
‘By incorporating these real-world hazards into our test facilities we can develop vehicles equipped to deal with these challenging conditions’. Lommel Proving Ground incorporates test tracks covering 50 miles, and more than 100 extreme surfaces replicated from 25 countries, including 1.2 miles of potholes.
Ford Motor Company is a global automotive and mobility company based in Dearborn, Michigan.
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Engineers drive through the potholes and over surfaces as diverse as granite blocks from Belgium and cobbles from Paris, at speeds of nearly 50mph. For example, test drivers there drove the all-new Transit over the course more than 5,000 times as part of a testing regime created to simulate ten years’ punishment in just six months.
