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+--- Thread: Suspension - is Magneride standard or only available with Adaptive Dynamics? (/Thread-Suspension-is-Magneride-standard-or-only-available-with-Adaptive-Dynamics)
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RE: Suspension - is Magneride standard or only available with Adaptive Dynamics? - mark_n - 29-07-2011 03:59am
It's made all the more confusing by the plethora of names but the generic name is adaptive damping. The damper or shock absorber is part of the suspension strut on each wheel. You can think of a damper as being like a piston with a hole in it moving in oil. The faster you try to move the piston, the more resistance it offers to having the oil forced through the hole. You adjust the damper by changing the diameter of the "hole" or the viscosity of the oil.
Early adaptive dampers simply had two or three settings - soft or firm - and you selected the one you wanted for the style of driving. As far as I can see, the Evoque without Adaptive Damping has a fixed setting chosen to be a compromise across different driving styles and terrains. The advantage of the Magneride dampers is they are not restricted to particular settings but can be adjusted continuously according to what the car is doing which is determined by accelerometers. One application for example is to stiffen the dampers on the inside of a corner to reduce body roll. Pictures of the heavier diesel cars under cornering show it tends to dig in at the front. With Magneride, the cornering stance should be more neutral.
So, the system is much cleverer than simply proving a soft ride/hard ride option. Instead, it's more of a profile - comfort or dynamic - which determines how the dampers are adjusted in different conditions. If you like to drive a bit harder and faster, adaptive damping makes sense. For me, it's a must have.
The point about the 20" wheels is that the tyres contribute to ride comfort. With small wheels, the squashy tyres cushion the ride but the handling is all over the place. Increase the size of the wheel, reduce the height of the sidewall and the tyre stiffens. This improves handling but at the expense of ride comfort. Using Adaptive Damping helps restore the ride comfort.
AD only makes sense for the higher performance variants. The Evoque is not an out and out sports car but is intended to be sporting to drive and that's a tough call when you also factor in the tallness of the car and the range of terrains it's designed to be at home in.
Worth also saying that the Dynamic mode may do other things than just adjust the dampers. Examples might be the auto gearbox control where in dynamic mode, you'd like the car to hold on to lower gears for longer when accelerating or when the car senses higher cornering forces - if you are driving fast along a winding road, you want the car to stay, say, in 4th gear instead of changing into a lazy fifth. Other examples are to stiffen the power steering in dynamic mode to provide an increased feeling of "connectedness" with car; similarly, the throttle response might be changed to provide a more enthusiastic take-off from rest.