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2017 Ford Fusion V6 Sport’s Shock Absorber System the Bane of Potholes

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2017 Ford Fusion V6 Sport (1)

2017 Ford Fusion V6 Sport

Ford is aiming to help reduce the near $3 billion bill that US drivers foot every year to repair damage caused by potholes. And it is starting with the 2017 Ford Fusion V6 Sport, which will feature a first-in-its-class computer-controlled shock absorber system

Watch: A Demonstration of the Fusion V6 Sport’s Shock Absorber System

The pothole mitigation system will use onboard computers to analyze data collected from 12 sensors to adjust the continuously controlled damping system every two milliseconds. This allows the Fusion V6 sport to almost instantaneously detect the edge of a pothole, adjusting the wheel to its stiffest setting to prevent the wheel from falling to sharply into a pothole and reducing the impact.

“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,” said Jason Michener, Ford continuously controlled damping engineering expert. “It was long hours of not very pleasant work, but the results are well worth it.”

Much of that testing was done at Ford’s Lommel Proving Ground in Belgium, which features 50 miles of test track covered with more than 100 different road hazards.