We at WorldAutoSteel, side-by-side with our engineering partner Ricardo, are rounding the corner on two years in the design process for the Steel E-Motive’s SEM1 and SEM2 autonomous, electric, mobility as a service (MaaS) vehicles. The excitement is really building around our global virtual office as we are getting closer and closer to finalizing the concept designs. We’re finishing the material and manufacturing process optimization now, and soon it will be pencils down. We’ll be making the full engineering reports freely available to the world’s engineers, as we have always done through the years, beginning with our UltraLight Family of Vehicles. We cannot wait to release our results for the world to see!
In the meantime, we have been releasing as much information as we can along the road. This month’s blog (on the Steel E-Motive site) concentrates on the unique closure design developed for Steel E-Motive. A B-Pillar integrated configuration (red component on the right side door in the animation below), which specifies Advanced High-Strength Steels in the A- and B-Pillars as well as for the door ring, affords a wide-open entry for passengers to enter and exit safely and comfortably. And when not in use for transporting people, the wide aperture can accommodate the loading and unloading of goods.
Steel E-Motive is achieving excellent side pole and side impact results with this closure design. You can read a little about Ricardo’s approach on designing for crash in our April blog here.
Here’s a little animation of the side closure design to hopefully encourage you to click over to the Steel E-Motive blog where we tell the whole story. Keep this window open on your browser and come back here with any questions or comments you may have. You can add them below in the Comments area of this page. We’d very much appreciate hearing your thoughts.