An automobile was seen as a simple accessory of luxury in the early years of the past
century. Therefore, it was an expensive asset which none of the common citizen could
afford. It was necessary to pass a long period and waiting for Henry Ford to establish
the first plants with the series fabrication. This new industrial paradigm makes easy to
the common American to acquire an automobile, either for running away or for
working purposes. Since that date, the automotive research grown exponentially to the
levels observed in the actuality. Now, the automobiles are indispensable goods; saying
with other words, the automobile is a first necessity article in a wide number of
aspects of living: for workers to allow them to move from their homes into their
workplaces, for transportation of students, for allowing the domestic women in their
home tasks, for ambulances to carry people with decease to the hospitals, for
transportation of materials, and so on, the list don’t ends. The new goal pursued by the
automotive industry is to provide electric vehicles at low cost and with high reliability.
This commitment is justified by the oil’s peak extraction on 50s of this century and also
by the necessity to reduce the emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere, as well as to reduce
the needs of this even more valuable natural resource. In order to achieve this task and
to improve the regular cars based on oil, the automotive industry is even more
concerned on doing applied research on technology and on fundamental research of
new materials. The most important idea to retain from the previous introduction is to
clarify the minds of the potential readers for the direct and indirect penetration of the
vehicles and the vehicular industry in the today’s life. In this sequence of ideas, this
book tries not only to fill a gap by presenting fresh subjects related to the vehicular
technology and to the automotive engineering but to provide guidelines for future
research.
This book account with valuable contributions from worldwide experts of
automotive’s field. The amount and type of contributions were judiciously selected to
cover a broad range of research. The reader can found the most recent and
cutting-edge sources of information divided in four major groups: electronics (power,
communications, optics, batteries, alternators and sensors), mechanics (suspension
control, torque converters, deformation analysis, structural monitoring), materials (nanotechnology, nanocomposites, lubrificants, biodegradable, composites, structural
monitoring) and manufacturing (supply chains).
We are sure that you will enjoy this book and will profit with the technical and
scientific contents. To finish, we are thankful to all of those who contributed to this
book and who made it possible.
