Comprehensive Analysis and Mitigation Strategies to minimize torque Steer phenomenon for FWD vehicles during the vehicle development

Born Electric SUVs is gaining immense popularity due to enhanced ride and handling characteristics, advanced tech features elevating both performance and customer experience to an elite standard. Due to the platform constraints, the vehicle adopts a Front Wheel Drive (FWD) layout with a rear twist beam configuration, housing the electric motor at the front to deliver drive torque directly to the front wheels. Torque steer is a phenomenon often found in FWD cars, which can be unsettling to a driver where the steering wheel could be pulled hard to one side when there is aggressive throttle input potentially leading to deviation of the vehicle from its desired path. In contrast to internal combustion engines (ICEs), electric motors provide an instantaneous torque, something that can worsen torque steer if not well addressed. However, torque steer remains a key concern, with high torque output of electric motors especially for a front wheel drive vehicle. This paper introduces a methodology to study the torque steer effect through multi body simulations which can be predicted at the early development phase. So, to maximize the performance envelope, two different evaluation methods such as straight-line acceleration and skid pad test maneuvers were worked out to analyze the torque steer phenomenon for various scenarios like different initial speeds, asymmetric driveshafts, where the output is measured in terms of CoG lateral displacement in comparison with the vehicle longitudinal displacement. Sensitivity studies on changing the inner hardpoints of the drive shaft were performed to examine the effect of driveshaft position on torque steer to meet targeted performance metrics. This will help us to anticipate changes required to mitigate the torque steer in the early development stages.