There’s a lot of gooey stuff between your heart and your bones, and there’s a lot more to a production automobile – fossil-fueled or electric – than a motor and a chassis.

Among the many things that have made the automobile tolerable is the un-sexy engine mount. Its evolution from the 1932 Plymouth’s innovative “Floating Power” hunk o’ rubber mount to today’s hydraulic dampener has made the internal combustion engine’s gradual torque rise tolerable, but we’re right back in the stone-age in terms of managing an electric motor’s immediate burst of full power. The engine mount is just one of hundreds of humdrum components that needs reinvention for EVs to become “normal” cars.

That’s why the application of rheomagnetic fluid – the magic shock-absorber goop that makes the Corvette the best-handling car in the world – to motor mounts is as important as synovial fluid is to your knee. By charging the Rheo fluid’s magnetizable particles, the mount is instantaneously “stiffened” against sudden force, and then just as quickly slackened as the body structure adjusts to the load. [Sounds kind of sexy after all – Ed.] The ability to reduce the shock of right now power will have a lot to do with making EV acceleration more manageable and efficient, as well as improving ride and vehicle durability.