MIT undergraduates have created a regenerative shock absorber that can increase vehicle fuel efficiency by 10 percent. Not only does this conserve energy that would otherwise be wasted as heat, it also reportedly results in a smoother ride than conventional shocks.

The team is moving quickly to commercialize the technology, initially focusing on organizations with fleets of heavy vehicles, such as the military. The reason: large vehicles are particularly well-suited to shock absorber power generation.

In 6-shock heavy trucks, each absorber can generate as much a 1 kW of power on standard roads — reportedly enough to displace the large alternator load in these vehicles, and even run accessory devices.

The team has received help from MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service, and has already drawn interest from the U.S. military and several truck manufacturers. In fact, the company that is currently working on development of the next-generation Humvee has loaned them a vehicle for testing purposes.

“Simply put — we want this technology on every heavy-truck, military vehicle and consumer hybrid on the road,” says Senior Shakeel Avadhany.

Not only does this technology represent a completely new way of thinking about shock absorbers and their effectiveness at smoothing out your ride, it is essentially a drop-in technology that can be easily integrated into current technology. For instance, hybrid cars already regenerate energy that would otherwise be lost during braking. These shock absorbers could be added to the hybrid system to regenerate even more energy at a constant rate.