The question is in the title. I’m aware that this may depend on the driver and how sudden the acceleration/retardation is, but certain luxury buses are for instance way smoother and softer than other. Obviously, this depends on the cost and quality of the engine. But what exactly makes it smooth?
In: Engineering
The smoothness of a vehicle largely comes down to its suspension. If you go look under a car, you’ll see that there are some very big springs that are part of how the axel attaches to the car. Those springs help absorb shocks to smooth out the ride.
The better the suspension (ie, using more than just a basic spring, like a hydraulic system) the more the car can “float”. Basically, you want the wheels to be able to move up and down as much as possible without the rest of the bus moving up and down. Of course, the wheels still need to hold up the bus, so they still need to push upwards against the bus, but if you can take a 1 millisecond spike when the wheel hits a bump and spread that out over 10 seconds the rider will barely feel it. A cheaply made bus is going to have as basic a suspension as it can get away with, while a luxury bus is probably going to have a pretty fancy one.
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