Components of An Automobile

My essence of writing this topic is not far-fetched, not for the purpose of entertaining you my dear readers but strictly for the purpose of educating and keeping you informed, have you asked yourselves this question, what are the components that make up my car? I know it could be out of place for most of us to have a bit of knowledge of our cars since its not exactly our call to fix these cars when they go bad, but its quite imperative to understand the workings of that car we drive every day to work, to church on weekends, to engagements and maybe just to move around
town.

My question again is what components make up your car? the BMW M5s of this world, the Mercedes Benz AMG,s, the Toyota,s and the Honda,s what makes these cars thick, Ordinarily the answers to expect from this sort of question aren't difficult to guess, ideally people will mention various components ranging from the engine parts, tires, suspensions, and other minor sub-components, this could be understandable, but in actual sense, an automobile is made up of just two parts THE SENSORS AND THE ACTUATORS.






FURTHER EXPLANATION

Before explaining further, I will like to explain what a SENSOR and ACTUATOR mean in simple terms,

A Sensor is a device used to detect or respond to electrical or optical signals, in other words, a sensor simply converts physical parameters like pressure, heat, or speed  into an electrical signal,

An actuator in clear terms is a device that converts energy into motion.in simple terms, an actuator does the bidding of a sensor.






MY POINT

Cars especially modern ones are made up of engine and transmission, tires and suspensions electrical components, and other related compositions, but these components could be categorized into two broad groups, the SENSORS, and ACTUATORS, while we have several sensors like the wheel speed sensors, the air pressure sensors, E.C, M  in modern day cars monitoring the overall function of these cars, we also have actuators that are responsible for the actual workings of these cars, the engine, transmissions, and other movable parts are the actuators in these cars.

Starting your car requires you to crank up the engine either through an ignition key or a push start button, for the process to be complete the sensors in this instance which is the ECM  (brainbox) would have to detect the command put forward using your push start button or ignition key and then transmit the signal to the engine which is the actuator in this instance through other sub-components like the crankshaft sensor, the ignition, and the injector nozzles.




Another scenario is when your car is idling and running in an open loop mode ( before your engine reaches its optimal operating temperature, or before the halfway mark) ordinarily the injector nozzles are required to dump more fuel into the combustion chamber to bring the engine to its optimal temperature quickly.
On getting to the required temperature the E.C.M picks up the command from the engine temperature sensor and sends signals to the injector nozzles to reduce fuel supply to the combustion chamber

CONCLUSION

These scenarios, play out for themselves, our cars might be made up of different components but if broadly categorized we just have sensors and actuators calling the shot in cars, particularly cars of today.

CAR SENSORS; All related sensors and electrical components in a cars

CAR ACTUATORS; Engine and Transmission, Tyre, Motors, and other movable parts.