Recently, the Monroe® Intelligent Suspension FAS (Full Active Suspension) actuator of Tenneco—a leading international automotive components supplier—won the "Best Technical Practice Award" at the 2026 Gasgoo Awards. Presented by Gasgoo, a renowned Chinese media and information services platform, the award recognizes outstanding innovations across the global mobility ecosystem.
As a frontier technology in the intelligent suspension field, this award for the Monroe® Intelligent Suspension FAS technologyis both an endorsement of Tenneco's technology roadmap and industrialization capabilities and a reflection of the broader industry trend in which active suspension technology is accelerating toward large-scale application.
"The FAS technology was developed under the leadership of Tenneco's China team, with collaborative support from the global R&D organization, and is a key achievement of Tenneco's 'In China, for the World' strategy," said Li Xiang, President of Tenneco Asia Pacific. "We have now completed a fully automated FAS production line in Suzhou and secured program nominations from leading domestic OEMs. We are honored to help full active suspension move from premium models into a broader market, and to grow together with China's automotive industry."
Image source: Tenneco
The Technical Advantages and Industrial Value of the FAS Full Active Damping System: From "Passive Response" to "Active Management"
As the penetration of intelligent vehicles rises rapidly, consumers are demanding more in terms of ride comfort and safety. Against this backdrop, chassis intelligence is becoming a new competitive frontier in the vehicle market, and suspension systems are accelerating along the "passive–semi-active–full active" evolution path. Unlike semi-active or adaptive suspensions, a full active suspension dynamically controls the body and wheels in real time based on driver inputs and ever-changing road conditions. By independently controlling the vertical motion of each wheel, it optimizes traction, stability and steering control, making it the core actuation layer of the intelligent chassis.
From a market perspective, data from the Gasgoo Research Institute shows that from January to August 2026, the OE standard fitment of full active suspension in China's passenger vehicle market (excluding imports and exports) grew nearly seven-fold year over year. Full active solutions such as BYD's DiSus and NIO's SkyRide intelligent chassis have already taken the lead in premium models.
As a globally renowned suspension systems supplier with a history of more than 100 years, Tenneco's Monroe® Ride Solutions (MRS) business identified this trend at an early stage and rapidly brought the FAS technology to market. The FAS responds intelligently to complex road conditions within milliseconds: while enabling independent decoupling of the wheels, it delivers strong, proactive wheel-end lifting and downward forces. It proactively suppresses body roll and pitch and effectively absorbs road impacts, delivering a more comfortable and more controllable ride experience.
Image source: Tenneco
Compared with the limited adjustment of semi-active suspensions based on body-vibration feedback, the FAS achieves the leap from "passively responding to the road" to "actively managing body attitude." It provides reliable chassis actuation for intelligent vehicles and reconciles the traditional trade-off between ride comfort and handling under a full active architecture.
Chinese Team Leads R&D and Delivery, Empowered by Global Collaboration: Writing Production Certainty into the Full Active Suspension Race
In the race to bring full active suspension to volume production, the advancement of a technology roadmap certainly matters, but the core questions OEMs face when making nomination decisions tend to be far more pragmatic: Has the system undergone sufficiently extensive engineering validation? Can the supply chain deliver the certainty required for scale-up? Can localized responsiveness keep pace with the development cadence of Chinese vehicle programs? The competitiveness of the Monroe FAS rests precisely on its systematic answers to these three questions.
The Monroe Intelligent Suspension FAS technology was not built from scratch. It builds on Monroe's mature and reliable, CVSA2/Kinetic® damper and actuator technologies, which have been successfully applied in ultra-high-performance vehicles for more than 15 years and validated through rigorous testing across global markets. This deep technological heritage, combined with extensive production experience, provides a reliable engineering foundation for taking the FAS technology from the laboratory to the production line.
Most strategically significant of all, Tenneco has placed the R&D and industrialization focus of FAS in China. As noted above, the product was developed entirely by Tenneco's China team, and in June 2026, Tenneco's MRS full active damper production line in Suzhou was officially inaugurated.
Image source: Tenneco
"The Monroe FAS technology demonstrates our forward-looking insight into—and unique capability to support—the continuous innovation needs of China's leading automakers," said Zhu Yue, General Manager of Monroe Ride Solutions China. "This production-ready solution will help Chinese new energy vehicle (NEV) manufacturers develop smarter, higher-performance models that appeal to millions of drivers in China and around the world."
These remarks also point to another dimension of the FAS's value: development led by the Chinese team does not mean serving only the Chinese market. The synergy between Tenneco's global R&D network and its China development team gives the FAS both the engineering rigor of a global technology platform and the responsiveness attuned to the development cadence of Chinese customers, forming a closed loop of "developed in China, manufactured in China, empowering the world."
"I have always believed that truly valuable technological innovation is not about leading parameters in the laboratory, but about confronting customers' most difficult problems head-on and delivering solutions that genuinely work," said Li Xiang. "As the era of accelerating intelligent chassis evolution unfolds, Tenneco will continue to treat the Chinese market as its innovation hub and, in tandem with its global R&D network, bring more mature and more reliable full active suspension technology to more automakers and consumers—making every journey more comfortable, safer and more controllable."
