How can software benefit chassis innovation? | with Ramiro Gutierrez of ZF

**John Heinlein** (0:00)
Today in The Garage and an episode recorded live at Auto Tech 2026 in Novi, Michigan, we're talking about something very different.
So often when we think about innovation in vehicles, it's easy to think about autonomous driving, or it's common to think about the infotainment system or an app store or the latest streaming services or voice capabilities or so on. But so often, it's easy to forget about the actual driving and how the car actually feels. And so much of that is done by the chassis subsystem. And that includes the tires, the braking, the steering, the suspension, all of those things which are so important to the driving experience but often are not thought about by maybe the average person. But in fact, there's incredible innovation in chassis and in fact, as we go to software defined vehicles where software brings innovation and enhanced capabilities over time, innovation in chassis is a super exciting area.
And who better to talk about that than the president of either "Zed-F" or ZF, depending on your perspective, which is a major tier one supplier that drives a lot of these subsystems. Ramiro Gutierrez, who is president of ZF North America. He joined us and we talked about so many different exciting ideas about how chassis innovation can both drive a better experience for the driver, but also improve cost and reuse and bring those capabilities to a wider range of price points. It was a fun conversation and I really hope you enjoy.
Let's go!
Welcome to The Garage. I'm John Heinlein, Chief Marketing Officer with Sonatus. We're here at Auto Tech 2026 in Novi, Michigan and we're so pleased to be joined by Ramiro today. Ramiro, welcome to The Garage. Thank you very much, John. Very happy to be here. You want to start by telling us a little about you and your background personally? Yeah. I am originally from Spain as you can tell by my accent and I came to the US fourteen years ago moving with my family to here to Detroit working at the time for TRW. As you probably know, TRW was bought by ZF in 2015 and since then we we've been here. I mean, the only fun factor there is that every Christmas we go to Africa. We have some family there from Spain that move into Africa and we normally spend Christmas in Africa. It's a good break from the winter here in Detroit. It's quite different than Detroit. So you went right to your fun fact, that's excellent. I had the opportunity a few years back to visit Malawi in Africa. We had a collaboration at Arm with UNICEF. I was actually one of the champions of our collaboration with UNICEF. So I got to spend an incredible week looking at the great work they're doing Okay. And visiting this incredible part of the world and and trying to do some trying to do some good. So it's exciting exciting adventure for you. Interesting enough. I mean, is where you're probably familiar with the Kalahari test. Kalahari is that in the south part of Africa, which is where I go. So normally I see plenty of test cars going around even if I go there for vacation. Very good. For the ZF is a hugely successful company, but for those of our listeners who may not know about it, can you tell us about your company and then also about your role? Yeah. So ZF is as you said, a big supplier out there.
We cover multiple areas of the business and we have a passenger car division that basically covers transmissions and chassis products. And within chassis, we cover braking, we cover steering, we cover suspension. Right? So on top of that, have an industrial division and on top of that, we have a commercial vehicle division that basically covers similar kind of product portfolio elements. So my role at ZF, I am the president of North America and on top of that role, I am the head of our steering business globally.
Steering globally, okay. Correct. So I basically manage our steering business across all the customers and all the plans that we have on engineering. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's jump right into it.
Historically, I think people would have thought of chassis and steering and all these things you're talking about is very hardware centric thing. In a world where now we're bringing software into more and more subsystems, how is software making its way into the subsystems in chassis? I think this is actually a pretty good question. I mean, in the old times, I remember somebody told me, you know, braking was used to be a very boring thing. It was just about calipers. And then somebody came with this idea of ABS and then as a sudden, you know, the the thing of a caliper was moving into something more technology driven and then after that, came up with the idea of stability control and then suddenly braking was something even bigger. And so this is what is happening right now with software. We have now the ability through software to manage very traditional mechanical equipment that is sitting in the car in different ways that traditionally has happened. Not only that, we can actually make the braking, the steering, the suspension to work together through software in a way that creates value for the end customer that has never happened before. You mentioned so many different aspects of that. I mean, I think ABS isn't kind of an easy one that people think about in terms of like an obvious, but the idea of stability control and steering and braking working, that's a very interesting way to look at it. Yeah. I mean, can put the same analogy for braking into a steering. Mean, steering probably I am old enough to drive cars without power steering, right? Probably you drove some of those too. I mean, there, we went into hydraulic steering, from hydraulic steering we went into electro hydraulic, from there we went into electric steering and now we're going into a steer by wire. So is a constant evolution in the chassis components. It may not be as sexy as infotainment, but certainly chassis has been going a long way from what it was a pure mechanical element into high technology or top technology part of the equation. You talked about not not sexy, I think the reality is that brands care a lot about the feel of their cars. Certainly a number of brands, you know, pride themselves on having a specific feel. Mercedes, BMW, they all have a kind of a brand feel I think that they want to deliver.