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Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

Traction control happens via braking (especially in AWD vehicles), fuel and ignition cut per-cylinder, or via drive-by-wire throttles.

I've never heard of a car with a second throttle for traction control. You might be confusing variable intake geometry vanes.

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I am not confusing anything. The system I describe was used, for instance, in several BMW models from the 1990s. It’s sucks and it disappeared fairly quickly, in lieu of the other much better systems you list.

See: http://www.eatsleeptinker.com/2014/06/02/asc-throttle-body-d...

My biggest takeaway from that link is: BEVs can't get here fast enough. ICEs are too complicated.

But I should be careful what I wish for. Current BEVs have many user-hostile clown-car features.

> ICEs are too complicated.

The excessively (and negatively) complicated addons described in the thread are not inherent to ICE cars. Take any car from 80s or 90s and the behavior is predictable and simple. It's only into the 00s that manufacturers started making things too complex and as a consequence, fragile and unpredictable.

I dunno, even the simplest of many-cylinder Otto-cycle ICEs is still a Rube Goldberg machine. Especially in aggregate with the transmission necessary for making usable the relatively narrow rpm range, fuel tank/system, exhaust, emissions/catalyst, they're all over the place.

Same throttle opening delay system could be present in a fully drive-by-wire system. Keeping it partially mechanical allows for instant, not computer altered, closing of the valve.

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