Bosch Unveils New Brake Technology
thebrakereport.com
thebrakereport.com
I did my best to extract details from the article's mountain of seo fluff. I think Bosch is trying to maximize complexity of a safety-critical system by deeply integrating it into all the other bits of the car.
Okay. We do build war aircraft that way and they're awesome but they also need a steady stream of $billions to keep them flying.
My recommendation if Bosch wants to be a radical leader in auto tech, invent tactile controls and place them where they can be reached w/o taking eyes off of roads.
Then blow everyone away by inventing non-blinding headlights.
Or bicyclists or pedestrians. We have all of automotive histroy to demonstrate that blinding others isn't necessary for driving, not even for comfort-level safety gains.
Better -something- that's trying to mask low beams than the alternative (nothing).
The technology is required on some types of headlights (which you can recognise), because…
> Better -something- that's trying to mask low beams than the alternative (nothing).
…they also made low beams notably brighter and reach further (= extended the angular output). The alternative isn't nothing, it's less bright low beams.
On country roads, it’s extremely valuable for keeping the shoulder lit up with high beams to see things like fear and bicycle.
It is my experience that bicyclists and pedestrians aren't partial to the endless passing vehicles that are blinding them. Seeing is part of how they keep out of drivers way. I disagree that we should ruin their vision just so drivers can seem them even more than they used to.
Ask any EU trucker about this and they will curse you out with the most creative expletives you have heard in your life. At least the existing systems are apparently hot garbage, especially on highways where some oncoming truck headlights might be hidden by the median yet you can still blind the trucker themselves (since they're higher up).
Wait until you hear about how the brake pedal works in hybrids and EVs!
I'm only joking a little. There are good reasons to integrate the brakes with electronics in the car, with regenerative braking being the smallest of them.
Under the hood, there is software determining how much braking power the motor can provide. The car will maximize that and only use the friction brakes at the very end, or when there is nowhere to dump the energy. My car (a series hybrid) powers the generator if the battery is full and gets rid of the energy as engine braking.
As a result, the car is significantly more fuel efficient AND the brakes last much longer. Yes, it's because sometimes I push the brakes and the brake pads don't get mechanically pushed.
I do wonder about ABS and always have. If ABS can make the brakes not brake even as you fully stomp the pedal - is there a reasonably conceivable failure mode that would simply prevent you from braking despite perfectly good hydraulics and a stomped pedal?
"We will have steer by wire and brake by wire over my dead body." - former head of engineering at Chrysler.
The answer is not simple, as it has changed over time.
Early anti-lock systems were so limited that the system would, indeed, fail to utilize the maximum possible braking force. This was known, and yet these were deployed, because the research said that maintaining directional control, the primary benefit of anti-lock, had greater safety value than the compromise of maximum braking performance.
Today, however, anti-lock is greatly improved, and anti-lock systems are capable of applying extremely high braking force, even to the point of exceeding thermal design limits (overheat) of the brake system components. The sensors are sampling at higher frequency, the braking models are far more accurate and the computers are faster in current vehicles. So current anti-lock can perform at near the absolute limit.
Further, current systems can actually detect panic. Drivers often fail to even use the full braking force available. Current vehicles can detect when sudden, high braking force is applied, switch into "emergency mode" and boost braking force beyond what the driver is demanding.
These features started appearing in the early 2000's. Nissan, for instance, introduced "Brake Assist" in 2001, with the 2002 the Altima redesign (L31 platform) and the Maxima. It has the "panic mode" behavior I've described.
I personally experienced this once about 15 years ago. Somehow I distracted myself, and when my attention returned I was closing with stopped vehicles at too high a speed and too little remaining distance. Collision was certain and my foot crushed the brake: pure panic, and I never let up. I came to a stop in a blessedly unoccupied left turn lane almost aligned with the stopped vehicles. I recall looking over my hood at the driver of the car I'd nearly hit: between us was a wisp of brake smoke drifting up from passenger fender. I could smell the brakes. The anti-lock did that. If I had had no anti-lock, all directional control would have been lost and my maneuver into the unoccupied lane would have been impossible. If the anti-lock had not applied as much force as it did, I would have been in the intersection, possibly getting t-boned.
So they're pretty good today, and I appreciate modern anti-lock designs.
Honestly, I think *-by-wire technology can exist, but I don't think it should be trusted to cost-reduction-at-any-cost manufacturers.
I've heard the cybertruck steer-by-wire has a control lag. And then there's the no-mechanical-escape door handles.
How is it possible to be more precise than a cable throttle? How is it safer?
What sort of motorcycle was this? The ones I had had metal cables; there is no elasticity (if it stretches, it ain't shrinking - you'll adjust it to take up the slack).
Friction between cable and guide also doesn't cause lag.
(Still want to know how it is more safe)
Friction causes the force at the brake to be non-linear (and importantly unpredictably so) in the force applied by the user.
If you had said that this elasticity and this non-linearity (and unpredictability) are small enough to be irrelevant in a properly designed motorcycle, I would have no way to contradict you: I don't know enough. But GGGP's comment[1] is evidence that they are large enough to be relevant.
[1] "I have throttle-by-wire on my motorcycle and I love it. Very precise and safe."
GGGP is talking about fractions of a millimeter in elasticity in the steel cable.
That said, steering without at least hydrolic/power assist is rough on your forearms.
For one thing, they usually give you a bigger wheel, which helps with leverage. Power steering enables different steering geometries which likely wouldn't have been put together on a vehicle without power steering also.
Exclusive brake by wire and/or steer by wire seem like they will add confusion and delay, and perhaps increased risk of injury when dealing with disabled vehicles. At least in my life, it's been pretty handy to be able to get a non-responsive vehicle into neutral and push it to somewhere else in order to get it out of the way of traffic or to have better access to repair it. That often means using the vehicle steering to help direct it to a good spot, and the vehicle brakes to stop it when it gets there. Accelerator-by-wire is more acceptable, as vehicle without working electrics doesn't need a working accelerator pedal; I have driven one vehicle with what I assume was drive by wire with significant latency, it wasn't enjoyable, but it was usable.
To anyone wondering this essentially turns your brake pedal into a gas-like brake pedal.
Now what I'm wondering is, can we tie this all to the brake-light brightness?
Aside: anyone else ever been driving behind a large vehicle with the brake lights out? That's a not fun exercise right there.
Is "i wonder how hard they're breaking" really a problem?
People drive too close to each other already
Tesla's move to unboxed model means they won't be able to have hydraulic lines. 48V means more power, but still need something like 50A per brake disc, IMO non starter for Tesla. Is it going to be batteries/supercapacitors or some other novel brake design.