Bosch's brake-by-wire system may be the next big leap in automotive tech

https://newatlas.com/automotive/bosch-brake-by-wire-system/

by zfg • 1 year ago

61 160 1 year ago

No thanks. The first thing I check in any vehicle is if there is any drive-by-wire anything followed by remote telemetry. If it has or had any of that I will not buy it or ride in it. Modern vehicles have a significantly long way to go to prove their local and remote security.

turtleyacht• 1 year ago

Would be nice to have a site like phoneshome.io to aggregate that, at least for cars, routers, and IoT.

VMG• 1 year ago

Do you accept power steering?

SR2Z• 1 year ago

I'm sure he does, as long as there's a mechanical linkage.

LinuxBender3• 1 year ago

Yes hydraulic assist is fine. A skiddie can't hack in and take control. A move fast and break things can't bug my steering. I have lost hydraulic assist whilst driving and there's usually enough pressure left to exit the road before I have to muscle it off the road. And to SR2Z's point yup as long as there is physical linkage I am good.

whalesalad• 1 year ago

Pretty close to impossible to find a modern vehicle (less than 20 years old) that is not using drive by wire technology.

baby_souffle• 1 year ago

To varying degrees.

Throttle cables have been replaced with wires for at least 20 years. Rack and pinion is slowly going away but odds are still pretty good that an arbitrarily chosen new car won’t use steer by wire; that’s still pretty niche. Shift / clutch has been electric for a while now on most cars but there’s still some “pure mechanical” shifting cars out there.

An all digital break system is probably going to take a _while_ to become standard.

shiroiushi• 1 year ago

Throttle-by-wire, yes: any modern car has this. Steer-by-wire or brake-by-wire, no. If the power dies, you can still steer to the side of the road and apply the brakes.

ycombinatrix• 1 year ago

What are you driving these days?

m463• 1 year ago

I was going to say "a skateboard" but then I thought of onewheel which is basically skateboard by wire with an (optional) app.

I dislike what the future brings (normalizes)

LinuxBender3• 1 year ago

25 year old truck. I suppose it's a classic now despite it smelling like dead mice.

My next truck will not be newer than 2008 and will likely have spent time in a mod shop to modernize it minus the digital cruft. It will not have any drive-by-anything, remote-anything, governors, ammonia, etc... but it will have good set of mufflers to make it quiet, dual alternators and a set of comfy seats.

anonzzzies• 1 year ago

Unfortunately, the other drivers are there.

jqpabc1235• 1 year ago

The technology saves weight and installation space by eliminating the requirement for hydraulics

Exactly how much weight/space is being saved here?

In an EV with a heavy battery, my guess is not a very significant amount. This looks like an example of ignoring the forest to focus on a tree.

42772827• 1 year ago

"Not a very significant amount" nominally, but multiplied across millions of cars driving millions of miles it adds up very fast.

jqpabc1235• 1 year ago

Most people could save more weight by simply cleaning out their trunk.

foxyv• 1 year ago

Bosch is famous for being anti-right to repair. To work on their E-Bikes you need a certification and a special tool set. Probably the primary feature of these brake systems for Bosch is locking end users into Bosch certified maintainers and parts.

jqpabc1235• 1 year ago

This seems to be a German speciality.

It costs $700 to change a dead battery on some Mercedes cars because the onboard computer has to be reset using special electronic tools.

This "screw the customer" approach is the road to self destruction. Just ask Volkswagen.

pxmpxm• 1 year ago

You save the plumbing to near the pedal box and maybe the plunger to the master cylinder... and that's it?

Not my world, but I don't get it - with throttle by wire you can do fun dynamic/nonlinear response, cut throttle when you don't have traction etc. With this thing, all the clever things are already done by the ABS/ESC unit, so removing the physical connection really only frees up like like 50 cm of a hydraulic piping.

Would love to hear an automotive engineer's take on this to be honest.

sidewndr46• 1 year ago

The piping in this case has a diameter of about 3mm. I'm not even sure you could measure the weight savings on a vehicle by removing it.

TheCleric2• 1 year ago

Without a mechanical redundancy: pass.

lttlrck• 1 year ago

In an electric car with regenerative braking, perhaps this is the redundancy.

aitchnyu• 1 year ago

Reminds me, will this system control both regen and friction brakes?

TheCleric2• 1 year ago

Are there any cars with just regenerative braking and not friction braking? If so I’m unaware of those.

adiabatichottub2• 1 year ago

It's not the use of electric control that scares me, it's the inherently complicated control system. A primarminarily mechanical and hydraulic system just plain has less things that can go wrong.

Maybe I'm just biased, but I believe in using the simplest tech that will do the job. You don't need an Arduino to blink an LED.

daghamm• 1 year ago

No, but a self-sustained 8-bit or even 32-bit MCU may be cheaper than a 555.

gfkclzhzo2• 1 year ago

A well designed embedded systems based on microcontrollers can be very reliable.

Everything goes to hell if you need to connect to the internet or use high-level software.

metaphor2• 1 year ago

A well designed embedded systems based on microcontrollers can be very reliable.

The objective measure of what qualifies as "well designed embedded systems" is inherently gray; and where industries have seen some semblance of consensus as a matter of unconditional need, it has always been accompanied with the tears of executives complaining of non-trivial expense.

ryukoposting2• 1 year ago

Electronics can certainly be made to have appliance-like reliability and consistency. I'm a firmware dev, I'd know. My design philosophy is this: if I'm doing my job right, the customer should never know I exist.

That being said, there's a time and a place for software. Software is a solution to a problem, and I'm not clear on what problem this system is solving. Sure, Bosch's product makes the brake system smaller and lighter. Cool. To what extent does that make the car smaller and lighter? Amdahl's law applies to more than computers. Are we really optimizing the right thing here?

metaphor2• 1 year ago

Electronics can certainly be made to have appliance-like reliability and consistency.

To be sure, when measured against prevailing market trends, this is objectively not a good thing. For safety-critical systems like a vehicle's brakes, I fully expect much more than the superficial considerations I would normally give to appliances.

Brian_K_White• 1 year ago

It doesn't matter how bulletproof the software is. It's already a huge downgrade that it must run on a chip.

A mechanical linkage of cables or rods or a hydraulic system all have their failure points also, but the differences are

the infrastructure required to manufacture a stick or a tube vs a chip and solenoids, motors, sensors,

the fact that a cable or linkage or hydraulic piston usually fails gradually over a long time while still functioning, while a chip dies without warning and completely,

and is not repairable in the field except by replacement, while you can repair a mechanical device essentially indefinitely with essentially any tools and materials that are available.

alkonaut• 1 year ago

Brake systems have already gone from mostly mechanical/hydraulic to more and more electronic with ABS, radar-autobraking, individual wheel braking with ESP and so on. The drivers brake pedal is just one of many inputs to the eventually hydraulic system, while the other inputs are already electronic. It seems to me you can simplify it but keeping all the brake inputs electronic and fusing them closer to the wheel, instead of having a mixed mechanical/electronic system?

Same as a throttle. That used to be a wire (perhaps it commonly still is?) but the throttle input shifted from being solely the driver into being other systems like cruise control. As soon as you have an electromechanical system it does seem easiest to keep it electric->mechanical rather than mechanical<->electric. That simplification does ignore the driver feedback, however.

richiebful1• 1 year ago

To clear things up: the throttle used to be a physical cable, like on an affordable bicycle with rim brakes. It is still a cable on most motorcycles.

maples373• 1 year ago

The key difference here, though, is that all of those electronics are integrated into, and do not break the path of, the absolutely-must-work hydraulic path.

Throttle-by-wire is a different beast entirely. If you step on the gas and don't go, that's usually very annoying, and depending on circumstances could be dangerous. But if you step on the brakes and don't stop, that's pretty much a guaranteed wreck right there.

flyingfences2• 1 year ago

The lack of information on how it /feels/ is telling. Feedback is important for safe driving.

jedmeyers• 1 year ago

It feels like you are pressing on a tennis ball, zero real feedback whatsoever. Acura MDX has had the brake-by-wire system fo a while now in the latest generation.

LeafItAlone2• 1 year ago

Possibly because that’s not the job of that parts being talked about. The brake pedal implementation will have to be separate and each brake pedal manufacturer can implement a different style.

One could even see the possibility that different drivers get different response customization, like how many new cars let you save custom seat, mirror, and driving style configurations.

flyingfences2• 1 year ago

That is not the point at all; We're not talking about a spring rate that increases as you push on the pedal. In a proper braking system, the driver can feel through his foot what the tires are doing, because there is direct mechanical feedback through the brake lines. This is an important safety consideration, and manufacturers are throwing it out for... what?

jauntywundrkind• 1 year ago

Younger me thought drive-by-wire was awesome. But now I'm aghast at all these systems. Because of feedback. Because yiu no longer have the tactile data to form a understanding & relationship with your 1.5 tons of rolling metal. Digitization strips of affordances that mechanical naturally provides, leaves us adrift in at best simulation of response.

The threads here seem dominated by questions like how reliable will this be (probably quite), how much weight will this save (not a lot, but it enables design flexibility).

Feedback though... That's really the key thing most users are going to experience as different. And it seems so unlikely that the user will have anywhere near as much accurate timely feedback as the mechanical systems it's designed to replace.

Even if initial models may layer in a variety of sensors to simulate feedback, it seems likely to be reduced over time, to be cost-downed.

acyou• 1 year ago

The technology isn't new. There has been some change in supply chain availability with the ability to produce super cheap electronics and servos. Honestly, this could be pretty great for safety overall with improvements to emergency braking performance alone.

You can still retain a redundant mechanical emergency brake.

Not really a big leap, you almost wonder why we haven't done it yet. People understand that we currently rely on power braking and steering for existing vehicles, this is taking that next step. I think anyone who has lost steering and braking power while driving should kind of automatically understand why it might be ok.

I do have my doubts for steering by wire in cars however.

smackeyacky• 1 year ago

Brake by wire is likely illegal in many countries. The design rules would have to change (at least in Australia)

metalman• 1 year ago

the best upgrade for brakes would be to keep them totaly mechanical, but move to indoard brakes, there would be no flex lines, or much shorter and robust flex lines, sprung mass will be reduced, improving handling , and reducing wieght, airodynamics and heat rejection can be refined further, center of mass is now better, and overall efficiency will see a significant improvement, with a statistical improvement in saftey due to better braking and manouverability. vs a gadjet that is not needed

zonkerdonker• 1 year ago

Interesting take! Is this suggestion for performance cars only or were you omagining this would be an imporvement for every car?

Personally, I wouldnt love having needing to have a lift to swap my brake pads, or to dissasemble my suspension and pull apart the half shaft to replace my rotors

Lwerewolf4• 1 year ago

I wonder how strong the driveshafts would have to be to handle all the braking torque transmitted through them. Dissipating the heat would also be an interesting problem. Also reduced clearance and/or increased drivetrain complexity and a million other things.

There are good reasons why people haven't moved away from old school rotors, pads & calipers right at the wheel hub, for basically any application.

Lanolderen• 1 year ago

My guess is torque isn't as big of an issue since on acceleration you break traction before anything snaps. The big issue in my mind is technically cooling and practically packaging since you already have the space inside the wheels.

I know inboards are used on some formula student cars in the rear (on some karts as well?) but I haven't looked up the issues they have with them.

linuxftw• 1 year ago

For it to be unsprung, you either need a solid axle or you're relying on a CV joint. Putting a CV joint in the mechanical path for braking at highway speeds will definitely kill people.

widdakay• 1 year ago

Is this what is used in the new Tesla Model Y?

exabrial2• 1 year ago

So if the battery is dead in the car, how does one apply the brakes?

BenjiWiebe2• 1 year ago

Your car will come to a stop on it's own when there's no electrical power left. ICE cars can run with a dead battery only as long as the alternator is working and producing electrical power.

When your alternator dies, the car runs until the battery is dead, and then the whole car stops.

Much older vehicles could run without electrical power but now with electronically-controlled engines you've gotta have electrical power.

exabrial2• 1 year ago

All older cars the brakes work 100% of the time, whether or not you have gas or electrical.

maples373• 1 year ago

Your car will come to a stop on it's own when there's no electrical power left.

Newton's laws would disagree. "An object in motions stays in motion..."

GP is asking "what happens if the alternator dies, and the battery runs flat while you're driving?" This may sound like an outlandish scenario, but my uncle had something similar happen to him not too long ago.

And not all cars can run solely off the alternator when the battery is dead. Several years ago, my mom's Grand Caravan wouldn't start when she was out. She called AAA, and they jumped the car, and it started just fine. But as soon as the AAA guys disconnected their jumper pack, the van died. They tried it several times and weren't able to get it to stay running.

If your brakes require a fully-functional electrical system to apply any force at all, that seems like an unacceptable failure scenario.

perlgeek• 1 year ago

If the battery is dead, it's not driving, so not need for much breaking power (dunno how they handle the parking situation).

What I wonder is: what if the electrical system has a short, close to the battery and alternator? Would the residual hydraulic pressure be enough to stop the car?

Lwerewolf4• 1 year ago

Not too different from, say, any of Toyota's hybrids (and the TLC100 / GS430 / others using "electronic brakeforce distribution")? Same with almost every EV out there, same with MB's SBC, etc. I really don't see why this counts as a big leap - all I see is the removal of the backup direct hydraulic lines, which doesn't exactly sit well with me.

XorNot• 1 year ago

I mean it's not like hydraulic lines can't fail catastrophically as well though. History has given us somewhat unrealistic ideas about what is and isn't safe - it all comes down to the design, not the underlying technology.

Lwerewolf4• 1 year ago

The major "sudden" failure mode of pretty much all those systems has so far been the (brushed!!!) electric motor eating through its commutator (with the brushes still relatively intact) and stopping relatively suddenly - at that point, you'd better not ignore the lights on the dash, as it means there's only what's left in the hydraulic pressure accumulator in terms of assistance - afterwards there's almost nothing. The backup hydraulic lines have never really been an issue with this setup - the backup lines are two and directly go to resp. the front left and right calipers, and the only time they see pressure and fluid movement is during the brake bleeding procedure. The rest of the hydraulic circuits are somewhat safer as cars with such systems can absolutely detect and isolate a "misbehaving" circuit - i.e. if a flex hose is punctured, the rest of the system will work.

cue_the_strings2• 1 year ago

I really distrust Bosch, knowing how underpaid their engineers are.

hanikesn• 1 year ago

Then you shouldn't get in a car. Bosch is the main manufacturer of airbag controllers and ECUs.

cue_the_strings2• 1 year ago

I rarely do. Working in the automotive industry (not Bosch, though) made me dislike cars even more than I did before, all the safety stuff (AUTOSAR, MISRA, ...) is theater.

djoldman• 1 year ago

Why is there a seemingly unending shift in the automobile industry toward digital/electric controls and away from anything mechanical/physical? (I'm not asking about entertainment/cabin items, just the ones that start/stop/move the car)

Is it really as simple as "cheaper to produce"? Is it cheaper to replace?

The article mentions "saves weight and installation space" - it seems this savings come at the expense of massive complexity; how big can the savings be?

As an aside, IMHO every time a component changes to "by wire" the driving experience tends to suffer due to latency.

karamanolev• 1 year ago

Overall system complexity might be higher (due to more electronics), but this type of complexity tends to have a more favorable profile for economies of scale. One, generally, writes software once, but has to route hydraulics, reservoirs and so on for every car produced.

Separately, hydraulic systems are an inspection item with a serviceable fluid. Electronic systems work without servicing until they don't, at which point a lamp on your dashboard lights up. More convenient for the manufacturer/dealer, less convenient for you, but that's typical for modern anti-consumer (pro-producer/corporation) design.

Then servicing a hydraulic system is more manual labor intensive (replacing hoses, bleeding the system, replacing the fluid), while electronic systems come with components that are replaced wholesale, where the consumer pays the price for the new component. I guess it's obvious which ones the manufacturer prefers.

Driving experience suffers, but not in a way that measurably affects consumer behavior. Most people tend to care about other characteristics more than the particular issue of latency. As another example, see the issue of rev hang - a type of latency on its own.

rwmj• 1 year ago

Don't forget the possibility of adding digital locks so it can only be serviced with authorized parts by authorized dealers "for your security and safety".

spiffytech2• 1 year ago

Some of these sound like upsides to me. I've owned a lot of older cars, and they're always a mystery box of "what will fail next?". So many moving parts, and they're often hard to diagnose.

Based on your comment, I expect newer cars to have lower maintenance and repair costs, fewer part failures, and less guessing about exactly which part is broken.

Kelvin506• 1 year ago

My main concern is the same as with electronic gear levers/selectors, electric parking brakes, steer by wire, and throttle by wire:

What happens when the car has a failure that kills all the electrics?

That's a much more common failure scenario than people think. Batteries go flat. Wiring gets chewed and shorts with vibration. CAN buses need only a brief short to go out entirely and not reset. Even in a modest crash the car can lose its battery and alternator, or get a system short.

Tesla owners have learned this lesson repeatedly with getting locked out, locked in, stuck in park, unable to shift to neutral for a tow, etc. Other car owners have learned this with electric parking brakes getting stuck on.

If the electrics fail and the car is moving, I need steering, brakes, and the gear lever to all work to stop safely. If they're by-wire, I'm just a passenger.

designerbenny• 1 year ago

this type of complexity tends to have a more favorable profile for economies of scale

Yeah, but what about economy of safety?

wiether3• 1 year ago

As an aside, IMHO every time a component changes to "by wire" the driving experience tends to suffer due to latency.

_window-by-wire_ & _mirror-by-wire_ seems fine.

alias_neo3• 1 year ago

I've seen a non-zero number of electric windows and mirrors that have failed in my time; what does that look like for a braking system?

wat100006• 1 year ago

Imagine you wanted to install a system so you could pull a lever in your kitchen and have it open your front door. Would you string a wire to an electric motor controlled by your lever, or run hydraulic lines and install a pump?

ToucanLoucan4• 1 year ago

Maybe it's just my bias talking as a senior software dev, but having spent a career watching software fail in inexplicable ways, and in the specific case of "if this door doesn't close, I will likely die" hand me the hydraulics please.

Also, my pinko commie ass would be remiss if I weren't to speculate about how if you fall behind on your car payments, these features among other drive-by-wire features would also allow a dealer to remotely lock out the vehicle until you pay up, and given the other shady things they already do to folks, I can't imagine this won't be an application for this tech too. Gotta fuck those poor folks till the line goes up, of course.

Edit: Or hell, doesn't even need to be if you miss payments. If you go too long for an oil change, your OEM could lock you out. If you aren't up to date on your Chevrolet+ subscription, they can make your steering wheel harder to turn. Or if you gasp try to service your own vehicle, ohhhh there could be all kinds of hell to pay.

Just, rampant opportunities to fuck with consumers just as hard as tech companies do. And isn't that what we all want in the end? Cars just as grating and irritating to use as our computers and cellphones are, in the thousand tiny ways per day they are?

wakawaka285• 1 year ago

I might use hydraulic lines if a wiring fault could kill me lol...

newsclues• 1 year ago

Cost.

digitallis42• 1 year ago

A few things:

* Automation (emergency auto braking, full adaptive cruise, autonomy) is here and needs electrical signal input. AEB is very nearly standard everywhere now, so there's an electrical input braking component that has already been added to the system.

* If you look at modern brakes, it's hardly simple anymore. Brake boosters, ABS, master/slave systems. It's run on a corrosive fluid that is water sensitive and uses hard pipe plumbing.

eptcyka• 1 year ago

Is DOT5.1 as corrosive now?

I agree that routing hydraulics everywhere is not nice, but this is the last component that I want to have a cliff failure mode profile, which is usually the caee with electronics - they work until they don’t. Hydraulic and pressure systems usually fail somewhat gracefully.

underseacables• 1 year ago

Cheaper.

jillesvangurp• 1 year ago

Is it really as simple as "cheaper to produce"? Is it cheaper to replace? it seems this savings come at the expense of massive complexity

Less parts, less things to break, less things to install, less things to maintain. Etc. All good things when it comes to cost. You'd be surprised how that stuff adds up quickly.

K0balt2• 1 year ago

This will not be less parts. It will be integrated modules Instead of tubing, with each module being about as many parts as the original entire abs system. Cheap to manufacture because cars can be engineered more easily, but each module will be 1000 dollars and unobtainable in 20 years, because it will be very specialized digitally for that specific vehicle models, sub year, etc. non-maintainability is a feature, not a bug.

burnerthrow008• 1 year ago

The article mentions "saves weight and installation space" - it seems this savings come at the expense of massive complexity; how big can the savings be?

Take a step back and look at how complex brake systems have evolved at the present date:

On one hand, sure, it's just a foot-operated hydraulic pump and four hydraulic actuators.

On the other hand, the ABS module has valves to both cut off each brake caliper and to drain hydraulic pressure from each brake to prevent lockup. In an emergency braking scenario, the foot pump will quickly go the floor as pressure is drained, so the ABS module also has an electrical pump to put fluid back into the system.

All US-legal cars have some form of electronic stability control (and often have lane keep assist), which can use the same components to pressurize one or several brakes to make the car follow the driver's intent (as measured by a steering wheel angle sensor and a body yaw rate sensor. Europe-legal cars also usually some form of emergency brake assist which again uses the ABS module components to apply the brakes automatically.

To keep this all safe, you need pressure sensors to monitor valve and pump functions, sensors to monitor driver input, and sensors to monitor vehicle dynamics.

When you look at the system holistically, as it exists today, it is bandaids on top of bandaids and you realize that you no longer have just a simple hydraulic system.

I would make an analogy to the 737 Max vs. Airbus FbW here: We started with something very simple, and then incrementally increased complexity in (seemingly) appropriate ways. Then, many years later, we realized that our "simple" mechanical system is actually more complex and prone to more complex failure modes than a system which started out complex and rigorously managed that complexity.

p_l3• 1 year ago

Funnily enough, A380, A350, B787, and other new aircraft have their brakes connected by Ethernet (specifically AFDX, a modified variant of Ethernet) so braking actuator signals (and sensor data back) goes as UDP messages.

But it makes the system less complex and easier to handle, as there's one kind of cabling, and complex functions like ABS equivalent are handled from avionics bay

etempleton• 1 year ago

Space and weight. It saves on both while also being more flexible and presumably much simpler to install. Install times will save money at the factory and the space savings can be used elsewhere. In theory it can also be more reliable. It may also be able to provide smarter brake pressure to come to a stop quicker and more safely. The only real downside will probably be brake feel. You aren’t going to get a lot of feedback, but for day to day driving that isn’t much of a concern.

Gibbon1• 1 year ago

You can imagine the robot bolts the integrated motor breaking assembly to the body. And then a tech snaps the high voltage and control connectors together. That's it.

hulitu• 1 year ago

Why is there a seemingly unending shift in the automobile industry toward digital/electric controls and away from anything mechanical/physical?

Because it is cheaper.

contingencies• 1 year ago

Hydraulic systems are themselves complex and require many components all of which may fail. Detecting failure in a hydraulic system requires additional systems and is generally only indicative of overall system state rather than specific failure in a specific sub-assembly, on account of the shared nature of the medium. Assembly and testing are expensive.

Electronic systems are much simpler by part count, lighter, and smaller.

When communication fails, you know it's failed, and you know where it's failed.

Adding sensors for real time feedback is extremely cost-efficient. If your current/torque/temperature are not within an expected profile, a braking system failure may be inferred. This is extremely cheap, reliable and fast on low-end hardware.

In this case, they do not need left and right forms, they can just produce one part. Right away that's a huge saving in mold cutting time, mold storage, part production, distribution, etc.

In a mechanical system, if something fails, you have to disassemble the subsystem, identify the failure, search the supply chain for the part in question (possibly not labeled), obtain or manufacture the part, re-install it, and then hope for the best.

In a digital system, it can probably tell you what fails. It's probably cheap. It probably has the part number printed on it. And it certainly knows how many hours it has been used, and how heavily.

About latency, the key point is that humans suck. There's no way 1ms latency is going to alter driving outcomes. If you care about latency, you're autonomous driving. And that's something that electronics excel at versus humans. Let's say signals begin to come in suggestive of brake failure on one of four brakes while rounding a corner at high speed. ABS systems can compensate for the failure in real time and intervene to guarantee safety, even across subsystems such as by reducing speed. Mechanical systems are subsystem-bound and will leave the driver to 'discover' the 'new handling characteristics' at the point when it's already too late.

So the summary is: cheaper to produce, cheaper to assemble, cheaper to debug, cheaper to maintain, cheaper to replace, less unique parts, more freely positioned within a vehicle design, more readily reusable across vehicle designs, safer in some conditions, more suited to forward-looking applications such as autonomous driving.

(Disclaimer: I am not a mechanic, however I do have a fairly solid understanding of multi-disciplinary mechatronic design problems.)

As an aside, although we have no ongoing connection, I would note from experience some years back that Bosch VC have been one of the most stand out professional venture firms I have spoken to. If you have an industrial project, particularly one that connects with their existing business lines, they will not waste your time in providing a well considered and efficient response. Definitely a class act.

wakawaka285• 1 year ago

Cost and the potential for vendor lock-in drive this. How long does anyone seriously think electric brakes will last on cars that bang around in mud and potholes full of water? What is the failure mode? Can you even tell when the brakes are failing? There are hydraulic brake systems many decades old, still in service. There's nothing new about this electric brake stuff that has only become feasible or cheaper today... It was deliberately avoided by engineers of the past because they did not trust the technology. They didn't trust hydraulics either. That's why emergency brakes are cable-driven. Of course, the cable can also work when there is no hydraulic pressure, such as when the car is parked and turned off. It's a smart design that serves multiple purposes.

ourmandave• 1 year ago

I'd hate to be a writer on the MacGyver 2030 reboot.

Every action scene starts with, "MacGyver pulls a laptop from his backpack and..."

wslh• 1 year ago

And then he asks an LLM how to solve the problem...

0_____0• 1 year ago

I learned how to program from a series of adventure books in which the protagonist (a reader insert) pulled out his computer and solved the problem with a few dozen lines of BASIC! Angry natives in the jungle? No problem. Those books were from the 80s I'm pretty sure.

p0w3n3d• 1 year ago

Brake by wire is fun and games unless there is a critical situation on the road.

If the car breaks by default - imagine stopping in the middle of a highway where trucks go 140km/h.

If the car does not break by default - trivial. q.e.d.

hollywood_court• 1 year ago

I just replaced all four rotors and pad sets on my Land Cruiser. It took me ~75 minutes to do it in my driveway. And that included rotating the tires.

I wounder how long the same repairs would take on a car with this new braking system. I wonder if I'd even be able to do the repairs myself with investing in a better scan/diagnostic tool.

skywhopper• 1 year ago

Sounds like the brake mechanism itself might not change much. It’s the actuation system being changed which it doesn’t sound like you touched.

PLenz• 1 year ago

Translated from corporate: we're going to a proprietary system that you'll need to have serviced only by us at insane markups in order to gain recurring revenue.

relistan2• 1 year ago

This is one system in the car that must have mechanical fallback. Yes there are a lot of systems already interacting with the hydraulics (servo assist, ABS, pumps, etc). But fundamentally you can stop the car if you push hard enough on the pedal. Removing that seems like looking for cost savings in a silly place.

wat100006• 1 year ago

It must be reliable. Having a mechanical fallback is a way to achieve that. If an electronic system can be made equally or more reliable, then it’s fine.

This community is going to have natural and reasonable skepticism of this. But consider that many airliners are fly by wire and their safety record is superb. There’s no guarantee an automotive system would be that good, my point is just that it doesn’t have to be worse.

dkjaudyeqooe• 1 year ago

In the abstract that might be true, but you're missing issues of unnecessary complexity which feed into systemic risk.

Large airplanes are obviously different to cars and so are the engineering choices. It actually makes a lot of sense to use fly by wire in an plane because the level of existing complexity (and expense) justifies it.

A Boeing with triply redundant mechanical control of control surfaces is still inferior to Airbus fly by wire when the latter can implement a more reliable system, but only because the inherent complexity and expense of planes allows it. The Airbus will have 5 or 7 redundant electrical paths to the control surfaces and numerous redundant power supplies and actuators and beats the mechanical system hands down.

On a car you sharply increase complexity, and therefor reduce reliability. You need redundant power supplies and power connections, for instance. Planes have to be serviced by certified professionals on a strict basis, where as cars do not. So you have to implement a system that still operates under conditions of neglect, all while having severe cost limitations.

maples373• 1 year ago

One consideration for aviation is that they have inspections, replacements, repairs, etc regulated like crazy. And I suspect it's regulated so tightly because it would be skipped otherwise, because that does NOT sound cheap.

Then compare that to an average car. If you change your own oil (like I do), it's possible to go multiple years in between trips to a repair shop for bigger items like tires or a weird noise that popped up.

And let's be honest, a large number of people will hear a weird noise and drive with the check-engine light on for way longer than any manufacturer would recommend (even if they didn't have a profit motive in the form of expensive dealership repair shops). If the machine gets to point B, then whatever that noise is can wait a few more days/weeks.

relistan2• 1 year ago

First of all there is no comparison between car and aviation safety systems. And in aviation, many systems have both an electric and a hydraulically system so that they don’t share dependencies.

Second, if this is intended for gasoline/diesel vehicles, then you need two power systems as well. If you lose your alternator on the freeway and don’t notice, or are very far from a safe place to stop, and you drive the car on the battery until it dies, it’s going to slam on the brakes. In some scenarios that’s a safe default. In many scenarios, it’s the wrong thing to do.

nothercastle2• 1 year ago

On an airplane all systems are triple redundant. That makes it easier because the power and control systems are redundant and there is no need to add that. If only the brakes need to be redundant then they need to have multiple self contained systems including power and that is really complicated

tassadarforaiur• 1 year ago

I've had hydraulic brakes fail on me before when a line broke in the winter, this doesn't sound significantly worse.

That said, I was able to control my car with a steel cable e-brake handle when it happened, and whatever fancy bs automakers decide to use on the brake pedal, I'm not buying a car without a handbrake for the foreseeable future.

Shadowmist• 1 year ago

My current handbrake is a toggle switch. :(

MisterTea• 1 year ago

I'm not buying a car without a handbrake for the foreseeable future.

Good luck. Most every car now has a switch connected to the computer that commands a motor to pull a chord that bonks the gerbil cage which starts running in its wheel that turns a fan by belt which blows the toy sailboat which bumps the hinged board that falls over releasing the bowling ball that runs down the ramp into a basket that pulls a rope which turns the burner on the stove boiling a kettle of water which blows the little turbine that pulls the brake pads tight. Cables and levers were too hard for them to install.

Hamuko3• 1 year ago

I am reminded of the Mercedes-Benz Sensotronic Brake Control (SBC) system that was developed by Daimler and Bosch. It was in two mass-market models, the E-Class and the CLS-Class, and it was so unreliable and expensive that it was replaced with a traditional brake system during mid-generation refreshes for both models.

Mercedes-Benz USA has also had to give the brake system components an extended warranty to not lose goodwill with its customers. I believe every single Mercedes-Benz with SBC in the USA is still under warranty with no mileage limits?

Definitely not worth the headache despite having a backup system if (or rather, when, as the control unit had a fixed lifespan) the system fails and a separate auxiliary battery just for the brake system. I believe back in the day it was several thousand euro to have the SBC pump replaced when it gave out?

luckydonald• 1 year ago

The article says "[being implemented in motorcycles] would also create a host of reliability issues, considering motorcycles endure far more than cars do. On motorcycles, brake-by-wire would require a lot of redundancy and failsafes to make sure that the smallest malfunction wouldn't endanger the rider."

I don't see why that isn't the case for cars. Why don't cars require redundancy and failsafes?

juancn• 1 year ago

I worry about the security aspect of modern cars, now that they're connected things, many times the thing with the internet connection has access to the CAN bus too.

You're a privilege escalation away from some piece of software wreaking havoc on the thing and car companies have historically been really awful with software.

nothercastle2• 1 year ago

The biggest problem with this system will be disregarding the brakes without power

aiiizzz• 1 year ago

Why isn't everything done by wire? Steering, gas, everything

Bosch's brake-by-wire system may be the next big leap in automotive tech

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