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Bosch's brake-by-wire system may be the next big leap in automotive tech
- LinuxBender 2y agoNo 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 2y agoWould be nice to have a site like phoneshome.io to aggregate that, at least for cars, routers, and IoT.
- VMG 2y agoDo you accept power steering?
- SR2Z 2y agoI'm sure he does, as long as there's a mechanical linkage.
- LinuxBender 2y agoYes 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 2y agoPretty close to impossible to find a modern vehicle (less than 20 years old) that is not using drive by wire technology.
- baby_souffle 2y agoTo 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.
- relaxing 2y agoFour wheel steer was a common use case for steer by wire in the past.
- shiroiushi 2y agoThrottle-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.
- OptionOfT 2y agoThe Cybertruck is steer by wire. Infinite had it with a backup, but it was bad. On the good old BMWs with hydraulic steering, you could get Active Steering, i.e. variable steering. They basically introduced a planetary gear set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unL8HpMeVTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unL8HpMeVTA If today you buy a BMW with Active Steering it means you get rear-wheel steering (on top of the standard front-wheel steering, but don't tell the execs, you don't want to need a subscription for front-wheel steering). On BMWs since the F* (with the electric assist steering) variability was achieved by a variable-ratio steering rack.
- ycombinatrix 2y agoWhat are you driving these days?
- m463 2y agoI 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)
- adiabatichottub 2y agoI love the One wheel, but it's a trip that the design is inherently dangerous in edge states (over max power output or regen braking with a full battery)
- DonHopkins 2y agoWhenever I see somebody riding on a onewheel, I like to think they're at the end of a long calamitous journey that started out in a much larger vehicle.
- teddyh 2y agoYou stole that joke; it’s at least 5 years old: <https://www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/eyhpdj/the_power_of_the_unicycle/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/eyhpdj/the_po...>
- DonHopkins 2y agoI'll admit to stealing jokes, but not to reading reddit!
- teddyh 2y agoReally. <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=DonHopkins%20reddit&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>
- anonzzzies 2y agoUnfortunately, the other drivers are there.
- jqpabc123 2y agoThe 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 2y ago"Not a very significant amount" nominally, but multiplied across millions of cars driving millions of miles it adds up very fast.
- jqpabc123 2y agoMost people could save more weight by simply cleaning out their trunk.
- foxyv 2y agoBosch 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.
- jqpabc123 2y agoThis 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.
- avidiax 2y agoThe German automakers avoid competing with each other in multiple areas, including colluding to limit the size and dispense rate of DEF tanks and collectively claiming to lawmakers that certain emissions regulations would be impractical. I can't find a citation, but I recall seeing an estimate that the German automaker cartel increased prices on the order of $10k per vehicle. I had also read that there is a similar cartel among the automotive suppliers, none of whom seem capable of making a windshield wiper set that isn't hundreds of dollars, or a vehicle lighting below multiple thousands of dollars. “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” -- Adam Smith https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-cartel-collusion-between-germany-s-biggest-carmakers-a-1159471.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-cartel-coll...
- TheCleric 2y agoWithout a mechanical redundancy: pass.
- adiabatichottub 2y agoIt'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 2y agoNo, but a self-sustained 8-bit or even 32-bit MCU may be cheaper than a 555.
- gfkclzhzo 2y agoA 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.
- metaphor 2y 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.
- gfkclzhzo 2y agoThe same is true of purely mechanical designs. Isolated embedded systems can be like mechanical systems in that they're simple enough to be tractable and even deterministic. A system running Linux and calling AWS lamda functions through the cell network isn't tractable.
- ryukoposting 2y agoElectronics 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?
- flyingfences 2y agoThe lack of information on how it /feels/ is telling. Feedback is important for safe driving.
- jedmeyers 2y agoIt 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.
- LeafItAlone 2y agoPossibly 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.
- flyingfences 2y agoThat 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?
- LeafItAlone 2y agoYes, and those can all be mechanically emulated at the pedal based on sensors on the brakes, with only an electrical connection between them. You can experience that even on modern arcade racing-simulator games.
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoYounger 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 2y agoThe 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 2y agoBrake by wire is likely illegal in many countries. The design rules would have to change (at least in Australia)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- metalman 2y agothe 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 2y agoInteresting 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
- Lwerewolf 2y agoI 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 2y agoMy 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.
- Lwerewolf 2y agoBrake torque is far higher than engine torque and can be applied at speeds where tire traction is far greater - at least at the front. The rear makes far more sense for this application - assuming a performance RWD or AWD vehicle, the rear driveshafts already handle most of the acceleration load, and max rear braking load is practically severely limited by the load transfer to the front. Formula student cars and other open-wheelers have far greater packaging flexibility as well. A quick search doesn't bring up a whole lot of encouraging discussions on FSAE and related places re: inboard brakes, please share if you've seen such.
- widdakay 2y agoIs this what is used in the new Tesla Model Y?
- exabrial 2y agoSo if the battery is dead in the car, how does one apply the brakes?
- BenjiWiebe 2y agoYour 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.
- exabrial 2y agoAll older cars the brakes work 100% of the time, whether or not you have gas or electrical.
- nickserv 2y agoHow old are we talking about here? If you have power brakes then when the engine shuts off the brakes don't work at 100%. At that point you're needing to push the hydraulic fluid without assistance and you'll find it's really not easy to stop. Also no power steering. A windy mountain road is not a good place to be...
- i_am_proteus 2y agoAt that point, engine brake with the clutch.
- vladvasiliu 2y agoUnless you're driving an automatic.
- Hamuko 2y ago
- cue_the_strings 2y agoI really distrust Bosch, knowing how underpaid their engineers are.
- hanikesn 2y agoThen you shouldn't get in a car. Bosch is the main manufacturer of airbag controllers and ECUs.
- cue_the_strings 2y agoI 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.
- Lwerewolf 2y agoNot 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 2y agoI 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.
- Lwerewolf 2y agoThe 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.
- djoldman 2y agoWhy 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 2y agoOverall 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 2y agoDon'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".
- blueflow 2y agoAlso, these systems are much more difficult to diagnose if they fail to function correctly. This means you are going to pay for 5 different things to be replaced, each after replacing the previous one didn't fix the issue. And you are going to pay big time for every replacement.
- ourmandave 2y agoI'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 2y agoAnd then he asks an LLM how to solve the problem...
- 0_____0 2y agoI 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 2y agoBrake 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoSounds 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 2y agoTranslated 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.
- relistan 2y agoThis 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.
- wat10000 2y agoIt 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 2y agoIn 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.
- maples37 2y agoOne 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.
- tassadarforaiur 2y agoI'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 2y agoMy current handbrake is a toggle switch. :(
- MisterTea 2y 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Hamuko 2y agoI 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 2y agoThe 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 2y agoI 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.
- nothercastle 2y agoThe biggest problem with this system will be disregarding the brakes without power
- aiiizzz 2y agoWhy isn't everything done by wire? Steering, gas, everything