4 ms·

My understanding with ESP (My Nissan has it as Electronic Stability Program) was that it uses small amounts of single-wheel breaking to cause the vehicle to kee

My understanding with ESP (My Nissan has it as Electronic Stability Program) was that it uses small amounts of single-wheel breaking to cause the vehicle to keep the expected line during extreme manoeuvring (eg swerving around a child running into the road, or swerving around the car in front suddenly anchoring on). I would have thought your issue with power being removed to the drive wheels is actually the Traction Control system kicking in not the ESP, but then it's possible you have one button that disables both.

maxerickson 12y ago
For the purposes of my comment, they are pretty much the same thing (and once you have all the components for ESC, traction control is essentially a software option). My point was that immediate road surface conditions are already a bigger problem for humans than for computers. nogridbag has a point, but I think the higher level computerized control system could make a finer grained input than a human, directly requesting that the power train operate at the traction limit.
nogridbag 12y ago
My only experience is with Mazda's DSC (dynamic stability control) which I had in a previous car (Mazda RX-8). I had a couple of cases where I forgot to turn off DSC, because in that car you have to switch it off EVERY time you start the car, and the power would be completely cut to both wheels going up steep snowy inclines. For most conditions like rain it's great for the average driver. DSC caught me off guard a couple of times in dry/rain and one time almost caused me to lose control. But in all cases it was because I accidentally left it on while driving "enthusiastically" and wasn't expecting the DSC to yank the car abruptly and unnaturally in its attempt to straighten the car out.