Electronic handbrakes why

[marshalla]

HarryFlatters said:

It depends on the system. The one in my Dad's Passat works well, especially with the Autohold thing that for some reason wasn't standard on the early models. The one in the hired Vauxhall Insignias that I've had does not have this function and as a consequence doesn't work as well.

I'm so glad you said that. People have been telling me that I don't know how to use the electronic parking brake on a hired Insignia. It seems I do, it's just that the designers never envisioned anyone having to do a reverse uphill start in one of them.

Hateful, HATEFUL invention.

[jamieduff1981]

Symbolica said:

xRIEx said:

You do realise that an 'old fashioned' hand brake lever applies no force at all? A person applies the force, therefore the force through a hand brake is inconsistent - how can you say that the same force is applied? I bet I can apply more force to the brake than e.g. a little old lady.

You barely need any strength at all if you press hard on the footbrake before pulling the lever up. I'm always bemused by people that wrench the lever up hard - it's not supposed to be a test of strength.

It is in a Cerbera

[GravelBen]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

How is an electric circuit more complicated than a big lever, a cable, ratchets etc etc.

How is an electric motor attached to the brake caliper less complicated than a lever and cable?

And does it allow the driver to modulate the force applied, or use it where necessary for purposes other than simply stopping a stationary car rolling down a slope?

[mph999]

Hate them ...

Drove a Vauxhall with one, although it had 'hill start' it didn't work on a very slight incline, so you rolled back. Overall not a major issue as it had 'drive away' but if you were in a situation where you stopped briefly and so would just need to hold the car for the time it took to pull away you had to put the brake on to avoid roll back - and the brake took a good couple of seconds to activate,

Hateful thing ... just wait for the one that malfunctions and decides to apply itself mid-bend at 60 mph ...

Had one on a Volvo loan car yesterday, equally as hateful, plus I had to learn forward to reach the button.

[jamieduff1981]

I don't mean to be obtuse (no, really), but in the context of a wafty Jag as per the OP, what use is a hand brake outwith preventing a car rolling away down a slope - assuming I report back later and confirm that it works as an emergency brake in the event of a master cylinder failure.

You don't need to modulate the handbrake on a wafty exec saloon car. You're not rallying with it. If you have a car with no brakes and you winch it on to a flat bed then you can winch it back off again. I just don't see the problem.

I accept that not all EPBs are equal and from most of the opinions in this thread the VW system tries to be too clever and is crap, but the Jaguar one as per the OP I actually own and use daily. It's fine and has been fine for 4 years 70,000 miles. It goes on only when you ask it to, or when you pull out the key (unless you ask it not to). What's the problem? As the person actually sitting in the car I prefer not having a lever there. To be perfectly honest in the context of the running costs of a big exec saloon like that in terms of tyres, discs and pads, suspension parts, fuel consumption etc etc an EPB failure (which I haven't had) is not really up there in the realms of horror-story failures. There are plenty other toys and gadgets on similar cars which can break and cost a lot more. Most buyers/owners prefer not to have to pull a lever in a comfy wafty car like that.

[eztiger]

Have one on my A6.

Thought I was going to loathe the thing for many of the reasons listed here - turns out I love it and wouldn't be without it.

Big problem is remembering that other cars have physical / non automatic handbrakes. You wouldn't catch me forgetting and trying to drive off with the handbrake still engaged - no sir.

Of course it hasn't gone wrong yet. I expect my opinion to change radically when it does.

[GravelBen]

jamieduff1981 said:

I don't mean to be obtuse (no, really), but in the context of a wafty Jag as per the OP, what use is a hand brake outwith preventing a car rolling away down a slope - assuming I report back later and confirm that it works as an emergency brake in the event of a master cylinder failure.

You don't need to modulate the handbrake on a wafty exec saloon car. You're not rallying with it. If you have a car with no brakes and you winch it on to a flat bed then you can winch it back off again. I just don't see the problem.

Certainly for your usage, the roads you use etc its obviously not an issue, I'm happy to accept that. Just saying that it would be an issue for me and the roads I use - if I had a nice wafty Jag it would still spend a bit of time on gravel roads (even if I wasn't a petrohead), and I'd prefer a manual one too. Hows the suspension travel? It could be quite fun.

I'll be interested to hear the results of trying it as an emergency brake if you do get the chance to test it - whether it works through the regular braking system (in which case I don't know that you could rely on it with a split brake line etc), locks the rears or applies itself gradually to slow you down as you can do with a manual handbrake.

Edited by GravelBen on Tuesday 10th September 13:53

[TwigtheWonderkid]

My experience of things is that the less moving parts something has, the more reliable it'll be. Like those old radio cassette players, the cassette machine always went wrong, leaving you with just the radio, that lasted for ever.

Some electric handbrakes will play up, but over the life of the average car, an electric handbrake will be far less work and less trouble than a manual one.

[Ozzie Osmond]

Electric brake is the devil's work!

• Only two positions - full on and full off. No graduation.
• Slow to automatically release when you move off. Messy and threatens to stall car.
• Mustn't apply it until the car is completely stationary.
• Even then, if you're on any slope the car rolls fractionally when you release the foot brake and jerks against the parking brake.
• Hill hold function is hopeless at detecting hills....

Definite step backwards. Answers a question that no-one was asking.

[shandyboy]

paranoid airbag said:

me neither. Still can't hold a candle to the pointlessness of auto wipers though. There should be a task force set up to work undercover in dealerships: anyone who sounds impressed by auto wipers has their licence revoked immediately. The only people who benefit are those who a)lack the observational skills to note it's raining, or b)are too lazy to flick a switch. Neither group can possibly be safe drivers.

In the defense of auto-wipers... The other-half's car has them and I was quite dismissive about them at first, but I think their benefit is not that they turn on as it starts to rain (because let's face it, how hard is it to move a stalk), but that they only sweep the wipers when they need to - so if it's very lightly raining, you'll get a sweep of the wipers maybe every 45 seconds or so. It's nice when it's that irritating type of rain that isn't heavy enough to stop your wipers from scraping on intermittent, but makes it annoying having to keep manually setting it to wipe every so often.

Having said that, never really missed it on my car. And when we were driving in winter up the A1 it thought salt-spray from the road was rain so it went into a wiping frenzy smearing the windscreen and making visibility much worse!

On the subject of parking brakes, colleage had a Passat with one, it had to go back to the garage on numerous occasions, sometimes sticking on, sometimes failing to engage.

Edited by shandyboy on Tuesday 10th September 14:16

[jamieduff1981]

GravelBen said:

jamieduff1981 said:

I don't mean to be obtuse (no, really), but in the context of a wafty Jag as per the OP, what use is a hand brake outwith preventing a car rolling away down a slope - assuming I report back later and confirm that it works as an emergency brake in the event of a master cylinder failure.

You don't need to modulate the handbrake on a wafty exec saloon car. You're not rallying with it. If you have a car with no brakes and you winch it on to a flat bed then you can winch it back off again. I just don't see the problem.

Certainly for your usage, the roads you use etc its obviously not an issue, I'm happy to accept that. Just saying that it would be an issue for me and the roads I use - if I had a nice wafty Jag it would still spend a bit of time on gravel roads (even if I wasn't a petrohead), and I'd prefer a manual one too. Hows the suspension travel? It could be quite fun.

I'll be interested to hear the results of trying it as an emergency brake if you do get the chance to test it - whether it works through the regular braking system (in which case I don't know that you could rely on it with a split brake line etc), locks the rears or applies itself gradually to slow you down as you can do with a manual handbrake.

Edited by GravelBen on Tuesday 10th September 13:53

Mechanically I'm 100% certain that it works by winding in a couple of short Bowden cables which pull cam levers on the rear calipers. I've been under the car a fair bit and have seen it working in front of my face so it doesn't rely on hydraulics at all.

It works with a flick of the switch from <5mph ish already. In that case it halts applies the brake over perhaps a second, maybe slightly less and stops the car firmly. Faster than that it just beeps at you if you flick the switch up. The switch is spring loaded central though. You pull up for on and press it down for off (or just drive away). I *think* the handbook says if I pull the switch up and keep it there it will engage the parking brake for emergency use, in which case it may lock up if the road was greasy.

I'll give it a go and get back to you. Suspension travel is fairly long in theory and it's quite softly sprung even in sport guise, but the rear anti-roll bar is kinda normal and the front anti-roll bar is much thicker than any other car I've had. Body roll is pretty well controlled. With CATS suspension (which I don't have) it's better still.

[eztiger]

I guess a lot depends on the particular implementation although :

Ozzie Osmond said:

Electric brake is the devil's work!

• Only two positions - full on and full off. No graduation.
• Mustn't apply it until the car is completely stationary.

Are either of those issues? Unless you want to be doing handbrake turns or similar?

Only time I've ever had it somewhere in the middle was to try and 'clean' the shoes and stop them from sticking. Hopefully less of an issue with electric ones.

Likewise I've never put the handbrake on whilst moving (in the course of normal driving..). You can still apply electric ones whilst moving but you'll end up with an emergency stop - or at least on mine, which matches the behaviour someone else has already described.

Ozzie Osmond said:

• Slow to automatically release when you move off. Messy and threatens to stall car.
• Even then, if you're on any slope the car rolls fractionally when you release the foot brake and jerks against the parking brake.
• Hill hold function is hopeless at detecting hills....

1 - Works fine on mine. Worse case (depending on gradient I presume) you feel like you're 'tugging' it off the brakes a bit moving forward but not noticeable for passengers and certainly nowhere near a problem in terms of stalling.

2 - No issues with this. And / or I've driven plenty of cars with manual handbrakes (bmw I'm looking at you) that exhibit this behaviour.

3 - Works fine on mine. It doesn't really detect hills as far as I know - just puts on the handbrake (to some extent) as soon as you're stationary. Flat or gradient. Then you just drive off as normal. Took a while to trust it but it seems fine.

Interesting the differences in implementations. What car was this on?

I have to say doing reversing manoeuvres can get a bit confusing if you don't switch off all the assist stuff first though

[MGgeordie]

I would never ever buy a car fitted with an electronic handbrake. Complete & utter stupid invention, the lever & cable setup is so much cheaper and easier to maintain.

Other pet hate is cars that park themselves, if you can't park properly please hand in your license. Would piss myself if the self parking function failed and it crashed itself (obviously as long as no one was hurt).

[TwigtheWonderkid]

MGgeordie said:

I would never ever buy a car fitted with an electronic handbrake. Complete & utter stupid invention, the lever & cable setup is so much cheaper and easier to maintain.

How can it be easier to maintain? On most cars, an electric handbrake will never need a moments maintenance. It'll just work perfectly thru the life of the car.

My own car has an electric handbrake, by company car doesn't. Electric handbrake is much better.

[MGgeordie]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

How can it be easier to maintain? On most cars, an electric handbrake will never need a moments maintenance. It'll just work perfectly thru the life of the car.

My own car has an electric handbrake, by company car doesn't. Electric handbrake is much better.

I meant easier and cheaper to fix if and when it goes wrong

[MG CHRIS]

Well as I posted this 2 years back things have changed, im now fully qualified. But what I was getting at is the cost of replacing a electronic motor far out ways a conventional handbrake. As for the comments above I didn't work on the car and we did manage to release it and then told the customer the bill would be £700.

The garage I work at have one of the best reputations around my area specially within the diagnostic area loads of other garages come to us when they can't fix a car so the comment saying "ops garage lacking the wit to look up on the internet etc" well aren't you charming.

I still remain that electric handbrakes are not needed and are there to make things more complex and more expensive to replace.

[petrolsniffer]

Awful things watched a motorway cops (bbc1) other night a brand new range rover broken down in lane three the police couldn't move it thanks to the electronic handbrake had to be dragged onto the recovery truck!

[MitchT]

jamieduff1981 said:

MitchT said:

gf15 said:

More complexity for no benefit.

No, there is a benefit... The manufacturer gets to plumb some software into it which will be programmed to 'fail' every so often, thus facilitating the opportunity for them to relieve you of a three figure sum plus VAT just for them to re-code it at virtually zero cost to themselves... just like BMW with their stty electronic steering lock. Old sheds never never looked more appealing.

Life isn't just one big conspiracy you know...

I'm sure it isn't, but in nearly 15 years of driving the same old E36 I haven't once had to pay to have my steering fixed. My OH, on the other hand, has been regularly relieved of cash to re-code the electronic steering lock in her 120d... "or really bad and terrifyingly expensive things will happen to the steering column". Sometimes the old fashioned, tried and tested, mechanical solution is best left to do its job, unless there's another motive.

[PugwasHDJ80]

petrolsniffer said:

Awful things watched a motorway cops (bbc1) other night a brand new range rover broken down in lane three the police couldn't move it thanks to the electronic handbrake had to be dragged onto the recovery truck!

I hate them too and have already mentioned range river hand brakes


BUT

had the driver read the manual he would have ound the very easy manual release ststem

[va1o]

PugwasHDJ80 said:

I hate them too and have already mentioned range river hand brakes


BUT

had the driver read the manual he would have ound the very easy manual release ststem

Exactly. I managed to emergency release a new Audi last year which I'd never even sat inside before nor read the manual. Just showed how little the woman driving the car knew and the police who came to the rescue.