Brembo has developed an all-electronic braking system that is soon to become standard equipment for a “leading global vehicle manufacturer”. While Brembo isn’t yet revealing who their customer will be, this article posits that Tesla is the leading contender, with MB and BMW also being possibilities.
It always amuses me when claims like “first” are made. This is a technology brake suppliers have been prototyping since the early 1990s.
Seems no one bother to look back to GM’s EV1. The Delco division (now Bejing West Industries) created a brake-by-wire WITH hydraulic backup - as required by federal standards at the time.
The rear drum brakes had a pure by-wire design (no hydraulics) with an electric motor inside to apply the brake. The front system had electric motors to push a piston that sent brake fluid to a conventional front caliper. In the event of a failure of the by-wire system, the front brakes defaulted to conventional hydraulic apply.
The systems were designed to make the brakes work consistently with a fully charged (no re-gen braking) to a fully discharged (full re-gen braking) battery.
I suppose in the future we will look back at cars with hydraulic brake design and laugh. How crude? The horseless carriage is so quaint.
Similarly, it now seems somewhat crude that the first power windows were hydraulically-powered. This was done because the electrical systems of the day were so anemic, but because of complaints about the nasty stains on fabric-covered interior door panels from leaking hydraulic cylinders, the automakers realized that it was time to move-on to electric motors for the windows.