Bosch takes new brake-by-wire system to the Arctic Circle
For six days, over 3,300 kilometres and through different climate zones to the Arctic Circle: On an unusual test drive, a Bosch development team successfully tested the company’s new hydraulic brake-by-wire system for the first time on public roads.
According to Bosch, this solution completely eliminates the mechanical connection between the brake pedal and the brake system. The driver’s brake request is transmitted to the brake-by-wire system purely as an electrical signal via redundant signal lines.
For this fundamentally new approach, Bosch says it is offering a robust and efficient solution with two independent hydraulic brake actuators – a by-wire brake actuator and an ESP. Today’s brake systems, such as the integrated power brake from Bosch, still ensure the required redundancy in the event of a fault via a mechanical connection to the brake pedal. This coupling via an input rod to the brake pedal is claimed by Bosch to be eliminated in its new brake-by-wire solution.
Set to be launched later this year, Bosch says it has already received orders from various vehicle manufacturers and expects that by 2030, more than 5.5 million vehicles worldwide will be equipped with its brake-by-wire system.
Brake-by-wire to the Arctic Circle
The brake-by-wire system is being developed at the Bosch development centre in Abstatt, Germany. The long-distance journey led the development team from the southwest of Germany via Hamburg, Copenhagen and Stockholm and a short detour to the Arctic Circle to the finish at the Bosch winter test centre Vaitoudden in Arjeplog, in northern Sweden.
Bosch said it specifically applied for and obtained approval for public roadway use for the Nissan Ariya test vehicle in several countries, based on an extensive safety concept.
“The whole team has worked towards this event with incredible motivation and is very proud of this achievement. Our hydraulic brake-by-wire system has worked perfectly on the journey. With our first long-distance test, we impressively demonstrated that we can bring a real brake-by-wire system safely and successfully from the test track to the roadm,” said Hagen Kuckert, project manager for the by-wire brake actuator at Bosch in Abstatt.
“We performed thousands of braking operations during the journey, were able to obtain important insights and data on the behaviour of the brake system in a wide variety of traffic situations and compare them with our previous simulations. All this is incorporated into the further development work to further optimise our hydraulic brake-by-wire system,” he added.
