Our lives depend so much on the braking system of our vehicles.

They have - it's called ABS and EBD, traction control, skew control, hill descent control etc, etc. All these things interact with the brakes to varying degrees on various vehicles.

As you say, the basis is still pumping an incompressible fluid through non expanding pipes and eventually compressing a friction material against a friction material.

I reckon that when F1 moves away from this system to something else such as perhaps servo motors actuating the brake pads rather than a fluid, it won't take long to reach the everyday cars.

There is an electric car around that uses a form of engine braking on the motor that returns power to the batteries.

This principle could be used with say a rotaing permanent magnet fixed to the drive shafts and an electro-magent that used a variable current for braking force.

Also my caravan already has electric brakes that use magnetic force to pull the friction surfaces together.

But as Exploder says, what happens when you blow a fuse!

We once had an exciting descent down a slippery road on the way home in the Adelaide Hills with no van brakes. We had clipped off a dangling electric brake line at some point in our trip home. It is now fixed up out of the way.

Cheers

Pete

G'day,

BMW are working on a fully electric braking system. Interesting to see if it ever gets past ADR regulations when developed.

Greg