Friday, 12 December 2008

Electric Handbrake on Audi A4

I guess it is now inevitable that cars will start to use electric handbrakes over the manual ones. It saves quite a bit of space in the interior, and I assume it auto adjusts the tension in the brake system.

The previous car I had, was a new XC70 from Volvo. This had an electric handbrake, but the switch was not in a great place.. i.e. it wasn't obvious and you had to reach for it. I also could not work out the logic of the auto release. Very often it didn't auto release as you would expect.

The Audi one is much better than the Volvo. For starters, the switch is very nicely placed in the centre console, near the gear lever. It is very easy to see if it is on or not by a red LED (of course also on the dash too). It releases everytime in auto mode.. as long as you have got the seatbelt on. You can't release it manually unless you have your foot on the footbrake. So overall, it seems to have sufficient safety built in, with ease of use. Something the Volvo failed to do.

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