Toronto, Ontario — Engineers working with automaker Mercedes-Benz have announced that they can use an electric vehicle’s motors to act in place of brakes and slow the vehicle in 98 percent of situations.
Specifically, at the automaker’s R&D centre in Sindelfigen, Germany, an engineering team is reportedly in the process of developing a brake system integrated into the electric drive unit of an electric vehicle that contains the motor, transmission and differential.
As noted by Motortrend, this change could move 200 pounds of unsprung mass from the corners of the vehicle to the other side of the suspension. Placing the brakes inside aluminum housings would also help encapsulate dust.
This technology, which the automaker is currently referring to as “in-drive brakes,” would further reverse the roles of the brake pads and discs.
Additionally, this change would allow Mercedes-Benz to run coolant through both brake discs and as a result, use the same cooling circuit to manage both battery and motor temperatures.
However, lithium-ion batteries, Motortrend notes, operate at around 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29 degrees Celsius), with the motors holding at around 175 degrees Fahrenheit (79 degrees Celsius), and so, engineers must continue to work through this difficulty in order to ensure proper functioning of temperature sensitive electronic systems.
The proposed technology is currently in the hardware testing phase, meaning there is no guaranteed date for if and when the technology could reach a commercial manufacturing stage.
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