Drive Systems, Emergency Braking Systems And Reliability - New Issue Of The Daimler HighTechReport HTR

STUTTGART – November 24, 2008: That driving pleasure and environment-friendly driving can be harmonized, how coach travel can be made even safer in future with an emergency braking system, and how an interdisciplinary team of engineers keeps a sharp eye on the quality and reliability of hardware components – starting tomorrow you can read about these and other exciting topics in the new edition of the Daimler HighTech Report HTR. Background material such as films, animations and interviews with experts additionally can be retrieved at www.daimler.com/innovation. You can get a brief preview of some of the highlights today.

Driving forces
“We invented the automobile and feel we have the responsibility for giving it a sustainable future”, says Dr. Thomas Weber, Daimler Board of Management member responsible for Group Research and Mercedes-Benz Cars Development. The Daimler strategy "Roadmap to Sustainable Mobility" banks on made-to-measure drive technologies: Vehicles with the most advanced internal combustion engines continue to be thoroughly optimised. Hybrid concepts employing petrol and diesel engines further enhance efficiency. And a further field of activity is emission-free driving with fuel-cell-powered and battery-powered vehicles.

All-Round safety
The emergency braking system Active Brake Assist has given a successful account of itself since 2006 in the Mercedes-Benz Actros heavy-duty truck. This autumn, as the world's first manufacturer Mercedes-Benz presented the active emergency braking system for coaches, for the first time in the Travego coach. If the coach is in danger of crashing into the rear end of a vehicle ahead, Active Brake Assist first warns the driver, and after partial braking even initiates drastic braking if necessary. But the driver can intervene at any point and overrule the system. Since coaches can travel faster and their driving dynamics are different from trucks', the emergency braking system was specially adapted to coach use.

Reliability can be planned
In every single E-Class or S-Class vehicle from Mercedes-Benz, depending on equipment 50 to 60 electronic control devices consisting of as many as 15,000 modules are installed. An interdisciplinary team of engineers in Project Risk Management sees to their reliability. With sophisticated methods the team searches for the causes of errors. Taken by themselves, their occurrence is extremely rare, but owing to the complexity of the vehicle electronics and the large unit volumes involved they are of crucial importance to vehicle quality.