New standards will speed by-wire growth - New Technology - Brief Article

Automotive Industries, April, 2002 by Gerry Kobe

When General Motors unveiled its AUTOnomy concept car at this year's North American International Auto Show in Detroit (see Al, February 2002 p. 24), its SKF-designed drive-by-wire architecture seemed as futuristic as the vehicle that embodied it But many by-wire systems are either in production or waiting on the shelves of suppliers like Delphi, Visteon, Bosch, Brembo, ContinentalTeves, Denso, ZE and TRW.

Safety-critical applications like brake- and steer-by-wire are surprisingly well developed. But their introduction is being slowed due to lack of regulatory consensus in defining an architecture that includes backups and redundancies that don't rely on a mechanical linkage.

Other by-wire technologies are already proving economical and reliable in existing applications such as throttle-by-wire, brake intervention and shift-by-wire. These systems, found on many luxury and performance vehicles, show better performance than the mechanical systems they replace and are paving the way for a total by-wire vehicle.

Even Delphi's Quadrasteer, a 4-wheel-steer option available on GM full-size trucks, is a by-wire system. It uses electronic actuators to operate the steering rack on the rear wheels. It is not affected by complicated regulations because it is the secondary, not primary, steering source.

In an effort to reach a regulatory consensus, the European BriteEuRam Ill research and development project that ran from 1996 to 1998 spawned a by-wire consortium that defined standards. These may or may not be adopted by European and/or world regulators.

Tier One, a market research company in Mountain View, Calif., predicts that by-wire technology will grow considerably in the next decade. Tier One predicts braking applications will soar from fewer than one million units today to 7.6 million units by 2006. Other by-wire technologies have similar growth curves.

For many major suppliers, by-wire is a logical next step since it usually incorporates capabilities that already exist within their portfolios. SKF, for example, combines its machine tool expertise in ball and roller screws, with sealing know-how from its Chicago Rawhide Division and by-wire logic from its SARMA avionics arm, to produce exceptionally mature by-wire systems. Clearly, if the regulators budge, the supply chain is ready for by-wire.