To fit the electronic version they’d cut the centre cable short. After test driving, it was somewhat lacking in responsiveness and we asked for the manual h’brake to be reinstated. Incidentally, we just bought a mk4 Micra that had an aftermarket electronic handbrake fitted for a disabled person. 1) What happens if you need to roll the car without starting the engine and 2) if the car has broken down and it needs moving in an emergency-what then? Not much good if the cars all locked up. James Foxall 14 Comments Car ownership, Maintaining your car Brake, brake pads, handbrake, parking brake And the systems are also child proof so kids can’t push the button and let the brake off by accident. For example, in many new cars, when you turn the engine off, the parking brake automatically engages. These brakes also have additional features. Electronic parking brakes create the room to do this. They also need to create areas for 21 st century lifestyles such as wireless mobile phone charging plates. Why do so many car makers use electronic brakes?Ĭar makers are desperate to free up space in their cockpits to make them appear more sleek and stylish. That’s less than a fifth of the price.Īccording to MotorEasy’s records, the most expensive parking brake repair cost it’s ever paid out on is £2,005 to fix the system on a 10-year-old Range Rover. Mending a manual handbrake costs on average £149. Data from warranty provider MotorEasy shows that the average cost of repairing a faulty electronic parking brake is £831. Why are electronic parking brakes expensive to fix?Īs they’re significantly more complicated, electronic brakes are much more expensive to put right. Just 1 per cent of Audi’s range had a manual handbrake while 6 per cent of Peugeot’s did. The research found that big name car firms such as Volvo, Jaguar, Porsche and Mercedes-Benz no longer offer any cars with manual handbrakes. Budget Romanian brand Dacia has a manual handbrake on two thirds of its cars. In its study of 642 models offered by 38 car makers, only Fiat’s performance brand Abarth has a manual handbrake across its whole range. The manual handbrake is increasingly a thing of the past (Picture iStock/LumiNola) That means there aren’t many cars with old-style handbrakes The number was 24 per cent in 2020 and 31 per cent in 2019.Īccording to the report, the Vauxhall Corsa, SEAT Leon and BMW 4 Series have all dropped the manual handbrake over the past 12 months. The third edition of the CarGurus Manual Handbrake Report reveals that the proportion of new cars with a manual handbrake fell to 17 per cent in 2021. How many new cars have electronic handbrakes?įewer than two in 10 new cars come with a manual handbrake. Most electronic parking brakes automatically disengage when you lift the clutch or press the accelerator on an automatic car. It’s usually accompanied by a whirring noise which is the motor doing its thing. When you pull up the electronic button on the centre console, it triggers a motor which moves the rear brake pads onto the rear wheels. Pulling on that lever caused a pair of cables to apply the rear brake pads or shoes (on drum brakes) to the car’s rear wheels.Īn electronic parking brake has no cable. And that’s why it was called the handbrake. The familiar lever with a button on the end that you yank up after coming to a halt is how most of us were introduced to the parking brake. The reassuring old handbrake has been replaced by the much less substantial electronic version. Back in the day there used to be a lever that would operate the parking brake, more commonly known as the handbrake. If you bought a car that’s either new or just a couple of years old, you might have noticed something missing between the seats. Most new cars have an electronic parking brake (Picture iStock/Kenneth-Cheung)
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