MB to stop SBC?

[prprandall51]

SBC must surely be a vastly more complex (and therefore expensive) system than conventional ABS-equipped cars from a mechanical point of view. After all, ABS valves merely remove and then reapply full braking pressure at a locked wheel - albeit many times a second.

SBC fully modulates and applies the braking pressure to a highly refined level at each wheel. The driver decides simply on how much retardation they require and the car then calculates the best spread of that requirement amongst the four wheels and does it for you - taking things like lateral acceleration, yaw angle, wheel slip, speed and tyre grip and probably a load of other stuff into consideration! There is a whole integrated onboard computing system that has to do all that in real-time.

I am not aware that there have not been any significant number of failures - costly or otherwise - of the SBC system anywhere in the world. Therefore, I can only assume that MB have pulled the system because of PR issues combined with cost-saving. Global recalls are expensive, but hardly unique to MB. I had a Golf that was recalled three times during my ownership - all for problems that would have affected every single one made. VW just wrote to the owners and asked them to bring them in. MB, for better or worse, decided to make a big thing out of the SBC recall. A decision (no doubt made by the PR department, rather than the engineers), the sagacity of which must have been reviewed and rehashed and pondered upon many times in Stuttgart since it was made.

Philip

 

[saorbust]

I've refrained from commenting so far, but here goes.

I like SBC. It works extremely well - is a very capable system, and its had a couple of teething issues which have affected a VERY small number. So lets not get this problem out of scale. MB have done recalls and modified the system for all owners.

SBC Stop and Go has now been disabled, which I rather liked. I still have the SBC Hold function which is great and very useful (when I drive my wife's car I forget she doesn't have it !)

Regarding the deletion from the E Class, I suspect its been done for the following reasons:

1; Its a volume car, and a redesign of the system is too expensive.

2; Perception has largely been associated with this model, not with others (such as the SL etc).

For those reasons I'm confident its going to stay on the S Class. I also believe the next E Class will have the system too - since its in development now and they likely can design it effectively. Fundamentally the system works - but they have learnt from consumer experiences which will always be more thorough that their own testing.

I wonder has it been deleted from the CLS Class ?

Clarky.