Present day automotive engineering is constantly searching for opportunities to improve vehicle safety and driver comfort and satisfaction. A common approach is to take legacy mechanical-only systems and where possible implement an electro-mechanical solution. The parking brake function is an obvious application area where significant improvements can be made on the basic cable pulling solution. Many of today’s newer vehicles have improved on this technology and have integrated electric motors, sensors, and relevant power management ICs into modern solutions. These solutions can be done with a more basic electric cable pulling solution or can use a more integrated and complex electric caliper solution.
In either system, Allegro provides a wide range of motor driver ICs, power management ICs, and Hall-effect sensor ICs which are key enablers of today’s parking brake technology.