ElI5: What does traction/traction control mean?
In: 8
The simple electronic traction features of cars can be described in 3 categories. These are ABS, TC, ESC.
ABS is Anti-lock braking system. It does exactly what it says. When you brake too hard, the wheels lock up and this reduces braking performance, and also it makes it impossible for you to change direction. When the wheels lock up, you’re still decelerating, but at a slower rate than the max theoretical amount. ABS is a mechanism that automatically engages and disengages the brakes very rapidly many times a second. This allows you to still have control, and at the same time help you stop. On casual road cars this system is quite simple (basically a simple on-off switch that’s very quick), but on advanced sports cars it can optimize braking by applying the exact braking pressure to maximize traction without locking up.
TC stands for traction control. It has the same idea as ABS, but works for acceleration. If you step on the gas too much, the wheels might get more power than what the tyres can handle, so instead of helping you go forward, they start spinning. This has two drawbacks. Firstly, instead of providing optimal acceleration, the loss of friction makes you accelwrate slowly. Also, it can cause you to completely lose control, especially on rear-wheel drive cars. TC cuts the power from the engine, so that the wheels stop spinning. The same thing applies in simple cars vs sports cars. On a Yaris, TC will completely cut the power for 0.5-1 seconds. This will slow the car very much. But on a sports car, the computer can modulate the power to provide optimal acceleration by keeping the wheels exactly on the grip limit. Electric cars are very good at this because they have complete control of power delivery.
ESC is electronic stability control. The basic system can brake individual wheels when it detects loss of traction. Usually happens when the car has understeer or oversteer. For example, if you try to go left but the car continues straight, ESC will try to decelerate the left-side wheels, to help rotate the car. Once again, this is simpler on slow cars, and much more sophisticated on sports cars or AWD cars.
In general, race cars have zero ESC, and may have ABS and TC depending on the race class. For example, F1 has zero assists. Spinning the wheels is extremely easy (1000 hp will do that to you), especially in the rain. Other series, like GT3, have ABS and TC and it performs very well.
Latest Answers