Basically DVD No.

There's no partial engagement nor disengagement, its either on or off.

You can apply and release them manually, or in most if not all cases as you engage drive the thing will release fully and when you stop and turn the ignition off will apply fully.

I don't have one, and won't ever be having one, i drove lots of the horrid things in my previous work.

To be fair they're OK when working right.

I have many reservations though mainly around increased wear over time to the clutch to trigger auto release, and increased costs due to brake pad/caliper servicing and replacement being now a garage job only with the right electronic equipment, and the serious costs involved when they fail out of warranty, plus the faff involved if and when it fails to release at all which has happened to me with brand new cars at delivery points with them stuck on the transporter.

My biggest question though is why? what benefit are they? what question has been answered by their introduction? what was wrong with a decent manual parking brake before?

Hi DVD,

All Jag XF's have one and as an XF owner, I have been happy with it. As the car is automatic (as all XF's are), there is no real issue with 'creep' or anything, or hill holding - I just stick it in D, release the handbrake and off I go.

In order not to blind people in queues, I do sometimes use it then as well and stick the 'box in Neutral & then put the handbrake on.

There is a little delay when I release, but there will also be a delay when I move the gearbox selector from N -> D so it's not really noticeable.

Rear pads have been known to only last 15k on the XF, but I've had 30k out of mine, so can't be that bad.

From the engineering aspect, looking at the rear calipers on the XF, it looks like the Jag has one motor that is activated by the handbrake switch and that motor in turn controls the handbrake cable to the caliper (i.e. when I look at the caliper I don't see wires for a handbrake switch, just a Bowden cable, the pad wear sensor wires & brake pipe for hydraulic brakes)

As to why are they fitted, well just think about how the design consultant who was putting together the XF interior would have felt if someone had come along and said "ELECTRIC HANDBRAKE, WITH A SWITCH ??? We'll have none of that, I want a proper handbrake. Hack out most of that centre console to make it fit..." :-)

After all, if it's going to fail, it will no doubt do so long out of warranty.....

Hope that helps (probably not if you are buying a manual car!)

cheers

Stu

I like the electronic brake on my '64 Golf. You can switch 'Auto hold' off but I don't see a reason to. I very rarely used to apply my handbrake in traffic and even used to take my foot off the brake too, when on level ground. A bad habit that is obviously not great if you're rear-ended. The electronic brake takes the thought out of it....the minute you brake to a standstill, on pops the green light on the dash and you know that a) all brakes are applied, and b) your brake lights are showing to warn the less observant that the traffic ahead is at a standstill. If you open the door or take the key out of the ignition the green light changes to red to show that the parking brake is now applied.

I've only encountered 2 issues with the EB since getting the car:

When parking in a space (especially on the end of the row), I always used to ensure my wheels were just inside the parking space markings so that I wasn't taking up 2 spaces instead of 1. I'd do this by opening the door a crack and leaning out as I reversed to make sure I was right up to the boundary. You can't do this in the new Golf...the minute you open the door, on comes the parking brake which resolutely refuses to switch off until you shut the door. Cue lots of muttered swearing.

The other issue is that you forget that not every car has an EB so you either try and drive off without releasing it, or forget to apply it when parked!

With a new car I don't see how you'd have an issue with it. Of course, with all this new technology, when they do eventually fail it'll cost £££ to repair.