Australian innovation leads to a major breakthrough in caravan safety and stability

AL-KO, the world leaders in caravan axles, brakes and components manufacture has announced the release of a revolutionary new Electronic Stability Control (ESC) technology for electric braked caravans. The ESC controls instability that can cause dangerous and frightening driving scenarios when towing.

In a world first innovation, AL-KO ESC automatically responds to the driving behaviour of the caravan by monitoring for any dangerous sideways movements and taking preventative action immediately - applying the caravan’s electric brakes to maintain stability of both the car and caravan to ensure early intervention for a safe recovery.

“AL-KO saw an important need to eliminate the sway effect in caravans which can often lead to the driver losing control of the caravan and tow vehicle” said AL-KO International Technical & Manufacturing Manager, Rob Funder. “This is caused by many factors, including taking an emergency evasive manoeuvre to avoid an obstacle that has suddenly appeared on the road ahead”.

After testing the product at Sandown raceway, motorsport driver Charlie Kovacs is an advocate of the product: “What the ESC has done - it’s sensed you are making an avoidance manoeuvre, it’s sensed the caravan is out of align, it’s already applied the brakes, slowing you down to help you drive around and avoid the incident on the road”

Sven Mannfolk, Managing Director of AL-KO International said: “We believe AL-KO ESC is the most significant development in towing safety ever developed for the Australian market. It amounts to a new era in towing safety and will ultimately save lives”.

“ESC will also grow the caravan market in general by allowing people to overcome their fear of towing” said Mr Mannfolk. “Like ESP in cars, we believe ESC will be standard on all caravans in a very short period of time” he said. “For the relatively low cost that the AL-KO ESC will add to a caravan, there really is no reason why ESC should not be mandatory as it is for cars within a very short period.”

AL-KO ESC will be available initially to caravan manufacturers, who can now make AL-KO ESC available as standard or as an option on their vehicle ranges. In the near future, AL-KO ESC will also be available for retrofit in 2013.