Ebike brake lever cutoff switch / interrupt switch : How does it work? When pressing the brake lever on my ebike the bldc motor controller (aka ebike controller) 'cuts power' to the motor until the brake lever is released again/sensor is deactivated. I would love to know how that works/what happens.

I am wondering what causes the power to be 'cut off' when the sensor is triggered by pressing the brake lever.
My theory is that the power (5v +) to the throttle and pedal assist sensor are cut off when one of the brake sensors is activated, this in turn causes the user to be unable to 'apply throttle' .

Perhaps my theory is way off, do any of you know how this works? Does it differ per case/controller ? Or is the method (of cutting off the power when one of the brake sensors is activated) quite universal ?

The controller I'm using: https://a.aliexpress.com/e1R175D8X

My battery: 20s 72v 10parallel

Thank you very much for any input, it is greatly appreciated!
In your current set up, the electric brake lever sensor will protect against the situation where you're emergency braking but forgot to release the throttle.

The brake sensors override the throttle because there's basically no reason to power the motor while braking.



If your bike was configured to use a pedelec or pedal-assist mode, then the controller will detect when your cranks are turning, and the controller then instructs the motor what power levels to be putting out.  There's generally some lag, where you have to do some rotation of the cranks before the motor starts to power you.  At the other end, the same crank sensor will take a short time to decide you've stopped pedalling before it drops the motor assist.

Its conceivable that you may be braking hard, and have been riding at 60 RPM on the crank.  Your feet may turn another half rotation, and then the motor takes a "missing" half rotation to decide to cut the power.  That could be an entire second of time where your motor is powering you forward against the braking force, which is 7 metres at 25 km/h or about 2 car lengths.

The electric brake lever sensor should be telling the controller to STOP RIGHT NOW and override those other inputs.



Additionally, electric brake lever sensors can be used to activate secondary electric brakes and scavenge some power back into the battery.  Sometimes this simply uses the motor as a generator, and sometimes there are separate coils.

This is relatively rare on ebikes, though electric trail bikes may have this feature.

Side note - electric brakes aren't legal, and the bike still needs mechanical brakes to be on the road.