Comment by amluto
7 months ago
On a reasonably well constructed car, loss of power steering at highway speeds is barely noticeable. Loss of power brakes is a different story. An inability to actually get all the way off the highway before running out of speed could also be quite dangerous, and a loss of power steering can indeed make it quite difficult to maneuver at low speeds.
If its drive-by-wire steering, then isn't loss of power steering the same as loss of all steering?
I'm shocked (literally) to see there are production vehicles with steer-by-wire. Couple that with OTA updates and you have a vehicle I'd refuse to ride in, much less purchase.
Its wild to me that any car manufacturer would push an OTA update while the vehicle is in motion, or hell, even push one at all instead of having it be user initiated. They didn’t bother to put a simple check in place to make sure the vehicle wasn’t being driven before updating?
And then these manufacturers wonder why people just want them to have a dumb head unit with carplay/android auto. Because they absolutely suck at software and have shown no desire to improve outside of charging people subscriptions for hardware features that are already in the car.
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The Cybertruck is basically the only vehicle with true steer by wire. Infiniti offered cars for a brief time which had clutched steering columns (a truly baffling worst of all worlds solution). Otherwise what people mean is electrical power steering, where a power-off failure means you need to turn the wheel harder (a power-on failure can be very bad and there are a lot of safety systems to limit applied torque so a driver can always override the input).
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I think most recently developed large commercial passenger aircraft are completely fly by wire with most controls lacking any physically interlinked backup.
Thinking of this somehow reminded me of the most harrowing aircraft disaster that I've ever read about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
It's both tragic because half of the passengers were killed but also miraculous that anyone survived at all.
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The cybertruck steer by wire IIRC has dual redundant everything including power supplies (the redundant one is powered by a DC-DC converter from the HV battery)
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> I'm shocked (literally) to see there are production vehicles with steer-by-wire. Couple that with OTA updates and you have a vehicle I'd refuse to ride in, much less purchase.
Indeed, the risk is far too large to ignore.
I will never own a car that has steer-by-wire or braking-by-wire. Those are two controls that absolutely must have a mechanical linkage that cannot be altered by software. Other things I can handle, but if all goes haywire, I must be able to steer and brake.
I don't think I have any issue with steer-by-wire as a concept. Yes, steering bars are very mature technology, but so are steering actuators.
Car manufacturers have just never bothered to do it right. If they cheapened as much on steering bars, it would break all the time too.
That said, OTA updates for basic functionality is an immediate blocker. Updates are by definition not mature technology.
You might need to stop dealing with cars made recently then. While steer-by-wire isn't so common, the number of cars with entirely digital drive-by-wire throttles would likely bother you.
Honda: "all Honda models use Drive-by-Wire technology" (for the accelerator pedal).
https://www.hondainfocenter.com/Shared-Technologies/Engines/...
Subaru's used it in a bunch of vehicles for decades: https://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/70486-what-year-d...
Most new Toyotas, Ford, etc.
While throttle/acceleration isn't steering, if you're uncomfortable with the underlying concept of a potentiometer and a microcontroller and a small motor on the other end being used to control a vehicle and consider it unproven technology, then you'd need to avoid most new cars in order to be logically consistent.
There's fortunately two major reported problems with DbW: 1) lack of feedback, and 2) latency. It's been attempted, and customers never liked it.
Even some motorcycles have electronic throttle control now a days. When you twist the throttle, it doesn't pull a cable anymore.
Its all controlled by electronics now.
Whats so shocking? Did you ever study them? Any ideas of their design and failsafe modes?
Or are you just posting just for engagement?
Well, at some point you won't have a choice. The government is going to ban ICE vehicles, tax the existing ones, and all the electrics will be everything by wire.
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If its drive-by-wire steering…
Which it isn’t. What production passenger vehicles have no steering column? (EDIT: oh, yeah, forgot about Cybertruck.)
Tesla Cybertruck, Lexus RZ 450e, Nio ET9, Toyota bZ4X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steer-by-wire
Cybertruck for one. I searched and found several, some without any manual backup. That's crazy to me.
There are many passenger vehicles with brake-by-wire, but only one I'm aware of with steer-by-wire: cybertruck
E.g. the cybertruck. It will also be more common as vehicles become more automated.
The cyber truck, tragically.
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I think there are only a couple of cars that are steer-by-wire.
The Infinity Q50, QX50, QX55 and QX60 (with backup that connects upon electric failure).
Without backup, but triple redundancy, can be found in the Tesla Cybertruck. But I'd take that redundancy with a grain of salt as they don't have the best track record telling you the truth.
That said, I really with companies would go back to the good old hydraulic steering. I don't need self-parking. But self-parking needs at least electric steering (with our without steering column).
> self-parking needs at least electric steering
You can control a hydraulic system automatically. That's literally what ABS braking is on the same cars already.
Which vehicles other than the Cybertruck have drive by wire steering? To my knowledge it's the only one without a physical steering column...
I've lost power steering on my dad's F250 once. It was incredibly noticeable, since I had to crank the wheel like a ship from the age of sail in order to get onto the shoulder.
I guess you could argue that it wasn't a reasonably well constructed car.
I lost power steering every day during the winter in my old car, when the engine stalled while coasting through a particular intersection, and I was busy re-starting it and negotiating the turn.
It's amazing how much more reliable cars have gotten. You used to be always on the alert for some critical function to fail spontaneously, and also listening for warning signs.
Is that more or less dangerous than being complacent with a vehicle that 'never goes wrong', then suddenly fails, I wonder?
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I had flaky power steering on an old Lexus LS400, and it would stop working for minutes at a time, more or less at random. At 40mph, I could generally tell that it wasn’t working but there was no meaningful extra difficulty when steering. At 15-20mph it was quite a bit harder to steer. At 5mph, it took some real force to steer. At parking speeds, it was very hard to make the large wheel movements needed to park. At a full stop it was almost impossible.
In general, this wasn’t especially hazardous, since I rarely needed to move the wheel very far while moving at very low speed in a place where other cars could be a hazard.
(Yes, I got this fixed. And the old LS400 cars were extremely well designed and built.)
In most situations a rudder is very, very gentle on the hands. You rarely have to crank down hard.
Did you mean tiller? These are hardly found on larger ships. I still like them for how much better you feel sail balance.
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I think the comment was about how noticeably _far_ they needed to turn the wheel not how hard it was to turn it.
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Losing power steering would be no big deal. Anything that caused a sudden loss in forward velocity worries me.
There's construction on the Interstate highway in my area with lanes that have no "breakdown" space ("contraflow" lanes). I would be terrified to lose power in that lane. I would be worried about getting rear-ended and / or causing a pile-up.
Loss of power steering is definitely noticeable. Especially when it comes to getting off the freeway.
Lost power steering at highway speeds in my '91 Corolla a couple of decades back. Didn't notice on the highway (belt just made a loud pang and I thought "What the heck was that?"), but as soon as I took an exit and had to turn at the light, I seriously had to muscle the wheel over. Good learning experience about what power steering offers.