Sounds like a terrible idea to me, honestly. Even Boeing aircraft still have a mechanical linkage. And Cybertruck won’t be a fighter jet no matter how much Elon proclaims it so, it’s just worlds away in terms of maintenance and safety engineering compared to what happens on an aircraft. Not saying it will be common but some sucker will eventually be killed by this.
> Even Boeing aircraft still have a mechanical linkage.
Airbus has been FBW for nearly 40 years now. And recent Boeings are FBW as well, the mechanical linkages are only between the yokes, something which is not relevant on a car.
I think aeroplanes are not a good point of comparison.
For one, mechanical steering is still very complicated, with many meters (miles?) of hydraulic hoses, actuators, pressure control systems etc.
Two, aerospace is healthily paranoid about QA and failure modes. I'm sure a steer-by-wirw can be extremely safe when done with that mindset. But Im not sure if that's the car industry's mindset, let alone Tesla's.
Finally, fly-by-wire offers enormous safety benefits in aeroplanes, because of what it enables. But I have no idea what steer by wire enables for a car.
>For one, mechanical steering is still very complicated
Yes, and digital steering is by nature even more complicated.
>aerospace is healthily paranoid about QA and failure modes. I'm sure a steer-by-wirw [sic] can be extremely safe when done with that mindset
What? So if we have the right 'mindset' then we can ignore any complexity and adapt anything we want. Why even let users drive cars now? Make their fleet 100% autonomous. Just do it with a mindset of QA and safety!
> Not saying it will be common but some sucker will eventually be killed by this.
People are killed by vehicles every day, and some of those are vehicle failures as well. Saying someone will be killed by it isn't interesting. The question instead is will it fail more often than existing designs, which is something only time will tell. But we've had throttle by wire for a long, long time now, and unintended acceleration issues caused by the system failing are largely unheard of. It's completely possible to engineer a robust electrical system just as it's completely possible to have design faults in the mechanical systems that cause premature wear & failure.
Yikes! Even assuming it all works correctly and safely, who actually wants a steering wheel like that? What's the upside?
The only possible advantage I can think of is that when you start the car up again after having reverse parked, it'll be more obvious what way the wheels are currently pointing, so you can straighten up. But that's such a trivial problem.
Tbh I still think it's a bit of a silly idea. But it's not completely without its merits(the one done by Tesla was though - that was completely entirely pointless).
No, that just seems to be variable speed power assisted steering - so at high speeds it gives you little assistance, at low speeds it gives you loads.
With this it literally changes how much your wheel turns for the same amount of steering wheel/yoke movement. So at high speeds turning the yoke by 90 degrees will turn the wheels maybe 10 degrees so you don't kill yourself, but at low speeds the exact same movement will move the wheels 45 degrees so the car is a lot more manoeuvrable.
Oh I guess it's just that once you elimited the need to ever turn the steering device more than 90 degrees, it doesn't need to be a wheel anymore - same reason why bicycles don't have steering wheels but handlebars.
The yoke is to make visibility of the dashboard better. You can deal with rectangular screens easily then instead of needing to force things into a curve. Not necessarily a good enough reason, but it's not entirely frivolous.
I had a BMW from 2007 that had something called "active steering", where an electric motor in between the steering wheel and the rack-and-pinion sort of "adjusted" the steering, which gave it a variable steering ratio (add according to speed) and also stability control interventions (it would countersteer in a slide even if I didn't turn the wheel).
The stability control part is probably the biggest safety benefit of this steer-by-wire system.
Other manufacturers have had similar levels of electronic steering "augmentation" of one kind or another for a long time (e.g. electronically steered rear wheels). In this kind of thing, the safety case is probably that the system only provides small adjustments so that:
1. The driver can overcome any errors in the electronic augmentation system using the main steering system
2. If the system fails, it can switch off and the driver can still steer the old-fashioned way.
In those systems the steer by wire works in cooperation with a mechanical system. Other cars have had backup mechanical steering systems that engage if the steer by wire fails.
What's new about the Cybertruck is it _only_ has a steer by wire system with no mechanical linkages at all. But this is being misreported as the first steer-by-wire system which doesn't cooperate with a mechanical linkage- Nissan has done that for quite a while in some models.
