Drive-by-wire steering: Is it bullshit?

[LandQuail]

I see concept car after concept car, many with sporting pretenses, touting drive-by-wire steering as some sort of revolutionary and apparently inevitable advancement. Other than the claim that it improves packaging, which I find dubious to say the least, does anybody know how this could do anything but **** up the driving experience?

Sure, modern video game force-feedback steering wheels show us that the concept can work with a degree of success, but what's the point?

If the steering sensor clocks out early because you've picked up a field mouse with a penchant for electrical insulation sleeve after parking in the grass outside your favorite deserted rave-party warehouse, or for the several hundred other reasons electronic gizmos tend to pack it in, you're ****ed like Chuck, aren't you?; doomed to die right there in your stupid techno-fetish car when you spear off the road and straight into a decidedly low-tech oak tree?

The bizarre thing is that all these concept cars seem to make use of carbon fiber and weigh less than a Fiat X 1/9 or the like. I've driven an X 1/9, which has a steering wheel positively dripping with succulent unassisted steering feel and about which I can say with some authority that even a little girl in pigtails and magenta-colored longstockings would have no problem whirring about, even when the car is stopped.

If the future of cars is small displacement, efficient engines and lightweight chassis, why give a steering mechanism that's a miniaturized copy of a bloody supertanker's?

To this Quail, it reeks of the same sort of 'just because we can' gooseshit thinking that brought us the motorized tie rack and battery-powered wine bottle de-corker.

(Think I'm making the mechanized wine opener up? Sorry, sunshine: Oster® Appliances - Products — (party on, indeed)).

Just to prove that I'm no technophobe, I've recently fitted a laser sight to my trusty home defense chainsaw.
Discuss.

[IBrake4Rainbows]

Everything else has become electronic - why not the steering?

Well, for starters, you can't move the car when it has a flat battery.

if you run out of fuel, the car becomes undriveable.

It's easier wiring a circuit board then having to have to engineer more moving parts for a car. especially when you can sell the circuit board for the same price

[clutch-monkey]

i actually no longer use any form of power assisted steering, let alone drive-by-wire.
people may complain that turning requires more effort without power steering (fatasses :P ) but i just find it simpler and more accurate, and in the end, just more fun

[IBrake4Rainbows]

werd to your large mother, monkey.

driving my unassisted 3 series = easy to place, greater feedback, an interesting drive.

Driving my Assisted volvo = zzzzzzzzz.

quite how that would be improved by unassisted steering is another matter.

[LandQuail]

I never see tuning catalogs offering unassisted racks for modern cars? I'd take one for my Subaru in a heartbeat, if only to wail on my triceps.

[drakkie]

If your power steering system cuts out while taking a turn, you are f**ked as well. One of my dad's colleagues 1 week old FIAT Croma crashed over a fountain in my town when it suddenly stopped working in my town's tiny center.. Just goes to show you can never rely on technology, be aware of the unexpected.

Probably I am one of the very few here to have driven a steer-by-wire car (a concept People Mover of which a fully automated version drove on the Floriade exhibition). It is a feeling you take very short to get used to. It is basically the same as when you start driving a unfamiliar car. It steers very precise, quick and sharp however you loose a slight bit of the "feeling" in the wheel. In many modern cars you don't have a feeling like in older cars anyway. Especially not in the very comfortable French machines.

The main advantage is that of the packaging, as mentioned before. In the cramped engine bays of modern vehicles, there is very little room to put the steering axis and components. You can imagine, it is impossible to make it run straight through the engine Then off course it is very easy to tune it, to every driver's likes.

Usually the basic electronic components never fail. The problem is the sensors. Because of the lack of skill of many mechanics nowadays the first thing they replace is the base component, without looking for the problem elsewhere (according to complaining importers in the latest issue of AMT magazine). To make those components fail-proof is possible, however costly. In a few years time it should be possible, developments go incredibly fast nowadays.

[Turbo.Jenkens]

Originally Posted by LandQuail

I've recently fitted a laser sight to my trusty home defense chainsaw.

Zombie infestation? I've had much luck taking out their knee caps with 00 buck, then tossing a molotov cocktail.

Don't worry too much about drive-by-wire. The first time a blown fuse causes a freeway pileup the concept will be abandoned. Then again, worry about drive-by-wire.

[ruim20]

I guess it's something the industry must have, thoose who buy cars and know nothing about them need new "toys" that's why the car makers keep making "stuff" up to put inside the cars.

[drakkie]

Originally Posted by ruim20

I guess it's something the industry must have, thoose who buy cars and know nothing about them need new "toys" that's why the car makers keep making "stuff" up to put inside the cars.

Off course they do. With recent electronic advancements lots of money can be generated in extra sales, by a tiny investment.

[Matra et Alpine]

FWD, fat tyres, lots of power you NEED power steering
"Feel" is dependant on how good a design the assitance is.
Modern electronic assistance can be excellent and VERY compact.
As stated the risk of going to direct electric rather than just assisted is the failure mode and the sensor/control loop reliability.
It's VERY EASY to make it as reliable as the current mechanical systems.
Just you'd have to use military spec modules and they are currently expensive. BUT price will come down as it has in everything else. It used to cost $5000 for a CPU whcih coudl be used in a "dirty" electrical environment. Now every $200 ECU has one inside

[drakkie]

Originally Posted by Matra et Alpine

BUT price will come down as it has in everything else. It used to cost $5000 for a CPU whcih coudl be used in a "dirty" electrical environment. Now every $200 ECU has one inside

Just wondering though now I read your post. Is it possible to create a electrical circuit so close to the engine, without having it overheat ? In my recent college's i've been hearing a lot of EMS/ECU chips overheating and having a special connection to the engine's cooling system. It'd surely be a nightmare to engineer that part of the system to be reliable even with a very hot engine. Hmm.. quite an interesting thought, I will definitely go and ask the teacher tomorrow !!!

[MidNiteRide89]

Originally Posted by LandQuail

doomed to die right there in your stupid techno-fetish car when you spear off the road and straight into a decidedly low-tech oak tree?

ROTF! Quote of the month right there!

Hmmm.... they use fly-by-wire in military aircraft, so I would say that the technology is solid, but I have to agree that the driving aspect would become horribly artificial.

Give me unassisted rack & pinion and a proper clutch thanks! You may go faster, but I'll be having more fun...

[Matra et Alpine]

Originally Posted by drakkie

Just wondering though now I read your post. Is it possible to create a electrical circuit so close to the engine, without having it overheat ?

Depends
Type of circuit components. Free air circulation, Forced air circulation. Access to cold air.
But generally manufacturers try to keep electronics as far away from engine as possible. So ECUs aren't besides engines.

In my recent college's i've been hearing a lot of EMS/ECU chips overheating and having a special connection to the engine's cooling system.

Interesting WOuld wonder about that though as the water is running at 100- degrees !
Never heard of it.
And it's over-engineering, pipe work to cold air and fan woudl be much more effective ... or do what everyone does and mount the electronics AWAY from the engine heat

Bigger concern with electrics is the eletrical noise and protecting it from line carried spikes and ether transmissions !!!

[MadMax13]

Yes, it is, all this electronic assisted shit is exactly that, SHIT...

[kingofthering]

Originally Posted by MadMax13

Yes, it is, all this electronic assisted shit is exactly that, SHIT...

...and yet you drive a Saturn with electronic fuel injection and power steering...the irony.