I have worked on designing small machinery, 3d printers and cnc routers, and on some axis, we use two motors in sync for movement. It is very reliable until it is not, we had times were programming errors or driver failure would unsync the two motors, moving the axis into a triangle. It is very rare like once every 1000 hours, but it does happen. For our bigger machine, were this would cost a lot and could be dangerous, we decided to go old school with full mechanical coupling and bigger motor, we also added second endstops being the optical ones with direct wiring of the general machine switch. The mechanical coupling never failed.
I know it is not really the same type of machine and design, but it still makes me wary that my steering wheel will turn suddenly because of any unforseen reason.
I’m genuinely surprised this is the case, sounds like either budget constraint or bad engineering. Been a MechE for about a decade and worked on a span of critical applications. Either an off the shelf fully package motor from Parker or Schneider electric or a custom setup with a motor, high precision quadrature with harmonic drive run for years. Of course you need some safety code like encoder checks (baked into the off the shelf ones) but the machines I worked on run for years and throughput in the thousands without anything failing. Also worked on industrial gantries. We’ve built delta packaging robots with sub second throughput and those motors never go out of sync after commissioning.
I am not sure as I was a software engineer on those and it was a few years ago. I would like to say cost constraint but I do not really know. But the mechanical engineers seemed way more confident with the single motor.
It really depends on the motor (stepper, closed loop BLDC...). It can help in some configuration but with bigger motors, there is a lot of inductance and EMI and it is very hard to drive them from the same wires. You usually have one supply and one driver per motor. As least that was my understanding from my software job point of view.
Ugh, the thing I like least about my new (to me) car is the power steering is so light and the wheel itself so small that it feels fake, even on the highest steering force setting. I love my old big steering wheel that feels like it's part of a car, not an Xbox. It's still power steering but you have to actually mean to turn the wheel to do so. You can even see the chunky steel steering column linkage disappear into the bulkhead.
It's been years and I still hate nearly everything about the newer car (but my wife loves it, which I guess was the actual design intent - mostly the only thing we agree on is that the touchscreen is dangerous dogshit, and the speed limit recognition is a deathtrap when it downshifts in flowing traffic at 50 because it saw a 30 sign on a sideroad).
Look into a Mazda for your next car. I find that they tune their steering more on the heavy/connected side. I’m not sure if that’s still the case but they’re definitely still a brand with attention to detail to the driver experience.
They even disable the touch screen while the car is moving. They seem to “get it” if you ask me. They’re not blindly following trends like throwing climate controls into the screen.
Urgh, yes! I wouldn't mind so much if you could do it from the steering wheel controls. It already does a limited subset of phone, media and navigation that way, adding climate, which is only a few actions anyway, seems like it would fit right in to the UI there.
I'm less comfortable with buttons on steering wheel. I'm left handed and I drive with that hand, leaving my right hand free to change gears or handle controls, which I do by feel, by knowing where each one is. Knobs that you can turn and push, and provide feedback are great for that.
I'm also left handed, but in the UK, that means that's the hand you have to take off the wheel to faff about in the centre console.
I'd still rather everything was a physical control, but if they have to remove every traditional control, the least they can do is provide access to that function though the dashboard interface, which they already do for several functions. Just not that one.
I think the only consolation is that most cars that have these controls moved to the screen can just use voice controls or driver profiles to “set it and forget it.”
I feel like a lot of people who have the basic “fan and blue/red” climate controls assume that people in Teslas are swiping all over the place while they drive to change climate settings, but in reality you step in and your driver profile loads your settings and you probably never have to touch the climate control.
Then again I swear that everyone I know who owns fancier cars than me refuses to hit the “auto” button and use the feature they paid for.
Why does a control have to be on a screen to support voice commands? Most buttons and knobs are just digital inputs into the same infotainment system in current cars. If the knob or slider is stateful, there are still mechanized versions that can be controlled by software. I had a Kenwood receiver in the 90s that would mechanically turn the knob when I adjusted the volume from the remote and I know Yamaha had a similar feature around the same time. Studio mixing boards (for sound and light) have had software controlled sliders for decades as well. If a $200 stereo can include a servo coupled volume knob, a $30k+ car should have no issue.
My Kia has awful rear control where you push a physical button to bring up an ok screen interface that doesn’t react to any physical buttons. Other models have the same physical interface (same buttons, same screen), but allow adjusting the on screen settings with physical buttons. I usually have a lot of kids in the back, and find having to muck with an awful on screen interface (not because it’s on screen, but because they require multiple steps to do things I should just be able to tap on) to be a safety issue.
That should work but I have never had the voice control correctly understand a command. Ever. I have tried repeatedly. I don't think I sound that wierd, but maybe I do. More likely I think it's just yet more terrible Volvo software LARPing as a car. All the software is completely pointless anyway because the UI is such shit that I just use a phone in a nice solid cradle anyway. Just like I do in the old car.
I do change the climate controls quite a bit, but this is the UK where you're only ever 34 seconds from the windows steaming up and the temperature changing all the time. Maybe somewhere with a consistent climate it's easier.
According to any speech recognition software that has ever existed, I should be unable to interact with other people in person, because my speech is completely indistinguishable from random noise, it seems.
Like in winter if you go for a short trip you have winter jacket and you cook if the heating is too strong, but if you're going for a longer trip then you want your jacket off for comfort and you need an higher temperature :)
That’s where on most modern cars with these touchscreen systems you can just hit the voice control button on the steering wheel and say something like “set the temperature to XYZ.”
I would still prefer some climate control buttons but I’m not sure their absence would be a dealbreaker for me depending on the car.
My ideal climate control system: a nob for hot/cold (no thermostat) a button for the defrost, and a button to inhibit air conditioning. Everything else is fluff.
I’m not sure why that’s ideal when we can imagine things like “the car knows if you feel too hot or not” or “the car knows if the windows are frosted up.”
To me, the ideal “Jetsons” climate control system never needs to be interacted with.
> They even disable the touch screen while the car is moving.
That is a JDM "feature" that can be defeated with a $5 part in case you want do something dangerous like ask your passenger to adjust the GPS navigation while on the move.
> They’re not blindly following trends like throwing climate controls into the screen.
I agree, buttons and dials are so much easier to use safely, especially with muscle memory.
Hah, I really like how light the steering feels on my car, but I only started to drive recently. It is certainly more pleasurable to drive than the car from the driving school.
As for touchscreen, although the car has one, I can control music and volume through physical buttons on the wheel, and there is a panel with physical buttons for AC/heating.
I always feel a bit confused when people complain about new cars, my experience has been great.
As someone that lived through the blue screen of death era, this makes me very nervous. It’s funny how Windows 98, etc. made me question the reliability of software for the rest of my life. I don’t even think that’s a bad thing.
Ye it is a bad idea. I mean, I've worked in the auto industry as a ECU programmer and multiple times during uncommitted code development I made self acceleration bugs. It is really easy to mess up.
And steering going full left kills you in ways the brakes and gas can't.
After I left I heard that they removed the key as kill switch too for some stupid reason.
It makes for an easy horror movie plot: car gets hacked or a sensor gets confused, and kills the occupants who can't override the Airbus-like automation lacking "direct law" or anything resembling a manual backup.
"[The expert witness concluded that] Toyota’s electronic throttle control system (ETCS) source code is of unreasonable quality. Toyota’s source code is defective and contains bugs, including bugs that can cause unintended acceleration (UA)."
There are details in the article. It's horrifying stuff. My personal favorite aspect: "The Camry ETCS code was found to have 11,000 global variables."
Some level of scepticism is certainly warranted. OTOH it is possible to create reliable safety critical software, it's just very time consuming and expensive. For instance, many (most?) modern passenger aircraft are fly by wire, with no mechanical nor hydraulical connection between the cockpit controls and the flight control surfaces.
I think this will the the way of electric brakes, the type with solenoids instead of brake fluid: interesting and with some possible advantages but needlessly complex. Some things, like brakes, shock absorbers and tires, are so simple that the advantages of electrification dont outweigh the increased costs and possible downsides. Remember when cars were going to switch to 48v electrical systems? That was for electronic braking and air conditioning. Even tesla has since retained the 12v/13.9v voltage.
I suspect the reason that Tesla has retained a 12v system is because the automotive grade parts largely dont exist at anything other than 12v. Even when the big three were making stuff for the military with a 24v system, it was a hybrid 24v/12v system.
There are also safety concerns. Any emergency responder cutting into a crashed car isnt going to be killed by 12v, nor are sparks from shorts likely to start fires before a fuse blows.
48V was developed for that purpose. For example stage microphones can be powered by 48 V phantom power. Say if there are broken cables or rain, it's not nice to be shocked but it's not dangerous.
Many mild hybrid cars use a 48V system for the motor. It's probably going to get more common over time.
>> Many mild hybrid cars use a 48V system for the motor.
Except they have a 12v solenoid to engage/disengage the drive voltage in the event of a crash, which is why if you leave your lights on you might need a 12v "jump" even if the drive battery is fully charged.
Hmm does 48V really need to be disconnected? What's the reasoning?
Honest question: is there something else than path dependence preventing just switching everything in a car from 12V to 48V? Even interior lighting?
Ie is there some place where 12V is actually significantly better for physics reasons?
Hasn't this "lower DC voltage is safe" nonsense from the Edison days been thoroughly debunked yet?
The safety differences between 12V and 24V are largely trivial. Mostly comes down to wire sizing as 24V can use smaller wires to carry the same power, which some may argue is safer than 12V as the current is halved (but I wouldn't)
Modern chemistry batteries are VERY good at providing their stored charge instantaneously across their terminals. Lookup videos of someone dropping a wrench on a car battery for a real life example (spoilers: the wrench welds itself to the terminals immediately and spectacularly.)
Humans, as big bags of ferrous liquids, literally have only our skins to help increase our impedance against electrocution when touching ANY metal in series with a battery short. A measley 100 _milli_ amps is enough to stop our hearts. Let's not pretend DC batteries are safe and treat 12V and 24V batteries with the same caution they deserve.
I would hope emergency responders are trained against electrocution risks regardless, as fuses can be bypassed when crushed metal is involved near battery compartments in any crash.
As for fire concerns it's more about battery chemistry than voltage. Lithium ion being more combustible than lead acid, nickel cadmium.
The whole wrench thing has happened to me.
It was on the bigger 12 volts marine/industrial batteries connected in parallel series for 24 volts to start a Detroit Diesel 71 series engine.
There was a nice arce and the end of the wrench melted.
24v is only a little more dangerous than 12v, but so is 48v only a little more than 24v, and 110v only slightly more than 48v. One has to draw a line somewhere. 12v barely penetrates dry skin, and won't do anything across even a cotton shirt. If that is enough for powered windows, why change what isn't broken.
As for first responder training, assume they have none. The first person at a scene will be some rando person reaching in to pull a kid out of a burning car, or it is that kid themselves climbing out of the wreckage.
Since the resistance of human skin is fairly constant (1k-10k ohm without open wounds, limited persperation), increasing voltage increases power absorbed across your body and thus the danger exponentially by a factor of 2: P=V^2/R
This specialness causes no end of supply-chain problems often requiring vertical integration of items that might be low volume, complex, and far afield from the main b2c products.
I'll probably wait and see on this. Toyota's reputation for software in these automation systems is poor, after poorly developed and tested electronic throttle controls resulted in deaths and recalls. The software suffered from stack overflow and used recursion (a no-no in any embedded software, especially life- or mission-critical). Also found in analysis: buffer overflow, unsafe casting, race conditions. The code was found to have 11,000 global variables. Toyota had nominally adopted MISRA-C [2] coding guidelines, but the source code had 80,000+ violations.
Well, in a frontal collision you're basically sitting in front of a battering ram pointed at your chest. Removing that might contribute to a reduction in driver deaths in frontal collisions, even though it doesn't seem like a motivator.
> Well, in a frontal collision you're basically sitting in front of a battering ram pointed at your chest.
Steering columns collapse on impact (takes very litte force) and this has been the case since.. I don't know, but a very long time. If you drive a car from the 50s or 60s you probably need to worry about this.
Well, there's one small victory hidden in the article:
> Over-the-air software updates would be possible for the steering system. However, such remote updates are not currently allowed by legislation.
Based on the wording, I wonder if that means "it is illegal for the steering system to have a network connection" or if it means "it's possible to OTA update the steering system, but it would be illegal for an OTA update to do so".
After all, as the old adage goes: "If you ban software updates, then only criminals will be able to update software." Similarly: "Patches don't kill people. Catastrophic boot loops at speed do.", or: "You can pry my auto-updating steering wheel out of my cold dead hands".
Has anyone here ever owned a car that didn't have at least one safety recall due to the CAM bus protocol being terrible? Are they running steering over CAM or some bespoke (and probably somehow worse) thing?
The billionaire class will own all the self-driving EVs and sell rides to the diminishing remnants of the middle class.
The growing masses of 'the poor' (formerly 'the working class') will have no transport, no jobs, and no hope. What wasn't taken from them by automation and AI will be taken by mostly-futile attempts to fix the climate.
I’m quite excited for a potential de-emphasis of the automobile combined with sharing so that we don’t have this ridiculous waste of prime space everywhere. The parking lot, as a concept, is grotesque.
How long does a bike last in the Netherlands before it gets stolen?
These days (in the UK) the thieves have battery-powered angle grinders to defeat locks. A fancy new bike, especially a costly e-bike, won't last long in many places. And nobody is going to confront a thief armed with an angle grinder.
A battered old bike may last longer, but you still often see the carcasses of bike frames locked to railings where wheels and other parts have been stolen, and the rest of the bike was then abandoned. It certainly doesn't encourage the adoption of cycling, even by those who can cope with the hills, weather, and traffic.
Not sure, but bikes remain a popular item here so apparently it's not stopping people. I haven't had a bike stolen, though most of my bikes are not especially fancy (I have a Brompton which is a bit pricier but, being a folding bike, I just take it with me instead of locking it outside).
I could buy a new electric cargo bike every year for the amount I spent on my car when I had one.
Who can afford to live in a city (the only place you can really have most of that)? And of those who can afford to, do they want to, given rising crime and unrest.
Cities just to have an obvious purpose, but can successful cities be sustained in an era where so much retail has moved online, and jobs are being automated or done remotely, and the extreme costs of living or doing business in a city centre are getting harder to justify.
We can always hope that humans will extinguish themselves in the near future, before that ever comes to pass.
While it may be tragic to everyone involved, it does warm the heart to think that a cataclysm will be fair in that it will exterminate poor and billionaire alike.
My hope is that kids born today don’t have to drive to take care of their basic needs.
A number of countries transitioned from car-dependent to increasing their cycling and transit usage and I’m hoping America jumps aboard that train (pun intended).
As I understand it, Tesla also introduced a flight-yoke-style steering column. For people who own one, how is it working out and do you miss the wheel?
Of course its horrible. Non-round steering wheels have been tried in concept cars since the 60s, and in more than a few production cars. They were all flops. Its up there will gullwing doors and automatic seatbelts: everyone knows they are possible, but clearly not wanted by the market. Despite this, every few years some designer tries again, most likely just after the last designer to pitch the idea retires.
I used to drive a cargo van at work that had a knob installed. I think it was the prolonged version of Renault Master, or something similar. It was actually great to have in that vehicle. The steering wheel was a lot more horizontal than in a normal car and much bigger. You wouldn’t use the knob at speed, but it was pretty indispensable when manoeuvring in tight places.
They are great, but only in vehicles with little "road feel". Road feel is forces experienced by the tires being transmitted up through the steering system. Say you hit a pothole, on a forklift you won't feel the wheel move. In a road car the steering while might jump a couple inches. If your arm/hand gets between the knob and something solid, that pothole just broke your thumb. Note that vehicles with brodie knobs rarely have solid arm rests.
Similarly, you can always spot an Auzzi because they steer while keeping thumbs outside of the steering wheel. In a country with a greater offroad tradition, kids are taught to keep thumbs outside the wheel in case it jumps.
They were not a requirement but a cheaper alternative to providing then-expensive airbags for automatic crash restraints. They are still a totally possible thing today. Nobody wants them.
My car's software has always had a problem where the power steering turns off suddenly while driving, occasionally. It then comes back by itself after 2-3 days. Mechanics just said there was no physical fault that they could fix, so I had to live with it until I had that car.
It was dangerous but I could still steer, and I'd feel when the pump was going off.
My Toyota with electric power steering had this seemingly random cutting out issue for a few months before I figured out that the voltage regulator in the alternator was failing. Replacing the alternator fixed the power steering.
Hopefully drive by wire steering will be more robust, or it will be a death trap.
More like, you get in your car for work. Facial recognition has mistaken you for someone shop lifting at a cashless, humanness convenient store (where you walk out and are charged).
So your car locks you in and drives you to the nearest police station. You pull up and a robot comes to the window, doors unlock, it tells you to step out with your hands up.
A drone then pops out and circles you three times, scanning for weapons using x-rays if some kind.
After that the robot tells you to follow and you walk into the police station.
In the police station, the robot brings you to a room. You sit. Robot leaves and door locks behind. Then a screen pops up out of the table and you see a remote meeting with a corrections officer…
The hilarious part about this is that even a sci-fi scenario can’t even imagine walkable or transit-oriented city development. I guess even in the automated robot future we’re still using cars for some reason.
You’d think that our robot AI overlords would calculate how wasteful personal vehicle infrastructure is and how un-optimized they are for human health and well-being, lowering the efficiency of the enslaved populace, and make corrections.
Probably because it’s an issue that’s reaching a boiling point among those in the know.
The present state of North American city design explains so much about what is wrong with North America.
Health and obesity, housing costs, pollution and emissions, isolation versus community, human safety and premature injury/death…the list goes on. It’s a politically deep topic.
I don’t want OTA updates for anything on my vehicle, ever. It should remain a reliable appliance by default, auto-updates destroy that predictability.
I would like to be able to update at my leisure via USB drive though. My current vehicle makes you go to a dealer to update anything because the software is locked behind a paywall. As such it’s never seen any sort of update in the last 10 years.
I know it is not really the same type of machine and design, but it still makes me wary that my steering wheel will turn suddenly because of any unforseen reason.