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When I first got my Tesla, the “gas” pedal was annoyingly further forward than the brake pedal. As “full self driving” progressed I drive “manually” increasingl

When I first got my Tesla, the “gas” pedal was annoyingly further forward than the brake pedal. As “full self driving” progressed I drive “manually” increasingly less often and now what once annoyed me is convenient, I can easily rest my foot there near the gas pedal without accidentally pressing it, at the ready to hit the brake pedal if needed which is located next to where my foot sits. It took several years before the design started to make sense and grew on me. When your car drives more and more autonomously having manual controls that can accidentally be activated start to make less sense, we’re not there yet, but someday there will likely be no steering wheel at all and people will react the same way they are now.

grp000 5y ago
In a commodity device, I think that would make sense. A steering wheel is life critical. No system is ever fault proof, and in the case of failure, you'll definitely want a backup here, unlike in a commodity good or service where a failure doesn't matter that much.
- buck4roo 5y ago
  Isn't steering drive-by-wire here? Failure is not an option... I hope.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    Pretty sure it's just a conventional rack-and-pinion with a steering wheel at the end of a collapsible column physically connected to the pinion, like almost every other car. There's just an electric power assist that can also drive the rack without involving the driver. https://www.ebay.com/itm/143911509282 https://www.ebay.com/itm/143911509282
    - grp000 5y ago
      They bring up a good point though. Society has decided that conventional steering systems are within defined failure bounds, assuming a perfectly safe driver of course. So to remove the steering wheel from a Tesla, FSD must be as fault tolerant as steering wheel failure limitations, plus some driver competence metric. Of course that also doesn't take into account the thorny issue of the intersection of safe actions on Tesla FSD actions to human driver actions. FSD has a long way to go.

grp000 5y ago

In a commodity device, I think that would make sense. A steering wheel is life critical. No system is ever fault proof, and in the case of failure, you'll definitely want a backup here, unlike in a commodity good or service where a failure doesn't matter that much.

buck4roo 5y ago
Isn't steering drive-by-wire here? Failure is not an option... I hope.
- pengaru 5y ago
  Pretty sure it's just a conventional rack-and-pinion with a steering wheel at the end of a collapsible column physically connected to the pinion, like almost every other car. There's just an electric power assist that can also drive the rack without involving the driver. https://www.ebay.com/itm/143911509282 https://www.ebay.com/itm/143911509282
  - grp000 5y ago
    They bring up a good point though. Society has decided that conventional steering systems are within defined failure bounds, assuming a perfectly safe driver of course. So to remove the steering wheel from a Tesla, FSD must be as fault tolerant as steering wheel failure limitations, plus some driver competence metric. Of course that also doesn't take into account the thorny issue of the intersection of safe actions on Tesla FSD actions to human driver actions. FSD has a long way to go.