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Toyota to begin steer-by-wire production in 2024
- pierrelf 3y agoWonder what car chases will look like in a couple years, car just safely comes to a stop and unlocks doors?
- csours 3y agoThat has happened already in some cases. The cops just have to know the right number to call.
- hedora 3y agoGM's OnStar system has billed this as a feature for about 20 years. The police can get the location of your car and screw with the drivetrain. Somehow, they have enough other severe problems that this is toward the bottom of my top ten list of reasons not to buy GM products.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lettergram 3y agoMore 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…
- dangus 3y agoThe 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.
- mhb 3y agoThere must be a law about how long it takes in a discussion about any aspect of cars before light rail or walkable cities is mentioned.
- dangus 3y agoProbably 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.
- onethought 3y agoI mean if they can lock you in your car and identify you. Do they need to take you to the station? Car could just enter “jail mode”.
- sandworm101 3y agoI 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.
- Aloha 3y agoI 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.
- sandworm101 3y agoThere 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.
- Gravityloss 3y ago48V 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.
- sandworm101 3y ago>> 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.
- projektfu 3y agoAs 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?
- valine 3y agoTesla doesn’t use steer by wire for the yolk. It’s a regular steering wheel that’s just shaped different.
- sugarpile 3y agoMy timeline was: - would have selected wheel if it was an option on order - ~4 days after delivery I was ambivalent to it - ~2 weeks after delivery I preferred the yoke. Better visibility is nice. That said, it would obviously be better if it was drive by wire with variable steering ratio. I’d probably pay some amount of money to switch to that.
- rightbyte 3y agoYou can have variable gear ratio with a gear rack too.
- Grazester 3y agoThe Tesla yoke is awful. Toyota's version is much better since it used a variable ratio steering.
- sandworm101 3y agoOf 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. https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/reinventing-the-wheel-a-brief-history-of-the-square-steering-wheel/ https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/reinventing-the-wheel-a-... Another "good" steering wheel idea that has never become popular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brodie_knob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brodie_knob
- Mistletoe 3y agoAs 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.
- rightbyte 3y agoYe 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.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoIt 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.
- rightbyte 3y agoYe. Like trying to do a hard reboot on a MacBook Air, but at 70 mph and going faster ... Or a hacker setting steeringWheelGain_S16 to 0 and turn full left.
- FFP999 3y agoHere's a little something to give you nightmares then: https://www.edn.com/toyotas-killer-firmware-bad-design-and-its-consequences/ https://www.edn.com/toyotas-killer-firmware-bad-design-and-i... "[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."
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- adhesive_wombat 3y agoUgh, 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).
- dangus 3y agoLook 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.
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoThanks! > 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.
- dangus 3y agoI 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.
- m3kw9 3y agoSafe to say kids born today will no long required to drive
- bluescrn 3y agoThe 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.
- Waterluvian 3y agoI’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.
- CalRobert 3y agoI dunno I like riding my bike around the Netherlands. Haven't driven in months.
- jimnotgym 3y agoI might be the same, if I lived in the Netherlands. British cities are not so nice to cycle in, and a lot of that infrastructure is hard to retro fit
- CalRobert 3y agoYeah they're pretty crap in general. I hope they manage to fix them.
- bluescrn 3y agoHow 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.
- kuon 3y agoI 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.
- leowoo91 3y agoCan't they wire between two motors as the supporting signal? Would that reduce the error significantly?
- kuon 3y agoIt 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.
- syntaxing 3y agoI’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.
- jimnotgym 3y agoSo the advantage is...better look to the interior since there is no steering column? How is that worth it?
- cheschire 3y agoWell, 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.
- sandworm101 3y agoOnly if you arent wearing a seatbelt. If a driver isnt going to bother to buckle up, then their death is on them imho.
- jjav 3y ago> 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.
- hedora 3y agoWell, 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?
- mhb 3y agoWhat's bad about the CAN bus?
- LtWorf 3y agoMy 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. This would be even worse.
- sillystuff 3y agoMy 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.
- tedd4u 3y agoI'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. [1] https://www.edn.com/toyotas-killer-firmware-bad-design-and-its-consequences/ https://www.edn.com/toyotas-killer-firmware-bad-design-and-i... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C
- Grazester 3y agoThe final report found no evidence of a software/electronic issue https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-department-transportation-releases-results-nhtsa-nasa-study-unintended-acceleration#:~:text=Toyota%20has%20recalled%20nearly%20eight,become%20trapped%20by%20floor%20mats https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-department-t....
- somehnguy 3y agoI 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.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoScotty Kilmer enters the chat to diss modern Lexus frontends using too much plastic and say how stupid it is to lack a manual backup.