Diamond

So I came across this hywire technology by GM while I was trying to learn further exactly our steering works since mine is having trouble and wanted to know all parts involved.

So like Drive by wire throttle- it is steer by wire.

What a great idea, no clunky steering column, rack etc which saves weight, eliminates powersteering pump losses and coolest of all it is all digital so you can have settings for how firm or soft or what ratio you want for steering.

I understand the arguement if the sensor goes than you cant steer-but clearly that would need work-but this would be truly the most amazing thing in cars in decades in my opinion

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/hy-wire3.htm

turboawd

that would never happen, as the chance of something going wrong could be catastrophic. plus, with steer by wire, you'd lose the feeling and feedback.

skelevirus

didn't mercedes try this already and switch back to conventional steering, i might be wrong..

Diamond

What are you talking about, a computer would control each cm you turned the wheel would send a message to the steering to turn the wheel exactly how much a regular rack/pinion would. The feel comes from learning your car and knowing how much each little turn moves the car-it would have no impact on feel-you wouldnt even know its there.

Same with this for brakes-why are they not doing this? You just have to make sure you have a totally seperate electrical system to back it up if the other fails. But mechanical parts fail all the time so that is not for certain either.

pininfarina

I would think that the physical linkage between steering wheel and front wheels is the best failsafe and can act (although requiring much more effort) independently of complete electrical/vacuum/engine failure.

Also, the direct physical linkage is what materially transfers vibration from the contact patches of the tires to the fingertips at the rim of the wheel. While a large portion of steering feedback is knowing how your car will act (pitch/roll/yaw) for a given steering angle, a large part of the "feeling" is the tiny vibrations from the road surfaces, or the microsecond loosening of the wheel at the static friction limit, etc. I would think those would be virtually impossible to recreate through a purely electrical system.

PS: I enjoyed the article you found on dynamic drive. Had no idea that the car decoupled the antiroll bars for L/R during straight line motoring. Cool.

T.

skelevirus

that makes senes

swajames

If one can fly a plane with no direct connection to any of the physical controls, as is the case today, then there's no question whatsoever that it would be possible to do this in a car. The HyWire approach will undoubtedly be with us at some point soon. It makes a lot of sense as it would make engineering cars for left or right hand drive a much easier and much cheaper proposition. It will require a lot of backup and failsafe systems, but so do brakes and other current components in virtually all modern cars.

As for feedback and feel, you have to look no further than your throttle and your indicator stalk to see that it is perfectly possible to provide tactile feedback without a direct connection. Neither are directly connected to anything, and the feedback in both is artificially generated. When my steering angle sensor on my 550 failed, the indicator stalk flopped about loosely - all of the feedback in it is due to electrical motors. When they got bad info from the SZL module, they were all over the place. It would be perfectly possible to engineer such feedback into the steering system. No doubt the direct connection probably provides more, but the steering feedback in a modern BMW is already far less "connected" than it was on some of the older and less hi-tech BMW models - we're headed down that particular path already. BMW could easily build something like this - and active steering already previews the technology to a certain extent as it can already introduce countersteering or add steering angle additional output for a given input if the car feels it's necessary.

525iEnjoy

I believe our VW R32 has electromechanical steering, it still has a pump and a shaft that goes thew the column but you actually have to go into Vag-com(OB3 settings) and you get to adjust the firmness 1-5.

Diamond

Guys like or not-probably like the throttle by wire guys did not like the idea we are headed toward brakes by wire, steering by wire and eliminate 400 pounds of parts from each car and be much more tunable to ones liking especially the steering.

The way we still have rack and pinion is actually funny that its that archaic and that is the best we have.

Reminds me of Lithium, oldest, most basic drug for bipolar-its a salt! And yet 50 years later its the best one and most effective out there! Hard to believe in those same time frames we have come up with computers and technology that is unreal yet those things still are the same.

pjinca

I agree with swajames - in this day and age we SHOULD be able to have this, however, given the reliability issues reported by members here (including the recent one about his car turn off while driving briefly) can you imagine what would happen if that system isn't STRICTLY tested? The lawsuits?