this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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I read that Tesla being Tesla reinvented a ton of very standard components that other car manufacturers have been using for decades. So there are a lot of weird issues with Teslas that you wouldn't see in a car from an established car maker. It's Tesla ego which makes them think that they can design component better than a whole industry over decades and decades could.
When the Model S came out, I thought it was the height of cool, but I wouldn't consider buying one of their vehicles now. I think the only reason they even kinda did well was that the rest of the car makers were slow to start making EVs that looked decent and were priced reasonably. Now that the big boys are in the game, Tesla has been dropping the price of some of their models to try and stay competitive. But their cars have always had quality assurance issues, and their support isn't decent at all, since they try to blame customers for things outside of their control.
Mostly i agree.
However:
Drive by wire is something that they should have implemented decades ago. It is a ridiculously proven and safe technology. Edit: just not in the Cybertruck. Or GM.
The argument for drive-by-wire in personal automobiles is basically that it's safe enough for airplanes, so it should be safe enough for cars.
I mostly buy that. But there's a glaring omission in the reasoning.
In airplanes, there's a full incident investigation for EVERYTHING that goes wrong. Even near misses. It's an industry that (mostly lol boeing) has a history of prioritizing safety. Even at its worst, the safety standards the airline industry and air transportation engineering are orders magnitude more strict than those of the automotive industry and road engineering.
In real terms, automobile incidents should be taken just as seriously. Even near misses should have reporting and analysis. Crashes should absolutely have full investigations. Nearly all automobile deaths are completely avoidable through better engineering of the road systems and cars, but there is mostly no serious culture of safety among automobiles. We chose carnage and have been so immured by it that we don't even think it's weird. We don't think it's weird that essentially everyone, at least in the US, knows someone who died or was seriously injured in a car accident.
So yeah, we should have drive-by-wire. But it should also include other aspects of that safety culture as part of the deal. "Black box" equivalents, for example, and the accompanying post-accident review process that comes with it. A process that focuses not on establishing liability, but preventing future incidents, because establishing liability is mostly a thought-killer when it comes to safety.
...of course, if we actually took road safety that seriously it'd be devastation to the entire car industrial complex. Because much of that industry is focused on design patterns that, in fact, cannot be done safely or sustainably.
But why have drive by wire? Like you touched on, planes have orders of magnitude more testing, redundancy, and need. Not to mention maintenance
Is there a reason cars need it? Powered steering seems to be pretty effective with a better failure mode