Tesla axes right-hand drive Models S and X, offers customers refunds
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I'm not aware of any fully steer-by-wire cars on the road-legal market.
The 2014 Infiniti Q50 was steer-by-wire most of the time, but still had a conventional steering column with spring-loaded clutches that would mechanically engage it if the SBW failed. It was not well liked, and Infiniti replaced it with conventional power steering.
Some modern luxury cars (eg. Audi RS5) have an electric variable-ratio gearbox in the steering system, but there's still a mechanical column, and the gearbox locks at a fixed ratio (albeit not always at the expected orientation) so that you can still steer the car if the electrics fail.
The Mazda Ryuga, Saab Prometheus, and GM Hy-Wire all used steer-by-wire, but those were all testbeds and tech demonstrators; none made it to market.
Tesla cars all have electric power steering acting with a conventional mechanical steering column. Some of them are variable-ratio, but still mechanically linked.
A fully steer-by-wire system is possible in principle, and is possible under existing regulations. It's just difficult and expensive to cover all the possible edge cases of weird failures in a way that satisfies those regulations, and nobody has yet built one that feels as good as a mechanical linkage. But it's probably coming, eventually.
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No clutch that I am aware of, a shaft connects the steering wheel to the steering rack/gear. There is an attached or integral stepper gear motor which provides variable assist based on a rotary sensor in the column, there is often a force sensor as well. These are legislated design parameters in most countries.
Edit: See MMarsh’s excellent comment about the Infinite system.
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Yeah, I don't get it. This was an overly angry response from someone interacting with the community reading YOUR articles. I still read Gitlin's articles, I just don't understand the need for excessive saltiness. Even if someone is dead wrong, you don't need to be a dick about it.
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OrangeCream
Ars Legatus Legionis
If your chassis has two holes in the firewall you only need one.
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Which was exactly what I indicated, except I wasn’t aware that Infiniti was the only ones to do it.
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No worries, I was unaware of the Infinite clutch system. Lots of good info in the comments today!
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It's pretty simple, really. QC costs money; Tesla is running out of money; so they're having QC issues. Because money.
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A bank note weighs about a gram, 454 grams to the pound... It's a little less than a million bucks, if it's ones.
Seems pretty generous.
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The real question is why they didn't just stop taking orders and finish off production for the remaining orders before trashing the existing equipment to produce these cars? If there is not a high volume demand for these cars that shouldn't be a hard thing to do.
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"Rumors" that could have been dispelled if any of you had gone to google and typed in "Tesla model S steering column"
Edit -
Sorry, saw the next line and it is clear this was sarcasm. My sarcasm sensor was evidently broken this morning.
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No, there are not. The only SBW car I can even think of was the Q60 and it had a column for redundancy.
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I last worked in Automotive sensing 3 years ago (primarily European manufacturers), but at that point there was no real interest in trying to to do the really critical stuff (brakes, steering) by wire alone as you would not meet the safety requirements. Yes you might not feel the linkage (eg. I worked on a brake by wire that used an actuator to physically drive the pedal down when you activated the sensor, but if it failed, your foot would still press through), but it was there. Yes the parts have redundant sensing systems and partially redundant mechanics (e.g springs), and there are a wide range of safety features, but things still go wrong sometimes. When did you last hear of a BMW driving under a truck and killing its owner when it wasn't the owners fault?
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“Running out of money” is an odd way of writing “making a couple billion in profits per quarter”.
They’re running out of customers on the S and X, which is a problem, but running out of cash isn’t imminent.
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Taking orders for a product that will never be delivered is a time-honored Tesla tradition!
They're just branching out into taking orders products that they could deliver, but won't. Because they don't feel like it.
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Tesla: "Upon further reflection, we have deduced that mirrors are not, in fact, miracles"
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Damn, I forgot to post the disclosure that this article was sponsored by Columns R Us.
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As I learnt from my time on the ISO audit circuit, a consistent fault level would be a lot more acceptable!
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Let me know when a brand new model X is discounted by 50% and I'll buy one, drive it until something really bad happens and then move all the valuable batteries and motors into a DIY project
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I think I’ve only ever seen a handful of Model X‘s on the road outside of Central London - the X’s in London were mostly Uber or private hire cars. It’s a big thing for British roads and eye-wateringly expensive too. The S seems to have died a gentle death since the 3/Y has been available too.
We have several neighbors that have traded their S’s in for 3’s or Y‘s in the last couple of years - the 3 being the majority - generally they loved their S, but it was too much car and not updated enough and the 3 is a real sweet spot apparently.
This is no huge surprise, both need a serous refresh and sales here have declined - I suspect that it makes no sense at all to continue to invest in RHD tooling and whatnot.
We have several neighbors that have traded their S’s in for 3’s or Y‘s in the last couple of years - the 3 being the majority - generally they loved their S, but it was too much car and not updated enough and the 3 is a real sweet spot apparently.
This is no huge surprise, both need a serous refresh and sales here have declined - I suspect that it makes no sense at all to continue to invest in RHD tooling and whatnot.
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Statistical
Ars Legatus Legionis
In what world is Tesla running out of money? It has $16B cash in the bank. In the past 3 years it has paid down $32B in debt. It has free cashflow of >$7B annually. It is down to $3B in longterm debt from a peak of $60B so should be debt free when the last tranche of loans come due in 2024.
Tesla is in absolutely great financial shape. I get the Elon Musk is a raging narcissist asshole and as a result people like to bash Tesla but the numbers don't lie. The only financial problems Tesla has right now is building enough Scrouge McDuck style money vaults fast enough to hold the billions in profits that keep pouring in each quarter.
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I struggle to imagine that someone who has a custom-ordered Model S or Model X will be satisfied with a lightly discounted Model 3 or Model Y instead, the S and X are in the luxury segment (however competitive you judge them to be in that segment is by and by), the 3 and Y are at best in the premium segment - and arguably only by price, I’ve honestly seen affordable cars better appointed than those vehicles.
It’s like if Apple cancelled your order for a Mac Pro and offered 10% off an iMac instead.
I’m not really buying the “these cars are less appealing than the 3 & Y in these territories due to size” thing either. Japan maybe, but plenty of people in the UK for example are cruising around in huge SUVs regardless of how inappropriate for the roads they are. If they were struggling to sell many Model Xs in the UK it would have to be something else that’s wrong with it.
It’s like if Apple cancelled your order for a Mac Pro and offered 10% off an iMac instead.
I’m not really buying the “these cars are less appealing than the 3 & Y in these territories due to size” thing either. Japan maybe, but plenty of people in the UK for example are cruising around in huge SUVs regardless of how inappropriate for the roads they are. If they were struggling to sell many Model Xs in the UK it would have to be something else that’s wrong with it.
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I know three Model Y drivers, two of them wanted a 3 but the lead times were horrendous so they opted for Ys instead. The third always wanted a Y.
It's gerrymandering like this that results it "Tesla Y is the best selling car ever" crap.
https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/ma...-y-becomes-europe-s-best-selling-car-in-march
It's gerrymandering like this that results it "Tesla Y is the best selling car ever" crap.
https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/ma...-y-becomes-europe-s-best-selling-car-in-march
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you don't want to see the orifice Musk pulls his market research out.
Although you'll be relieved to know he goes into the market research cubicle protected by two bodyguards ...
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They're not production vehicles, but there have been a couple at the 24 Hours of Nurburgring (presumably to test/prove the technology for future use) - a Porsche Cayman GT4 in 2020 and a Mercedes-AMG GT3 in 2021.
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Steering is an ASIL D system. That's the highest level of "Functional Safety" requirement you'll find in ISO 26262, and the second-highest you'll find anywhere.
Higher levels do exist in aerospace (DAL-A) and industry (SIL-4), eg. an "if this thing fails, the airplane will break up in flight" or "if this thing fails, toxic gas will kill everyone within a mile" scenario.
Certifying mechanical systems to the equivalent of ASIL D (which is an electronics standard, not a mechanical one) is complex and expensive. Certifying electronic ones to ASIL D is very complex and very expensive. Add software to the mix and you're into horrifically complex and obscenely expensive.
Essentially, to prove a system to ASIL D, you need to enumerate every possible way in which any aspect of the thing can fail. For every one of those scenarios, you need to work down the entire fault tree to determine the likely consequences. Then you need to calculate the individual probabilities for every one of those failures, and the probabilities for multiple-failure scenarios that compound to make a bigger failure, and so on.
Then, when (not if) your resulting number shows the system to be too risky, you need to go back and redesign the whole thing to add redundancy, allow for "try-catch" scenarios in both hardware and software for every possible failure, and recalculate all the probabilities.
Rinse and repeat until you've proven that your design is safe enough to use. It's certainly doable, but it's tedious and very expensive.
Hence Infiniti's spring-loaded clutches. When the SBW craps its pants, it doesn't have to self-repair and heal its failure within milliseconds; it can just say "oops" and release a relay and then everything falls back to the way it worked in 1947 with shafts and U-joints. Most potential buyers hated the SBW anyway, so all that effort was wasted.
Proving a totally new system to ASIL D without such mechanical fail-safes is a very expensive engineering effort, and a company will only undertake such a thing if it sees the potential for very real revenue and profit improvements.
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W
Wait...how do you open the glove box? Does it not have a handle? I thought they just used the tablet to lock/unlock it, not open/close?
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But... is it a Greek column? a Roman Column?Damn, I forgot to post the disclosure that this article was sponsored by Columns R Us.
a fifth column???
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Statistical
Ars Legatus Legionis
Nobody cares about assembly. The cars are essentially the same in style and functionality to ones seven years old. Competition has heated up especially at the high end of the price range. As a Model S owner I would say the Model S is terribly vulnerable. There are some unique things about the X but the Model S is just a car. There are now lots of expensive nice BEV cars. Luckily for Tesla the Model Y is the big money maker and it is well positioned but they really need to give buyers a reason to buy a Model S/X.
I will probably not buy another Tesla but even if I were it would be a Model 3. The price gulf between a maxed out Model 3 and entry level Model S is huge and very hard to justify.
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Tesla may need a separate chassis design because they're terrible at understanding the concept of a platform. But for most other automakers you just need a 2nd set of holes (that are filled with rubber plugs if not used), a different dash with the controls on the correct side, and a different wiring harness with longer wires because now you need to reach the other side. It's not very difficult actually.
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Ah, revenue, profit, all that's nice or whatever, but what if the three-sigma hardest-core fans think it's Really Cool? Is that sufficient motivation?
/s
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[1] Past behavior is not indicative of future behavior, and may be subject to previously un-announced changes. and/or the whims of the person in charge.
[2] Mentioning Musk makes [1] a bit redundant.
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