Nissan Steer-by-wire Options

[richee3]

First things first, a link to click. Clicky!

Spark notes: Similar to removing the throttle cable for drive by wire, Nissan is disconnecting the steering wheel from the steering rack. They're replacing the physical connection with a multitude of sensors and two electric motors. But don't worry, just to make sure everything is twice as expensive as it needs to be, they're making sure that the steering wheel can still be connected to the steering rack via a clutch.

Your thoughts?

I feel like this will dull the driving experience for those of us who enjoy it, drive manufacturing costs up which will of course be passed along to the consumer, add weight, and provide more things to break.

[6strngs]

Electronic steering has been around for a few years already. GM uses it on pretty much all their cars, and toyota has it in several including the yaris that I drive for my delivery job. I like that Nissan is actually putting a back-up in in case it fails, the electronic steering fails in GM's all the time and you just can't steer the car, they always seem to go out after parking and it just won't work the next time you get in the car though, I haven't heard of anybody losing control while driving... yet. I believe they were first used on hybrids because, well when the gas engine shuts off you would lose power steering, power brakes, air conditioning, water pump, etc. so they had to make all that stuff electronic so it would work with either the gas or electric engine going. It also makes it easier for the computer to control things like traction control, stability control, etc. basically cars are moving more and more away from the driver driving it and more towards a computer driving the car, which is a probably a good thing for the majority of the population because 99% of the people on the road don't know how to drive and have probably never driven fast in their lives. Better get used to it too because the government is putting more and more laws in place to move things that way too, for example, all cars 2012 and newer MUST be equipped with 4-wheel ABS and traction control (which means they will ALL be throttle-by-wire), and all cars after 2014 are going to be required to have back-up cameras.