Drive By Wire In 1958

[Ace-Garageguy]

On 1/1/2022 at 7:10 PM, peteski said:

...This is the first car I owned that doesn't have a mechanical throttle linkage.  While most of the time works ok, sometimes I step on the accelerator and the engine does not respond like the old cars did.  I guess the computer "decides" that it is not  in my(or car's) best interest to rev up.  It can be very annoying because it usually happens when I need the extra power.  And no, it is not anti-skid or stability control engaging - it happens on dry pavement and without any wheel slippage.

How's this for annoying?

Some drive-by-wire equipped VWs refuse to apply significant throttle if there's any steering input.

So if you're trying to nail the gas and steer out of the way of an approaching semi, you're toast.

A competent tech can go into the computer and disable the idiot function, but try to find one who's competent, VW-trained...and has the nads to defeat a "safety feature".

[stitchdup]

1 hour ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

How's this for annoying?

Some drive-by-wire equipped VWs refuse to apply significant throttle if there's any steering input.

So if you're trying to nail the gas and steer out of the way of an approaching semi, you're toast.

A competent tech can go into the computer and disable the idiot function, but try to find one who's competent, VW-trained...and has the nads to defeat a "safety feature".

apr can fix that, or most aftermarket vw places. has the benefit of increasing the mpg too cos the car gets a tune for us gas too instead of the international tune they arrive with. Works even better on the diesels, even the base tune removes that nonsensicle feature, and you can get another 15mpg on top of an extra 40+bhp

[PatW]

It's annoying though that in one Vauxhall advert, it pointed out that it had a new Wi-Fi gizmo so that you can receive phone messages or send them anywhere you might be at any time. Now if that isn't irresponsible what is? And a self driving car isn't stupid well! On the news last year two guys in the states testing a Tesler  were killed, setting the drive system to robot or whatever they got into the back seat to see if the car could self drive itself. Everything went great until it came to a sharp turn in a wooded area, the car didn't slow down, left the the road into trees and burst into flames. One of the 'passengers' left the back seat and went through the windsreen due to the force of the impact and was hilled instantly, the other rear 'passenger' could get out and burnt to death. I was going to say 'remind me not to get a Tesler' but I can't afford one anyway. '  

[OldNYJim]

I saw that story reported in some of the junkier tabloids, but the NTSB report disputes most of those claims:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/10/22/drivers-seat-wasnt-empty-in-fatal-tesla-crash-ntsb-says

Tesla says that the ‘self-driving’ add-on wasn’t optioned on the car involved, and investigators couldn’t make the self-steering function turn on in an identical car on the same road because of a lack of painted white lines that the system requires to function.

Sad as it is, I’d suspect this particular case was driver error rather than technology error…

[Joe Handley]

I had seen that too, sounds like it might have been a driver that got in over his head with way too much HP and maybe too much to "drink" just prior to incident.