Tesla recalls 40k cars over patch that broke power steering Tesla has initiated a voluntary recall of more than 40,000 Model S and Model X vehicles thanks to a bad firmware update that could cause the cars to lose power steering "due to forces from external road dynamics," also known as bumps. According to a recall report [PDF] filed with the US National Highway Traffic Safety …
Vehicles damage roads in proportion to the 4th power of the axle weight.* A car that weighs 20% more does twice the damage. Electric vehicles typically weigh considerably more than their ICE equivalents. Also, energy expended in a collision is proportional to the vehicle weight, so crashes are likely to be more damaging for the same speed of impact.
There are, of course, many health and environmental advantages to electric vehicles, minuscule pollution at point of use (if you drive carefully, don't skid and use regenerative braking), and very little noise pollution, but, sadly, prolonging the roads is not one of them.
*https://camdencyclists.org.uk/2020/06/the-fourth-power-rule-cyclelicious/
>Electric vehicles typically weigh considerably more than their ICE equivalents
Average USA car weight in 2020 according to the EPA = 4,156 a BMW i3 = 2,635 lb
According to Tesla:
4,766 lbs – Model S Plaid
4,561 lbs – Model S Long Range
4,416 lbs – Model Y Long Range/Performance
4,065 lbs – Model 3 Long Range/Performance
3,582 lbs – Model 3 Standard Range Plus
That "average US car weight" looks substantially too high to me. 4156 seems about right for full size SUVs, but most of the vehicles in the typical parking lot here in the US are substantially smaller and lighter. Mid range sedans like the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord come in around 3500 lb. Compact vehicles like the Kia Soul weigh significantly less. I think that pickup trucks must have been counted as "cars" in those numbers. Or else the vehicles were weighed with a full fuel tank, a weeks groceries, a large dog, and five American football linemen on board.
Adding 60-100 lbs the the ICE for a reasonably full fuel tank seems fair to me. But that doesn't begin to account for the discrepancy.
The Tesla numbers look OK.
The predominant vehicle style around here (Northeast Florida) is pickup trucks. My Chevy Bolt weighs about 3,600 which is similar to a Tesla M3 Standard according to that list. The Tesla is physically quite a bit larger though.
There is a 75 MW Solar generating station 10 miles from me but I have no idea what proportion of the Watts going into my car are from that facility.
You are comparing compact cars to the gigantic SUVs that many people drive. Cars the size of a Tesla 3 do not weigh 4150 lb. Mine has an iron (heads and block) V8 in it and it weighs a half a ton less than that.
Try comparing a GMC Hummer EV at over 9,000 lb...
I said that electric vehicles usually weigh more than their ICE equivalents, for example, the kerb weight of a Jaguar F-Type is 1595 kg to 1838 kg, that of the Tesla S is 2069 kg to 2162 kg, so a Tesla S would do approx 2.8 times the road damage as an F-Type.
If you have been to Los Angeles, you know that pollution at the point of use or elsewhere doesn't really make any difference. The smog blankets the entire basin, from LA proper (including the San Fernando Valley) in the west to San Bernardino 60 miles to the east. The westerly winds push the smog to the east until it hits the mountains, and at that point it funnels down through Gorgonio Pass into the Coachella basin. The particulate matter is the most notable bit of the smog by that point, and it is heavier than air, so as the air that isn't funneled into the pass flows up and over the mountains, while most of the particulate matter remains in the valley, looking like a filthy potato pancake from above.
Palm Springs, 100 miles from Los Angeles, has polluted air from the Los Angeles basin. Some of this pollution comes from the Port of Los Angeles, where many diesel ships bring in goods from China, which are then placed on trains, which add their own pollution to the mix, or trucks, which do the same. Then, of course, there is the industry that still remains.
Only a small fraction of the smog is produced by passenger cars.
Having driven vehicles with power steering, a vehicle without power steering, and a vehicle with nonfunctioning power steering, I can clearly testify that the one that is the hardest to steer, by a wide margin, is the one that has power steering but it doesn't work. Including at speed. PS failure really is a safety hazard, especially if it happens suddenly and unexpectedly.
As for your specific points: no, you really don't need PS at speed, but it has nothing to do with causing holes in tarmac or messing up tires - the holes are more due to vehicle weight than steering (much less PS specifically), and damage to tires due to "dry steering" (turning the wheel while sitting still) happens regardless of whether the vehicle is equipped with PS.
I think his "point", if there was one, was the without PS, you typically tend to inch forward/back as you crank the wheel to make it a tad easier, and from that aspect, would cause less damage to the tyres.
However, with less and less cars not having PS, I doubt that idea would go through anyone's mind who hadn't driven a non-PS car before.
The reason it's easier to turn the wheels when a car is rolling slightly forwards or back is because there's two (or three, or four) tons of steel moving with it. Turning the while while standing still is harder because you're doing all the work. Just because you can't feel it doesn't mean it's not happening. The twist forces on the road surface are the same in either scenario; more likely higher when the car is moving.
This is why cyclists and motorcyclists chow up the road surface and massive lorries don't, but they have to have their stories, don't they?
"The reason it's easier to turn the wheels when a car is rolling slightly forwards or back is because there's two (or three, or four) tons of steel moving with it"
More importantly, a rotating tyre has less friction with the road with respect to steering turn. Very approximately, if the wheel is stationary, friction against the turning moment is maximised as you're literally scraping the rubber against a rough surface under pressure. If the wheel is rotating, a new rubber surface is constantly being presented, so the scraping effect is much less because the tyre is "walking" forwards as the steering turns it.
Surely the other way round?
“This is why cyclists and motorcyclists don’t chow up the road surface and massive lorries do”
Motorcycles and cyclists can turn their tyres against the surface like PS vehicles can and do, but the contact patch is miniscule compared and they hardly ever do it because it’s a crap way to maneouvre two-wheeled vehicles.
What planet are you in?
No idea why so many down votes but I learnt to drive in a 1959 Land Rover and it did not have power steering, nor did it need it. If you are turning the wheels whilst stationary you are not doing the job right. Even my TVR with fat tyres and a relatively small steering wheel doesn't need PS. Just another thing to go wrong and as for software controlling steering - please, just stop.
"As anyone who has driven without power steering knows, its absence doesn't make a vehicle undrivable, but it does make it much more difficult,"
Driving without power steering is much harder work than with it. I'm just glad that, presumably, road traffic laws require a direct mechanical linkage between the steering wheel and the road wheels, 'cos otherwise I expect that some bright spark (did you see what I did there?) would have a completely 'drive by wire' steering train, like the fly-by-wire aircraft, and then they'd be completely *&^%$d.
Yeah, power steering is kind of a must unless you're the oiled up protein queef sort with more muscles than IQ points. I will never forget many years ago, in the middle of winter, I went to turn across an incoming lane of traffic, and the engine died on me taking the power steering with it. Naturally there was a car coming in the opposite direction, and the roads were not plowed overly well, so all I could do was just yank on the wheel as hard as I could to try to make the turn and hope I had enough momentum to get me out of the way of the other car. I did as it turns out, but it took pretty much everything I had to turn the wheel even a little bit.
My first car was a VW Polo, so I'd hazard a guess about the same weight (~700ish kg IIRC) but with the engine in the front. And no power steering. God it was hard work: I mean forget trying to turn it when the car was stationary, and even when manoeuvring it was tough. At speed obviously a lot easier but still quite fatiguing on a long journey. I'm not that weedy but I don't want to go back to unpowered steering, not least as our current car (diesel repmobile) weighs well over twice as much.
My first cars were designed without power assisted steering and I didn’t know any différent. They had lower geared racks and more leverage from larger diameter steering wheels. So, it was never difficult to steer, and large muscles were never required. We learned to inch the car forward to help and to this day with modern cars I still don’t turn the steering while stationary because I’m aware of the large forces it exerts on the mechanicals.
We also had to manually manage fuel air mixture with a choke, open windows with a rotary handle and separately lock each door.
I learned to drive in a non-PAS Vauxhall Cavalier. My instructor gave me a stern rebuke when I tried hauling the steering wheel round whilst stationary because of the damage/premature wear it would do to his steering rack. That was 40 years ago, I’ve never forgotten it and taught my son to listen out for a power steering pump struggling to turn the tyres against the road surface, and that will be cheaper for him in long term maintenance to just keep the car moving slowly whilst maneouvering.
I remember my neighbours' early non-power-assisted-everything Cavalier; I don't remember the year but it was the one that looked like a bigger Chevette. I mostly remember it because after yet another morning of it fannying about with its usual "I'll start when I feel like it and you can't make me, daddio", he kicked it and his foot went straight through the pre-rusted door. They don't make 'em like they used to, thankfully.
Same. This would've been in 1988 so power steering was far from standard and AFAIK it never was on the Polo; mine didn't even have servo brakes what with being RHD so I'd need to put all my weight on the brake pedal to get it to stop. Er, that is having been travelling entirely within the speed limit and not leaving it 'til the last second. Same deal with fuel injection which was a rarity except for the likes of posers in their XR3is: I didn't mind using the choke except for the (thankfully rare) occasion I'd manage to flood the engine, in which case forget about trying to start it and come back in an hour or two...
They had lower geared racks and more leverage from larger diameter steering wheels
Yup - been there, done that. My wife (who at 5 foot 2 and less than 9 stone would never describe herself as having muscles) manages to handle the Morris Minor - even with the lack of syncromesh on 1st gear..
Her joke is that the aircon control is a handle in the door that she winds a couple of times!
(The old guy that does the servicing[1] for the Morris turns up in his 1930's Austin car. Doesn't have to bother locking it - it doesn't have door locks..)
[1] I have the mechanical aptitude but not the desire..
"I have the mechanical aptitude but not the desire."
I have some mechanical knowledge but I think without the aptitude. I remember thinking "I know, I'll save myself some money and do the wheel bearings myself!" which I eventually succeeded in doing... eventually. The wheels didn't even fall off, either, though it's as well our usual mechanic checked it over shortly afterwards as it turns out I'd used the wrong sort of grease (cheers, Halfords) and it'd all dribbled out.
I did succeed in making it go faster. Except for something I forgot to reconnect so the engine kept stopping when it was idle, so it turns out it really was important after all (I think it was some contraption that determined the mix of hot/cold air the engine wanted; what it didn't want was a constant supply of fresh air instead of said contraption, or something like that) and I did manage to fix it when the throttle spring broke by finding something to replace it that didn't seem very important... and which turned out not to be. So one out of several ain't bad, but I'm not really cut out to be a mechanic: I'm much too disorganised and tend to get a bit "ew, dirt" with all the oily crap, though by that point I've usually managed to get it on my face too.
The last time I took my 1999 Ford Focus in for a service the mechanic told me the previous service had, and here I quote him verbatim: "put the tyres on inside out."
This surprised me, as I couldn't conceive of it actually being possible. But he pointed to some writing on the tyre wall which stated, quite clearly 'Inside'.
The previous servicer having departed to wherever closed businesses go, I had no recourse but to pay for the tyres to be put on the right way round.
It's interesting that both seemed "lighter" to drive than my Polo, though I doubt they weighed any less. The first car I drove was my driving instructor's Fiesta; I found the main problem that it's accelerator pedal was a bit sticky rather than the "God this is heavy" thing I got from my Polo's steering. I was probably much too timid, though. Even though I was told off for speeding in my first lesson. :|
My first car was a VW Polo ... God it was hard work
I could have done with that knowledge some time back.
I got loaned one while my own car was in for servicing. Turning onto the road as I pulled out I found myself pulling on the steering wheel like I was wrestling King Kong to the ground while exclaiming "fuck, fuck, fuck" as on-coming cars in the other lane were racing towards me.
No other car I owned without power-steering was ever as heavy on the steering as that.
> Steering that was never powered in the first place is
When I first started driving in the 1980's power steering was very much a luxury, cars were much lighter and had relatively massive steering wheels requiring a large number of turns.
Then they got heavier (more protection) and for looks the wheel got smaller. I remember when we got our first car with PS that the wife finally realised what had been giving her shoulder strain!
But today if it fails you know about it and if you are on a roundabout you could easily run off the road or hit another vehicle.
"But today if it fails you know about it and if you are on a roundabout you could easily run off the road or hit another vehicle."
I heard a similar comment about the Scorpion tank, of all things. Pretty nippy as tanks go but has some contrived differential system with levers rather than a steering wheel, so it's a bit binary with its "either I'm steering or I'm not" approach. The tricky bit is the turning circle varies according to what gear you're in, so changing gear on a bend or roundabout can put you in the wrong lane or take you for a spot of offroading. Neither should be a problem for the tank but other people might object.
Not first-hand experience, sadly. I suspect that some people might've been less than keen to let me have a go of their tank. Bloody driving snobs, etc.
"Not first-hand experience, sadly. I suspect that some people might've been less than keen to let me have a go of their tank."
Try: https://www.intotheblue.co.uk/experiences/scorpion-tank-firing-and-driving/
"What's Included
Alvis Scorpion Tank experience for two people
One person will drive the tank for 15-20 minutes on a purpose built multi-terrain track under full tuition from an expert instructor
The other person will be the gunner firing on three seperate targets from the 76mm cannon
The firing is simulated but fire and smoke are both in plentiful supply!
Spend around 30 minutes in the tank and allow approximately one hour on site for this experience
Choose the 'two driver' option so you both get to drive and both get to try your hand at firing spending around one hour in the tank"
No, I've not done this, but it does seem interesting. I'd need to find a 'friend' first.
Didn't get the full tank experience, but a company day out had us gathered in a tracked personnel carrier, taking turns to bounce everyone around a very bumpy field. Made all the more fun because I was a recent hire and my colleagues hadn't realised I'd never driven anything before, so really had absolutely no idea what I was doing!
I've a memory of being told that hydraulic steering is limited to plant running at slow speeds and within a short range of where it's being used because of the lack of a mechanical linkage. Vehicles like dumper trucks and specialised rough terrain tipper trucks.
It was a long time ago, I might have been ill informed and the regs may have changed.
Last time I looked in the UK regs (I built my own cars a handful of times so this was important) for passenger cars, steering required a mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the control arms - so no steering by wire. I don't recall whether that applied to HGVs but I would expect it to simply on safety grounds: if the power steering goes out you still have some control.
But as other posters have pointed out: while an unpowered steering is not a problem on a car designed that way (which many of us who started driving in the sixties or seventies will have used, and probably learned to drive in) it is an issue when a power steering system suddenly stops providing input... I suppose one advantage of electric assistance over hydraulic is that it can still work with the engine stalled. The disadvantage is that it eats the rack/pinion over time - I've had to replace a couple at a hundred and fifty thousand miles or so.
(My 240Z back in the eighties had unpowered steering and a bloody great lump of iron over the wheels. I developed rather thick wrists driving that...)
> 'cos otherwise I expect that some bright spark (did you see what I did there?) would have a completely 'drive by wire' steering train, like the fly-by-wire aircraft, and then they'd be completely *&^%$d.
Alas, I don't think Toyota got that memo. Their new "OMG" (yes, that's really the name they've chosen for it - One Motion Grip) steering system uses a yoke and fly-by-wire, with a battery as backup but no direct mechanical linkage.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/toyota-reinvents-steering-wheel/
Looking at the picture of the current interior of the Toyota BZ4X in that article, my first thought was "that looks cramped". Our current car is the widest we've had, but with a solid central console and mini-consoles on the doors, there is no side room left for legs. Doesn't matter if passenger or driver. No, we are not over 6 foot tall[1]
Whatever happened to just having a simple gear lever and the handbrake tucked between the seats? Made it a damn sight easier to clamber over and get out the "wrong" side when necessary or simply safer to do so.
Bah. Progress my backside.
[1] sorry, everything else is metric but too stuck in ways to do body size in anything other than Imperial.
Being not that young, it was quite a while before I ever drove a power steering car (& also had fun of manual choke, setting carburettor manually between Winter & Summer, hand wound windows etc. (occasional drives of a relatives moggy that had indicator flags instead of bulb indicators too!))
It could sometimes take a noticeable amount of effort without power steering if you wanted to make a relatively large / fast wheel movement.
Given strength tends to decline precipitously as you get quite old, would be quite nice if could optionally disable power steering, help get a bit of upper body workout when driving.
Not all cars have direct mechanical linkage for the wheel, throttle or even brakes. You might be stepping on the pedal and a hydraulic action is just feeding a value to a sensor which controls the action. Steer-by-wire has happened too but it's rare, mostly in racing vehicles.
There's a reason why the steering wheel on the Morris Minor is much bigger than it needs to be - more torque!
We used to have a Citroen XM - really nice car apart from the (then) Citroen build quality (or lack thereof). It had a nice fancy hydropneumatic self-levelling suspension that, when it was working, gave a really, really nice ride.
The problem was that the component quality in the suspension was fairly dodgy, in the 18 months that we owned the car the rear ride-height adjuster/valve blew out twice. And since the suspension shared the same pneumatic reservoir as the brakes and power steering, once the ride height adjuster blew and started spraying fluid out over the road, the brake assist and power steering died fairly quickly as well.
Which leaves you trying to muscle well over a tonne of car with no power assit at all. It was pretty much impossible to turn the steering to any great degree and the brakes required my full bodyweight to actually stop the car. Fortunately, the parking brake was a manual cable-operated one (a locking foot pedal) and, luckily, neither time it blew were we doing any significant speed.
After 18 months we realised that it had spent two months of that 18 in the garage waiting for parts from France and so ended up selling it.
(Actually traded it in with the garage we bought it from - for a Rover Sterling (2.5 litre V6 Honda engine - the US equivalent was the Honda Accura[1]) - which was a reasonably nice car but the engine was ludicrously overpowered for the chassis and you could feel the car flexing if you put your foot down hard.
We've had an.. interesting car history.
[1] Remember all those early work-from-home scams that promised you could quickly buy yourself an Accura? I vaguely do..
I am glad my car cannot get firmware updates. It's running the same program that it was when it was first started for its test run, and that is the only one it will run. That program has nothing to do with the steering, however... it controls only three things: fuel injector duty cycle, spark advance, and IAB plunger position.
Indeed. It amazes me that something as basic as power steering would ever need a "calibration update" in the first place.
My father used to have a Citroen CX in the 80s and it had fancy self-centring hydraulic power steering (actual servo, not assist, and with fake centring feeling) but it also proved to be VERY reliable.
My first ever company car was a Citroen BX. The only significant problem it had was the back box of the exhaust fell off the day before the car was due to be replaced at 180,000 miles (just over three years old!) :-) Oh, and the paint on the fibreglass bonnet didn't seem to adhere properly. Chunks of paint across our entire fleet had flaked off along the front edge.
Not having a turbo, the diesel engine was a bit slow to get up to speed though.
I am glad my car cannot get firmware updates.
One of ours doesn't either - mostly because it barely has electrics, let alone electronics..
And what electics it does have are (from memory) Lucas parts - hence the 'barely'. It is converted to negative ground and has an alternator fitted so is *slightly* improved over a stock Morris 1000.
The counter argument is that if it can't get OTA updates then potentially your car has a serious fault and if you're lucky some actuary has decided to issue a recall rather than deal with lawsuits by the deaths & injuries it caused.
The biggest abuse of OTA updates would not be for safety critical functions but when cars do stuff like add "features" that you have to pay to unlock and that otherwise stink up the user interface forever - satnav updates, XM radio, wifi etc. I read recently that one car even use subscription services to cripple functionality such as passenger heated seats. Now that is just bullshit.
"The 4th power law traces back to extensive testing undertaken by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) between 1958 and 1961 (TRB 1962 as cited in Addis 1992)
Addis, R.R. 1992 Vehicle Wheel Loads and Road Pavement Wear, London, UK"
Source: Implications of the 4th Power Law [PDF]
I can't help thinking that the Association could have tried just a little bit harder with that acronym.
This may be the least of Elon's problems, but 2 tons of uncontrolled car because they couldn't be arsed to test the software properly, let alone develop it properly, is A Big Problem. Perhaps there shouldn't BE software in the steering system until we find a way to make software work reliably? Or brakes, or indeed any part of a car that makes it go or stop. Or perhaps at least not software that an amateur can push out at will because its too easy to update to fix.
Literally move fast and break things. Things including other people, cyclists, houses, cars, ships, poles, reg readers, what have you.
"As anyone who has driven without power steering knows, its absence doesn't make a vehicle undrivable, but it does make it much more difficult"
Lost power steering nearly killed me once. The car stalled on a set of hairpin bends on a turn with a cliff ahead of me, which meant the power steering was suddenly not powered any more. It was a Rover 820 (bloody heavy but comfy) and fortunately I was strong enough to pull the wheel round and save myself. Someone less strong might have had a bad afternoon!
BTW if you wanted a truly unreliable car the 820 was ideal. Still miss it though.
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