Electric van manufacturer Canoo announced a highly visible deal with the United States Postal Service (USPS), which will see the USPS acquire a handful of right-hand drive versions of the company’s LDV 190 delivery van.
Canoo announced that the USPS will purchase six (6) battery-electric Canoo vehicles. In its official press release, the company said that it was “honored” to participate in the post office’s evaluation of potential suppliers as the USPS moves towards the “groundbreaking electrification and modernization” of its national delivery fleet.
Canoo Steer by Wire System
The Canoo is using steer-by-wire with an adjustable steering ratio. At 0:30 in the linked video, it shows taking a 180 turn with about half a turn of the wheel. If you dont need to rotate 360+ degrees to get to the wheel stops, the shape of the steering wheel shouldn’t be an issue.
Tesla is still mechanical steering linkage, so it’s as much work to turn as a typical vehicle, and you lose the easy 2 hand spinning you’d want for that system. In that case, I totally agree with you.
Oh so now not only is the steering wheel a weird shape, it also won’t always turn the car at a certain rate.
This seems like it could be helpful for people with shoulder injuries or other arm disabilities, but I also could see it leading to a lot of collisions where people who just made a U-turn suddenly swing around wildly on the street due to a hyper sensitive steering wheel.
Maybe I’m just getting old, but all I want out of a car is for it to take me from one place to another, pair to my phone for entertainment, and have physical buttons for critical tasks like climate control, cruise control, and the wipers. Having stuff like this is nice as an add-on, but a basic car should just be a basic car that does what the driver expects.
How is this any different than break and gas pedals having different sensitivities from car to car?
Because we’re not talking about car to car, we’re talking about the same control behaving differently on the same vehicle.
If you tap the gas on your Honda civic, you don’t expect it to go flying like a formula 1 car. If you hit the brakes on a Toyota Camry, you know it’ll take a certain distance to stop. If your Honda suddenly flew forward when you tapped the gas, or accelerated like an 18 wheeler when you floored it, that’s something that can cause an accident because the vehicle doesn’t behave predictably.
The steering wheel being able to turn the car 180 degrees with a quarter turn of the wheel one minute, and then take a full rotation to do the same thing the next minute, won’t allow drivers to build good muscle memory for how the car handles. When you have a second or less to react to something like a potential collision, muscle memory matters.
But this would be something that can be seen and corrected immediately, not something you’re going to suddenly notice in the middle of downtown Chicago going 90mph. In fact it would be damn near impossible to not notice before you’re even out of the parking lot.
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Canoo Steer by Wire System
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