I am all for easy parallel parking and tight turn-around!
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this is gonna get used as an excuse to use steer by wire, isn’t it?
for the love of god, no one wants input lag in their cars!
Steer by wire has been around for about 10 years now, mainly in Nissans.
Q50 was first. But it had a tiny mechanical backup. Toyota will bring a full system in Lexus models this year.
Its wild.
We already had this figured out in the 1920s:
Neat! I was expecting this one but your example is 30 years older!
Oh yeah, I’ve seen this one before. Turns out the 5th wheel is not a new concept:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMdLZLA8NcE
I imagine it’s a lot more expensive to manufacture than the angled front wheels, but those only worked on the old body styles.
Knowing how to do it conceptually and knowing how to do it in mass produced cars is the big thing and I am expecting this to either not be cost effective. Not sure if it will be reliable for over 100k miles, but I expect the cost to limit it to the weird luxury car space at best.
The fact that now each wheel can be fully independent with their own motors makes executing this much easier than before without adding extra hardware, simply working with software.
It’s actually more difficult. Previously those wheels had no drive and no issues being fully independent.
Adding a motor to the wheel makes this more complicated than in the 20s but much more advantageous.
If you want to do full crab like the one in the article, not just front wheels like in the oldies video, you need to power the wheels. With 4 independent driving wheels you can switch between traditional 2 wheel steer, 4 wheel steer, crab (for parallel parking) and orbit for turning around in place. There is no transmission axle between the wheels so they can be independently rotated and controlled, just like on a film dolly.
Look at that, a car driver nearly running over a cyclist for the lulz in the 1920s!
Good for the car that’s going to park, terrible for the parked cars who will then barely get out.
This is a good example of why vertical videos are cancer.
Here’s a much better version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqcAjxVyJZA
What’s the disadvantage of this system? Bigger wheel wells which reduce cargo space?
Lots of added tech makes these more likely to fail. And I don’t think they’ll be cheap to replace.
Now you’ll have to worry about front wheel alignment and rear wheel alignements more often. The rear steering components will add cost to the initial purchase of the vehicle as well as more maintaince costs. All to cram more cars into on street parking.
I think related technologies have been introduced a few times over the years. I remember seeing a similar system on an American pickup truck at least a decade ago, and I think Cadillac or someone tried it as well.
As I recall, they’ve always tended to fail because drivers don’t know how to use them. They require learning a new skill and a new way of thinking. An actual self driving vehicle might be able to make more use of the added maneuverability, but people who have been driving for decades (who are the primary market for cars in the price range these run in) have developed a muscle memory such that driving is automatic. Learning to use four wheel steering isn’t just picking up a new skill - it’s actively having to unlearn a fairly complex process that is literally hardwired into your brain at that point.
People who parallel park already know how to do so, and higher end cars can park themselves. Roads are designed for traditionally steered cars (eg for things like the turning radius) so I’m not seeing a benefit there either.
I could see this being useful in something like a forklift, where you do have to be concerned about limited spaces, but there it would be explicitly taught as a new skill which your brain could separate from car driving because it’s a different vehicle with a different application and environment. You wouldn’t have to unlearn anything.
