Tesla Model S Steering Wheel Will Work Using Steer By Wire

By now, all the Tesla fans who frequent this site have seen the pictures of the steering yoke on the refreshed Model S. It’s similar in shape to the steering yokes on airplanes. Of course, nobody thinks that the refreshed Model S can fly so there’s no indication that pushing forward on the Model S yoke will make the nose of the Tesla point downward or that pulling back on the yoke will make the nose of the Tesla point upward. That sort of thing is strictly for airplanes.

There’s a reason that steering wheels on cars are round, or nearly round. That reason is that in tight spaces, you sometimes need to turn the wheel more than 180 degrees in order to make the front wheels get all the way to the left or to the right. This is a leftover from when cars sometimes came without power steering. For those of you old enough to remember that long ago time, parking without power steering was a bit more work than we wanted to do. There was more mechanical advantage, and thus less force required, to turn the wheel all the way to the stop if the amount you had to turn the wheel was more than 180 degrees. In order to do that, you had to go hand over hand, and it was helpful if the rim of the steering wheel was pretty much in the same place no matter where the front wheels of the car was facing because when you’re looking out the rear window of the car, you can’t keep track of where the rim of the steering wheel happens to be.

So I started thinking about how Tesla could deal with issues like this now that they’re putting the yoke steering on the Model S. I’d have dropped this essay a week ago if I’d been able to figure it out, but I was unable. Today, I decided to consult the Oracle of YouTube to get an answer. The trouble with consulting YouTube is that some of the people who put up videos aren’t any smarter than I am. I checked out a few of those videos. One had a guy who put a model of a yoke on his regular steering wheel and tried to steer with just that part of the wheel. He could, but it didn’t tell me anything about what the engineers at Tesla were probably thinking. Another guy actually used a hacksaw on his steering wheel to make it into a yoke. He could steer, but that was also not enlightening. Finally, I found a YouTube video that gave a theory that I could get behind.

To me, a steering yoke makes sense only if you don’t need to turn the yoke any more than ninety degrees in either direction, just the way it is in an airplane. That way, there’s no hand-over-hand movement when you’re not looking at the steering wheel. I was stumped by this because steering would be too quick at highway speeds. There are already collisions when someone jerks the steering wheel too hard. These would be more frequent if the steering was so sensitive to slight movements.

The video gives the answer. What you don’t see in the pictures of the yoke steering are pictures of the steering mechanism. Now remember, the person who made this video is theorizing. I’m writing about the video because I believe his theory is correct. The person who made the video goes by the moniker, TenXchange.

Here’s the theory. Tesla is eliminating the traditional rack and pinion steering in which the steering wheel is physically connected to the steering mechanism by a stiff rod. Instead, the steering yoke is electrically connected to the steering mechanism, a steer-by-wire system. That’s helpful for two reasons.

First, there can be a variable steering ratio. When you’re going fast, on the highway, steering the car is less sensitive so a quick jerk on the wheel will make your car point in the direction you want to go, but it won’t send the car into an uncontrolled skid. When you’re going slow, and parking the car, you won’t need to turn the yoke very far to get the wheels in the direction you want them to go, and you won’t need all that hand-over-hand motion of the steering wheel to get the car parked. In between, on city streets when you’re not going as fast, the steering ratio can be more sensitive than on the highway but less sensitive than when parking.

The second reason for having steer-by-wire according to TenXchange is that there will come a time when your Tesla with FSD will actually be autonomous. You may want to send your car out to work as a taxi for you while you stay home and do something else, or you might just want your car to be your chauffeur while you do something else besides driving. I have to say that even though I paid for FSD when I bought my Tesla a year or so ago, I’ll be surprised if this happens in my lifetime. Anyway, if actual FSD does come to pass, and if my car is a much safer driver than most human beings, then I wouldn’t want a human being to be able to take over the driving by just turning the steering wheel or tapping the brake. That could cause an accident.

My car won’t ever have steer by wire or brake by wire since it doesn’t have those things now, and I doubt that Elon Musk is going to recall half a million Teslas with FSD in order to convert them to steer-by-wire and brake-by-wire. But the newer cars, the ones with yoke steering, may well have those features.

Tesla has an event to release the first redesigned Model S cars to owners on June 3rd.

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Tesla’s Optimus Robot Learns to Walk Without Vision [VIDEO]

Optimus Falls - but catches itself!

Not a Tesla App

Tesla recently showed off a demo of Optimus, its humanoid robot, walking around in moderately challenging terrain—not on a flat surface but on dirt and slopes. These things can be difficult for a humanoid robot, especially during the training cycle.

Daily walks help clear your mind pic.twitter.com/dUsW58trS6

— Tesla Optimus (@Tesla_Optimus) December 9, 2024

A Look Behind the Curtain

Most interestingly, Milan Kovac, VP of Engineering for Optimus, clarified what it takes to get Optimus to this stage. Let’s break down what he said.

Optimus is Blind

Optimus is getting seriously good at walking now - it can keep its balance over uneven ground - even while walking blind. Tesla is currently using just the sensors, all powered by a neural net running on the embedded computer. 

Essentially, Tesla is building Optimus from the ground up, relying on as much additional data as possible while it trains vision. This is similar to how they train FSD on vehicles, using LiDAR rigs to validate the vision system’s accuracy. While Optimus doesn’t have LiDAR, it relies on all those other sensors on board, many of which will likely become simplified as vision takes over as the primary sensor.

Today, Optimus is walking blind, but it’s able to react almost instantly to changes in the terrain underneath it, even if it falls or slips. 

What’s Next?

Next up, Tesla AI will be adding vision to Optimus - helping complete the neural net. Remember, Optimus runs on the same overall AI stack as FSD - in fact, Optimus uses an FSD computer and an offshoot of the FSD stack for vision-based tasks.

Milan mentions they’re planning on adding vision to help the robot plan ahead and improve its walking gait. While the zombie shuffle is iconic and a little bit amusing, getting humanoid robots to walk like humans is actually difficult.

There’s plenty more, too - including better responsiveness to velocity and direction commands and learning to fall and stand back up. Falling while protecting yourself to minimize damage is something natural to humans - but not exactly natural to something like a robot. Training it to do so is essential in keeping the robot, the environment around it, and the people it is interacting with safe.

We’re excited to see what’s coming with Optimus next because it is already getting started in some fashion in Tesla’s factories.

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Is Tesla Close to Licensing FSD? GM Quits Cruise, BMW Praises Tesla

Not a Tesla App

In a relatively surprising move, GM announced that it is realigning its autonomy strategy and prioritizing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) over fully autonomous vehicles.

GM is effectively closing Cruise (autonomous) and focusing on its Super Cruise (ADAS) feature. The engineering teams at Cruise will join the GM teams working on Super Cruise, effectively shuttering the fully autonomous vehicle business.

End of Cruise

GM cites that “an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” and “considerable time and resources” are required for scaling the business to a profitable level. Essentially - they’re unable to keep up with competitors at current funding and research levels, putting them further and further behind.

Cruise has been offering driverless rides in several cities, using HD mapping of cities alongside vehicles equipped with a dazzling array of over 40 sensors. That means that each cruise vehicle is essentially a massive investment and does not turn a profit while collecting data to work towards Autonomy.

Cruise has definitely been on the back burner for a while, and a quick glance at their website - since it's still up for now - shows the last time they officially released any sort of major news packet was back in 2019. 

Competition is Killer

Their current direct competitor - Waymo, is funded by Google, which maintains a direct interest in ensuring they have a play in the AI and autonomy space.

Interestingly, this news comes just a month after Tesla’s We, Robot event, where they showed off the Cybercab and the Robotaxi network, as well as plans to begin deployment of the network and Unsupervised FSD sometime in 2025. Tesla is already in talks with some cities in California and Texas to launch Robotaxi in 2025.

GM Admits Tesla Has the Right Strategy

As part of the business call following the announcement, GM admitted that Tesla’s end-to-end and Vision-based approach towards autonomy is the right strategy. While they say Cruise started down that path, they’re putting aside their goals towards fully autonomous vehicles for now and focusing on introducing that tech in Super Cruise instead.

NEWS: GM just admitted that @Tesla’s end-to-end approach to autonomy is the right strategy.

“That’s where the industry is pivoting. Cruise had already started making headway down that path. We are moving to a foundation model and end-to-end approach going forward.” pic.twitter.com/ACs5SFKUc3

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) December 10, 2024

With GM now focusing on Super Cruise, they’ll put aside autonomy and instead focus solely on ADAS features to relieve driver stress and improve safety. While those are positive goals that will benefit all road users, full autonomy is really the key to removing the massive impact that vehicle accidents have on society today.

In addition, Super Cruise is extremely limited, cannot brake for traffic controls, and doesn’t work in adverse conditions - even rain. It can only function when lane markings are clear, there are no construction zones, and there is a functional web connection. 

The final key to the picture is that the vehicle has to be on an HD-mapped and compatible highway - essentially locking Super Cruise to wherever GM has time to spend mapping, rather than being functional anywhere in a general sense, like FSD or Autopilot.

Others Impressed - Licensing FSD

Interestingly, some other manufacturers have also weighed into the demise of Cruise. BMW, in a now-deleted post, said that a demo of Tesla’s FSD is “very impressive.” There’s a distinct chance that BMW and other manufacturers are looking to see what Tesla does next. 

BMW chimes in on a now-deleted post. The Internet is forever, BMW!

Not a Tesla App

It seems that FSD has caught their eyes after We, Robot - and that the demonstrations of FSD V13.2 online seem to be the pivot point. At the 2024 Shareholder Meeting earlier in the year, Elon shared the fact that several manufacturers had reached out, looking to understand what was required to license FSD from Tesla.

There is a good chance 2025 will be the year we’ll see announcements of the adoption of FSD by legacy manufacturers - similar to how we saw the surprise announcements of the adoption of the NACS charging standard.

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