What about safety is fair? Tesla should have to provide evidence that it's as safe as what it's replacing.
For comparison, 3 minutes on google turned up a thesis by Chris Post at MIT comparing alternative steering interfaces for "next generation" electric vehicles, including yokes. Apparently they were more difficult to use and had worse performance across almost all metrics, especially braking time. Maybe Tesla's implementation resolves these issues, but they should demonstrate that.
Tesla should simply have to demonstrate that their whole package is safer than other cars being sold (including mustangs and corvettes with zero visibility, terrible handling etc etc).
This idea that you can stick a round wheel in some of these terrible sports cars and hypercars and it makes them safe is the height of stupidity. It's the whole package, traction control, safety cage, crumple zones, emergency braking etc.
Let me be crystal clear. If you advocate that a car design that, in total, is 2x safer than another car design be condemned - you deserve total condemnation.
A car might invest a ton in structural safety, and trade that for some cool or sexy features. Be that speed, horrendous visibility or whatever. Some cars this trade results in terrible safety results. Tesla is not one of those yet. There are PLENTY that are.
The irony of course is this adamant view around steering wheels ignores their long history of being an actual safety hazard! Those of us with some memory of early safe issues will remember the data showing that in frontal impacts, steering wheels were being forcibly driven into the chests and bodies of drivers, killing them. There are still issues (usually if folks are too close to the wheel) with skull fractures / hand and wrist injuries etc.
For instance, if Honda put a car bomb in 1 Civic in a million, it'd still be one of the safest car designs around. But it's totally unnecessary, and they should be condemned. That they're overall much safer than my AMC Gremlin doesn't enter into it.
dude, you are so confused. The car design as a whole. A car designed with a bomb in it is a different design than the other civics. Do you not understand that?
This makes my point even more clearly.
If you have Civics with bombs and civics without, and the ones without have a safety result that is higher overall, even if there is some arguable benefit of the bomb (ie, less likely to be carjacked?) if the design of the cars without the bomb results in a better safety result, those cars should be preferred.
I'm going to leave this here I think - I'm not sure who is on HN anymore, but it does feel like the actual engineering type folks are a smaller group, and so normal tradeoff analysis has turned into the outraged / condemn them type yelling.
so replace it with a bomb that has a 1/1000000 chance of going off over the cars average lifespan. Seems like you're just arguing semantics. It's a pointless regression in safety
Motorcycles are a pointless regression in safety. Fast cars are a pointless regression (and have terrible rear side views in many cases). Many things that are "cool" are also regressions - almost all big screens and apple carplay etc is distracting. The trade is that people like cars not just for safety but to use, and those features may in one way or another enhance the use of the vehicle.
And yes, they build vehicles with explosives in them, and those do drive around if there is a use, everything from military tanks, to construction and mining ops have vehicles with bombs in them. While MUCH more dangerous, the tradeoffs are considered worth it.
So you look at the whole package.
I want yellow blinkers on all vehicles. Something as basic as that is not required. Fast cars are allowed. And now we are not only saying that a different design shouldn't even be allowed to be considered, but the folks considering the design should be "condemned"?
Heads up - Tesla, and eventually others are pushing HARD on greater autonomy. I wouldn't be surprised if more and more designs started reducing the number of passenger controls. Airplanes have had this happen too. Spaceships same thing, crew dragon a lot fewer buttons. They were condemned for that as well.
My own guess? Tesla is too far ahead here (ie, their AI supplement is not yet ready), and may get reeled back.
But they are pushing this way. They don't want side mirrors, they want cameras as an example, and yes, folks condemn them for that too even through the fuel savings would be incredible. Folks condemned them for their "dangerous" batteries. They've been condemned repeatedly, but their death rates per mile driven are far better than the news stories make it seem.
On the other hand, if swapping out a yoke for a steering wheel measurably improves overall safety on an otherwise identical vehicle, is there still an argument for using a yoke instead of a wheel (even if the car with a yoke is already safer than any other car?)
For comparison, 3 minutes on google turned up a thesis by Chris Post at MIT comparing alternative steering interfaces for "next generation" electric vehicles, including yokes. Apparently they were more difficult to use and had worse performance across almost all metrics, especially braking time. Maybe Tesla's implementation resolves these issues, but they should demonstrate that.
[1] http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/66453