You don't need PS at speed. And using it at rest causes holes to appear in the tarmac. It also fucks tyres up.

[citation needed]

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.

>> I think that pickup trucks must have been counted as "cars" in those numbers.

Given how yanks seem to think pickups with dually's are just a commuter car, I would say you're right.

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...

Was a Toyota Camry, which is listed as weighing 3340 lbs. The SUVs are driving up the US average in a big way.

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.

Bad they pushed out a patched that broken things, good they are not waiting around to be told they have to do the recall.

Given the patch was on the 11th of October they should know where all the car that go the patch are.

"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.

Power steering that has lost power is indeed very heavy. Steering that was never powered in the first place is only heavy at manoeuvring speed, otherwise it's fine.

In my old VW Beetle, the real kind (aircooled, rear engine), the steering was never heavy. Female drivers had no difficulty turning the wheel even at a dead stop. The VW had notoriously fast steering, too, less than two turns lock to lock.

The old Beetle, with the engine in the back, would be relatively light at the front/would depend n how much fuel was in the tank

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.

> '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.

[1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/toyota-reinvents-steering-wheel/

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/toyota-reinvents-steering-wheel/

Maybe the Tesla s/w engineers should have a code review with the remaining Twitter engineers?

Twitter have started recalling some of their fired employees, saying "it was a mistake".

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.

Bill has been providing us with patches that broke our systems for the last 20 years. Why has there never been a recall ?

"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: [1]Implications of the 4 th Power Law [PDF]

I can't help thinking that the Association could have tried just a little bit harder with that acronym.

[1] https://higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/IPWEA/c7e19de0-08d5-47b7-ac3f-c198b11cd969/UploadedImages/pdfs/Info%20sheets/IS-06_4th_Power_Law.pdf