Quote:
Originally Posted by DnA Diesel
If you have ActiveSteering, there is a question about a possible failure mode of the electric motor and/or its controller within the steering assembly and potential lack of steering control.
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Folks who write such discussion above off as "musings" that were 'unreasonable' or uneducated' would be wrong. While BMW is no doubt a big company with undoubtedly thousands of competent and highly trained engineers, all trying to contribute to a well made product, that does not mean that they get things perfect. Nobody gets things perfect. There will always be some system with a potential unanticipated failure mode that the engineers, as diligent as they were, did not, or perhaps could not have foreseen.
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I see no reason why a fundamentally similar situation could not happen in this case. Engineers design an improved system, believing the potential disadvantages of a more complex system are outweighed by the advantages of increased control. There is a potential failure mode that is not identified, not through incompetency, but just the nature of design in an increasingly complex world. Test plans are established to ensure safety and performance, but they can't catch 100% of the problems, 100% of the time.
D.
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Great post! Thanks.
I've been an engineer for 40 years and concluded that the harder you try to handle every possible scenario, the more you increase complexity, which in turns makes it more difficult to fully understand and test, which in turn makes it less reliable. You can partially overcome these obstacles and make things more reliable, but it's an uphill climb. The closer you get to 100% reliability, the faster development, production and maintenance costs climb.
Is there such a thing as a perfect Active Steering system in an automobile with a 0% chance of failure? I don't know, but I doubt it.