– Ford is bringing to market in the next 12 months a new motorized steering wheel they say will make vehicles easier to maneuver at low speeds and at higher speeds more agile and fun to drive.
– Called Adaptive Steering, an electronically controlled gear motor is placed inside the steering wheel, replacing the solid connection between it and the steering shaft.
– In a nut shell, the gear motor can basically add to or subtract from your steering inputs based on the computer’s wisdom.
– The motorized wheel can continually change the ratio depending on speed and other driving condions.
– Ford says that at lower speeds, like when parking, the system uses the motor to speed up the turning requiring you to make less motions at the wheel.
– At faster speeds like on the highway, the system can be programmed to be less responsive and even correct for various things as the software becomes more enabled.
– Ok folks, for way too many reasons to list this make me very nervous. While the effects on driving feel and handling alone could be discussed for an hour, safety is the thing I worry about most.
– What kind of surprises is this system going to give its drivers 5, 10 or 20 years down the road when this gear motor starts to wear or fail, let alone the computer getting a little hinky.
– Case in point, this gear motor looks virtually identical in design to the power window motor which just failed in my Ford Mustang. When it failed, it began skipping gear teeth, jambing, and eventually the motor spun round and round as the window stuck half way up.
– Thus I hope Ford is thinking long and hard about how we replace the solid connection between our hands our tires with gear motors and computers. For more news and test drives of Fords and Mustangs see our partner channel TheMustangNews.com.
