Are there any cheap, new cars available in the U.S. that are NOT drive-by-wire?

I have a suspicion the #1 reason for 100% DBW in teh market is dynamic throttle emissions.  Crazy jumps in throttle position can do some strange things to the air fuel mixture.  I remember driving an e39 for the 1st time.  Was my first DBW experience and I felt it and hated it.  I got used to it pretty quick though, on that model it wasn't bad.  I later drove a 7 series, man that one was downright dangerous.  Serious lag that you had to plan for. 

I get the reasons DBW is done, but still hate it.  Feels terrible.

I also suspect dynamic rpm emissions is one of the reason mfgers don't like manuals.  Low uptake is hsa got to be way out in front as #1, but I think its a solid #2.  

8valve said:

I get the reasons DBW is done, but still hate poor implementations.  Feels terrible.

Fixed that for you.

I'm not so sure, I think people have just gotten used to them.   If you took the absolute BEST DBW car that exists now. You take that car to an alternate universe where all cars are drive by steel cable... would peeps drive it and not notice it?  I'm not so sure of that answer.  The human brain is an amazing thing and you can learn and unlearn things really quick. 

Of course you wouldn't notice. You move the pedal, the butterfly moves without lag. How would you tell the difference between that and having a cable in between? Do you miss the friction?

I've got cars with cables and cars with DBW. Cars with EFI and cars with carbs. Two of the ones with the sharpest response have wires.

In reply to DirtyBird222 :

The hanging revs while upshifting is what turned me away from a smoking deal on a low-mile, manual transmission '09 Focus a few years ago. 

It went something like this:

Accelerate, then lift off of gas pedal completely.

Slowly depress clutch pedal.

Shift to the next year.

Release clutch pedal.

Slowly depress the gas pedal.

I swear I could hear Walter Rohrl snorting in disgust.

LOL

DirtyBird222 said:

I'm pretty sure the 2005 S2000 was one of the last cable driven throttle body cars produced.

My wife's 09 Hyundai Elantra was DBC

In reply to The_Jed :

What were the conditions you were driving under?

I hated the throttle feel on my DBW '01 E38 740i after a few months. Much more mushy feeling than the '98 E38 (which was cable operated, even though the newer one has more power and better gearing. It just felt sluggish. Cure for it was a tune. In fact, a Sprint Booster module that goes in between the throttle pedal and the ECU (plugs inline at the pedal). Now I have -30odd different settings I can choose from for responsiveness with the highest 4-5 being really fast. And the difference is immense, making the car feel like it has more power, even though it doesn't. Just the quickness of the throttle response does it. Set it back to stock, and it feels like driving in molasses. I tend to drive it around in an upper midrange setting.

https://www.sprintboosterusa.com/

if you don't like the DBW feel, one of these is a way of getting the feel you really want out of the car.

Keith Tanner said:

Do you miss the friction?

 

Yeah could be.   Or maybe I haven't driven the right ones.  Like I mentioned my first experience with DWB I could feel it for about 2 months and it bugged me.  After that, it didn't  I chalk it up to my brain adjusting.  I think everybody's has. 

In reply to 8valve :

In reply to Stefan :

Just a test drive, 35 mph speed limit, trying to drive like a "normal" person.

Just to chime in, I own an ND and the DBW is by far my biggest complaint. Better than many, but when my circa-1990 crapcan has twice the instant response, something is very wrong. If you cannot discern the delay, thats cool, most people don't see 60hz flicker. But for those that do, its infuriating.  Clearly its not just the implementation, even if the engineer in me is screaming otherwise. Has nobody done it right?

In reply to Nugi :

What is your assertion that it's not the implementation based on?

It's possible that the implementation error is servo motors not fast enough to keep up with your foot, or that the code needed to get from torque request through operating conditions lookup and generate a new throttle position is slow, but these strike me as relatively distant compared to the idea that it's just doing unnecessary "smoothing" of inputs, or just flat operating at a lower ratio of request->response.

Given that hardware and software are certainly capable of moving the throttle plates as quickly as a cable, and in the same manner if directed to do so, why would you say it's not an implementation issue? I think you should listen to your inner engineer. Engineers are good at this sort of thing.

8valve said:

I have a suspicion the #1 reason for 100% DBW in teh market is dynamic throttle emissions.  Crazy jumps in throttle position can do some strange things to the air fuel mixture.  I remember driving an e39 for the 1st time.  Was my first DBW experience and I felt it and hated it.  I got used to it pretty quick though, on that model it wasn't bad.  I later drove a 7 series, man that one was downright dangerous.  Serious lag that you had to plan for. 

I get the reasons DBW is done, but still hate it.  Feels terrible.

I also suspect dynamic rpm emissions is one of the reason mfgers don't like manuals.  Low uptake is hsa got to be way out in front as #1, but I think its a solid #2.  

I can assure you that emissions are not the reason for electronic throttle. One can compensate for a/f dynamics - it's really not that hard.  And once the catalyst is nice and warm, the output from the engine is pretty easy to deal with, regardless of the dynamics.

keith is 100% right- if you have an issue with the system, it's because of poor implementation, not the system.

The_Jed said:

In reply to DirtyBird222 :

The hanging revs while upshifting is what turned me away from a smoking deal on a low-mile, manual transmission '09 Focus a few years ago. 

 

It went something like this:

 

Accelerate, then lift off of gas pedal completely.

 

Slowly depress clutch pedal.

 

Shift to the next year.

 

Release clutch pedal.

 

Slowly depress the gas pedal.

 

 

I swear I could hear Walter Rohrl snorting in disgust.

 

LOL

That issue pre-dates electronic throttle.  It has to do with a combination of the lowest output with fuel running vs. can you turn the fuel off during a shift.  One hangs up the engine more than most like, the other can be hard to deal with.   But it has little to do with electronic throttle.

Wondering how much of the hate for DBW has to do with crap like “full throttle restriction”. Its my pretty much only gripe with it. Hey heres a car with 300+ hp, except we dont think you can handle it so we wont give you full throttle until your doing 25+ mph. My 2012 frontier has like 260hp but you would never know it with the stupid throttle restriction. Its great needing to scoot from a stop and your friggin restrictions have you creeping until your up to speed. 

In reply to TJL :

So you know, it's highly likely that those restrictions are based some limit in or post transmission.  In the first few gears, the output torque is so high that it can break things.  And there are also interactions with the traction control systems, too.  But mostly it's torque limits in the drivetrain.

In reply to TJL :

BTW, that’s also not solely a DBW thing.  The vaunted 86/87 GLH-S had boost scheduling based on vehicle speed to save the transaxle.  So you couldn’t get full boost until you were out of 1st gear.

So, um, maybe what you’re complaining about is not really DBW, but really manufacturers protecting their products and customers from themselves, as they should be.  It’s just, perhaps, easier to do with DBW.

Tubeless tires

Foreign cars

unit body construction

FWD

Fuel injection

Catalytic converters

etc.

   All hated but we learned to live them.  

alfadriver said:

8valve said:

I have a suspicion the #1 reason for 100% DBW in teh market is dynamic throttle emissions.  Crazy jumps in throttle position can do some strange things to the air fuel mixture.  I remember driving an e39 for the 1st time.  Was my first DBW experience and I felt it and hated it.  I got used to it pretty quick though, on that model it wasn't bad.  I later drove a 7 series, man that one was downright dangerous.  Serious lag that you had to plan for. 

I get the reasons DBW is done, but still hate it.  Feels terrible.

I also suspect dynamic rpm emissions is one of the reason mfgers don't like manuals.  Low uptake is hsa got to be way out in front as #1, but I think its a solid #2.  

I can assure you that emissions are not the reason for electronic throttle. One can compensate for a/f dynamics - it's really not that hard.  And once the catalyst is nice and warm, the output from the engine is pretty easy to deal with, regardless of the dynamics.

keith is 100% right- if you have an issue with the system, it's because of poor implementation, not the system.

Does it really matter if it's the implementation or the system? Broken is broken. Most people don't have the means (or the rightr aftermarket support) to fix the problem.

In reply to freetors :

Yes, it does matter.  Some cars it will work great, others you won't be happy with.  It has more to do with that than the system.  If you don't like it, buy another car.  There is more choice in buying cars than pretty much any other thing you can buy.  Exercise it.

Exactly, implentation problems are not the fault of the system. I've driven an Atom with a shifter so vague that it was really impossible to tell what gear it was in - and this is from someone who owns a classic Mini and a Vanagon. Does that mean that all manual transmissions suck? Definitely not.

25 years ago, I was working on prototype electronic throttle systems.  We had a study (can't recall who did it, or where it came from), but back then, the 90th percentile driver could not detect a 0.1 sec throttle delay.  So the max target back then was 100ms.  And systems then were easily capable of 80ms.  Now computers are WAY faster than they were back in 1993, and I guess i should go out and measure the throttle delay.

And I'm convinced that's not what you are feeling.  What you are feeling is that there isn't a direct correlation between your foot and a specific throttle position.  All systems, that I know of, translate your foot position to an engine torque.  Which is very much not what your cable systems do.  When we were first working on it 25 years ago, it took some time to get used to, but it was fun to play with different output patterns.  Since then, those have been translated to vehicle DNA, so that all X brand cars feel like X brand cars.

At least that's my theory based on how I know the systems work.

How is there more information available to the ECU from a dbw system than a dbc system with a tps? 

In reply to simplecat :

Instead of 1 TPS sensor, there are 3 throttle and 2 pedal position sensors.  So 5 sensors instead of one.