What's new
By:

Loss of power steering while driving

What was said earlier is true: there are few (Cybertruck) steer-by-wire production vehicles to my knowledge. The wheel is still mechanically connected.
Therefore one of two things occured, either your electric boost failed (harder to turn), or the steer input failed meaning it wanted to force a straight line regardless of input (very hard to turn).

The first happened to me on my Ford Escape hybrid (electric power steering boost is not uncommon). When the wheel "froze" on the freeway, I had to gently and strongly steer to an off ramp and pull over. Power cycling the car restored operation. Possibly a full reboot if a software glitch would help.

If a sensing input failed, then on to the flatbed as was seemingly the case here.

For the record, on my Ford it happened once, and only once, in my 11 year ownership.
 
Last edited:
Can we adjust title to loss of power steer vs the word froze? It’s technically inaccurate and sends a message that the wheels got locked in whatever direction they were pointed in.

Or maybe as someone who troubleshoots for a living it only bothers me that the title is not similar to the actual issue experienced.
 
037 said:
Can we adjust title to loss of power steer vs the word froze? It’s technically inaccurate and sends a message that the wheels got locked in whatever direction they were pointed in.

Or maybe as someone who troubleshoots for a living it only bothers me that the title is not similar to the actual issue experienced.
Click to expand...
Agree. This does seem like a loss of power steering or something similar. For a heavy vehicle like the gravity, it would be even that much harder or nearly impossible to turn and maneuver.
 
McGriddle said:
Agree. This does seem like a loss of power steering or something similar. For a heavy vehicle like the gravity, it would be even that much harder or nearly impossible to turn and maneuver.
Click to expand...
Good thing I went from a 265 front tire to a 295…power steering loss would probably go really bad.
 
drb3333 said:
Yikes! Thanks for the correction. (Like I needed yet another reason to dislike that thing...)
Click to expand...
That’s the reason it has a turning radius of a much smaller car - the steering is one of (the only?) strong points of the Cybertruck.
 
The turn-by-wire does not change the turn radius, the rear steering does. The turn-by-wire allows variable ratio (small movement on-center, large steering further off-center). It also may allow better integration of front and rear steering.
 
hmp10 said:
This issue with the steering wheel is truly frightening, but it does appear to be unique with this particular Gravity.

Unfortunately, no car brand is immune from such hazardous issues. I had a Mercedes SL55 AMG that was the first Mercedes to use a brake-by-wire system. I was exiting a parking garage in Chicago. The car braked normally as I approached the exit arm at the pay booth, but when I then rolled down to the street-level exit, I had no brakes and rolled right into oncoming traffic on a downtown street. It was incredibly hairy, and I managed to stop the car only by steering it into a curb. Mercedes claimed the mechanical back-up system would still have responded to the brake pedal if I just put enough pressure on it. Believe me, I was standing on it for dear life.

It was never publicly announced, but Mercedes quietly took the system out of production in the next model year.

Less hair-raising was an incident with my Volvo 144 sedan some years earlier. I was entering an interstate exit ramp and went to downshift the manual transmission. The shift lever and its array of dangling linkages let go and came out of the console in my hand. I experienced something similar years later when the aforementioned Mercedes SL automatic shift lever failed.

Then there was my bedeviled 1998 Corvette that kept going into limp mode -- something that multiple shop visits had not resolved. The last time it happened I was cruising down the inside lane of I-95 in Connecticut, running alongside a concrete barrier wall. This was a 12-lane stretch of highway (6 each way) with heavy traffic averaging close to 80 mph. Suddenly my car was limited to 8 mph. There was no place to pull off to the left, and I had to get across 5 lanes to the right shoulder. I thought I was going to die. I got out of the car, walked down the nearest exit to a gas station, called a taxi, and never got back in the car. (It was a company car, and they took it off my hands.)
Click to expand...
Man... some of the stories that are out there! Glad you're still with us. ;-)
 
pravaasi said:
[…] However, service found some issue with something which according to them was not installed properly at the manufacturing time. Now I am supposed to pick the car up again today but I am really scared to do so. It’s such a serious safety issue for me and my family. I have asked Lucid to cancel my lease. I can't take the risk.

Anyone had this issue before?
Click to expand...
Scary issue for sure, and I can understand the reluctance. As others have pointed out, critical safety-related failures like this do occur in all types of cars.

I wouldn’t accept the car if Lucid service couldn’t figure out what went wrong. In this case, they were able to find the root cause and fix the problem. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll have this problem again.

Yes, it’s terrible that you were the one in a million that experienced this, but statistics show we risk our lives every time we even get in a car and drive. I’d be more afraid of a drunk driver or red light runner hitting me over the repair done on the car.
 
hmp10 said:
This issue with the steering wheel is truly frightening, but it does appear to be unique with this particular Gravity.

Unfortunately, no car brand is immune from such hazardous issues. I had a Mercedes SL55 AMG that was the first Mercedes to use a brake-by-wire system. I was exiting a parking garage in Chicago. The car braked normally as I approached the exit arm at the pay booth, but when I then rolled down to the street-level exit, I had no brakes and rolled right into oncoming traffic on a downtown street. It was incredibly hairy, and I managed to stop the car only by steering it into a curb. Mercedes claimed the mechanical back-up system would still have responded to the brake pedal if I just put enough pressure on it. Believe me, I was standing on it for dear life.

It was never publicly announced, but Mercedes quietly took the system out of production in the next model year.

Less hair-raising was an incident with my Volvo 144 sedan some years earlier. I was entering an interstate exit ramp and went to downshift the manual transmission. The shift lever and its array of dangling linkages let go and came out of the console in my hand. I experienced something similar years later when the aforementioned Mercedes SL automatic shift lever failed.

Then there was my bedeviled 1998 Corvette that kept going into limp mode -- something that multiple shop visits had not resolved. The last time it happened I was cruising down the inside lane of I-95 in Connecticut, running alongside a concrete barrier wall. This was a 12-lane stretch of highway (6 each way) with heavy traffic averaging close to 80 mph. Suddenly my car was limited to 8 mph. There was no place to pull off to the left, and I had to get across 5 lanes to the right shoulder. I thought I was going to die. I got out of the car, walked down the nearest exit to a gas station, called a taxi, and never got back in the car. (It was a company car, and they took it off my hands.)
Click to expand...
Remind me to never get in a car with you.
 
Better yet keep us informed of future purchases so we know what to stay away from.
Incredibly bad luck. Can only hope its a small percent of a large number of cars.
 
Totally get your concern. I turned in my Polestar 2 lease early after the collision avoidance system tried to put me into the oncoming lane on multiple occasions. Probably the most dangerous car I've ever owned. No way to disable the feature, and diagnosed by Polestar as "working as intended." Just had to be on my toes at all times in case collision avoidance randomly decides to cause a collision. Sure, easy to overpower, but felt like driving with a 5 year old who at any point will randomly grab the wheel.

The difference here is Lucid has identified a fault and has a fix for it. Power steering failures do happen, although quite rare these days. I'd say give them a chance.
 
hmp10 said:
Thus you join a long line of my relatives, friends, and acquaintances.
Click to expand...
I'm sensing that you might just have better spatial ability than all of them and so they just can't process the next level on which you drive

...you go bro!
 
hwy17er said:
I'm sensing that you might just have better spatial ability than all of them and so they just can't process the next level on which you drive

...you go bro!
Click to expand...

Well, there was that Gravity DE I wrecked last November when I failed to see an oncoming car . . . . Still trying to figure out what happened there.
 
hmp10 said:
Well, there was that Gravity DE I wrecked last November when I failed to see an oncoming car . . . . Still trying to figure out what happened there.
Click to expand...
Damn - that puts YOU back in to the equation. I liked it better when I was blaming the cars.... :)
 
hmp10 said:
Well, there was that Gravity DE I wrecked last November when I failed to see an oncoming car . . . . Still trying to figure out what happened there.
Click to expand...
sh*t happens
glad everyone was ok
 
hmp10 said:
Well, there was that Gravity DE I wrecked last November when I failed to see an oncoming car . . . . Still trying to figure out what happened there.
Click to expand...
That's one of the major causes of accidents. It's not a clear sign of there being anything wrong with you, and it happens to people of all ages. The only real defense is to try and slow down, and give your brain more time to process what your eyes are seeing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top