To my knowledge, there is no production vehicle available in the show rooms with braking or steering by wire. Both are direct with hydraulic assist (that way if the hydraulic assist were to fail one could still albeit with difficulty steer as well as brake.

Even if you cannot turn the ignition off, even if you cannot get the throttle to work, even if you cannot put the car in neutral, you still have the brakes (both main and parking) and steering. Granted in some situations the hydraulic assist may be down, but nevertheless both are still available.

Steer by wire and brake by wire are both possible. In fact they are in development right now. If anyone knows of a specific production vehicle with either brake or steering by wire and is available to buy from a show room, please do share!

Question was: Transmission/shifting by wire.

I believe there exists transmissions for which they are shift by wire and available on production vehicles. However it is still moot. Throttle fails, transmission fails, ignition on/off fails, there is still

(a) parking brakes, which are independent of main brakes
(b) main brakes
(c) steering

I will grant you that perhaps (b) may not be valid for the case because of the prevalence of ABS which is computer controlled, but ABS is by a computer which I believe is independent of the computer for the transmission and independent of the computer managing throttle position.

The possibility of either (a), (b), or (c) temporarily failing such that there is no evidence of failure after the fact, well, what are the odds, if any?

Mercedes used "brake by wire" on their E class and other models, but stopped and went back to normal hydraulics for the 2007 model year on the E. Too many issues.

It was called Sensotronic (or "SBC").

They may still use it on the SL and others, but I think it is being phased out on all models.

I'd uhhhh.... beg to differ on that one. :cool:

I call BS on the 120 thing.... My hands on research says they are all limited to 111...