Are there any new cars that don’t have fly-by-wire acceleration controls?
I am assuming my terms are correct, about no mechanical connection between the foot feed and the fuel injection.
Thanks for any help Jim
It’s drive by wire…and NOT all cars have this.
Where do I get my flying car? I want one! 
Yes drive by wire, or more appropriately, throttle by wire in this case. No physical connection with a cable exists, so the computer can better control the mixture for better power and mileage.
Some low-end ones may still have a cable throttle, but it is getting rare. Pop the hood - it is easy to tell by the lack of a cable in the firewall (if you can see around all the plastic covers).
Why are you wanting to avoid ETC (aka throttle-by-wire)?
I have a combined figure of 220K miles on my two cars with ETC with no problems from that system.
I’m sure there must still be a few, but they’re getting more and more scarce every day.
If there was still a car made with a throttle cable I would bet Chrysler.
My 2006 Chrysler has an electronic throttle. There is a throttle cable running to a control unit in the trunk.
Why would you think Chrysler? If anything, they’ve been a step or two ahead on electronics for years, despite what you might think of them. Incidentally, their electronic throttle will disengage if you tap the brake. How hard would it have been for Toyota to have included one more line of code to do this in their software? It would likely have prevented the whole unintended acceleration debacle.
You may be concerned about the Toyotas that exhibited unintended acceleration, which was attributed to the electronic throttle. It was recently shown that this could not occur. The only unintended acceleration that occurred was due to the wear problem in the gs pedal or the mis-fit floor mats. Don’t sweat the drive-by-wire systems.
Give me a cable ANYDAY…
Cables are becoming rare tho these days I’m sad to say… The new systems of fly by… seem very reliable tho…but someday they just have to burn out with all the millions of throttling actions it must perform in the life of the car…We havent had them long enough to see them fail by useage limit yet is my guess.
I agree with you about Chrysler…They actually have been one of the leading innovators in the past 20 years. Too bad their quality control wasn’t as good.
Mechanical cables eventually fail too, and in either case the throttle body can wear out.
I suspect that the electronic systems will last longer, but will be more difficult to diagnose, and will be more expensive to replace when they do fail.
I think that the driving force causing them to be used everywhere is that they allow a little more MPG to be coaxed out of a car.
A main driver of using drive by wire is electronic stability control systems which are prevalent in modern cars.
I am guessing really basic vehicles or older designs without electronic stability may still have throttle cables.
I am curious as to where that info comes from?
There are (or were) cars with electronic stability control that still had mechanical throttle cables. The system is cleaner with ETC because the computer can just reduce the throttle opening, but it still works with mechanical throttles. In the case of the mechanical ones, some of the fuel injectors are disabled to reduce engine power when needed. It’s not as smooth, but it works.
I’ll site an example. All years of the Lincoln LS had stability control. The 2000-2002 years had mechanical throttle cables, and the 2003-2006 had ETC. The specs for the stability control (AdvanceTrac) did not change between generations, but performance/mileage did.
So yes, stability control could be a driver of the use of ETC, but it is not the main one. I believe that to be mileage, but I am prepared to believe otherwise if some facts could be presented. What about the cars that have ETC but don’t have stability control?
Sincere thanks to the web managers.
Mechanical cables eventually fail too
Yeah, but they fail to “idle throttle,” which is a lot safer than a Toyota-esque “OMG I can’t stop!” failure.
I already did MB - lets keep it up.