Direct Active Steer points Infiniti in the right direction

Direct Active Steer (DAS) is Infiniti’s own steer-by-wire system developed in-house for the Q50 sedan and Q60 coupe.

It's a controversial system, having been dropped from the upcoming Q60 Black S and copping a pasting from journalists, yet it has garnered nothing but praise from customers, according to Infiniti's Vice-President of Product Strategy at Infiniti, Francois Bancon.

"We have zero negative feedback on this," he told motoring.com.au during the local launch of the 2018 Infiniti QX80 SUV at the end of March.

"The main feedback, I should say, partially negative was from the US and from the media.

"And I understand, because maybe the way we communicated this technology was not perfect. To be honest.

"We should’ve told the whole story.

"We are targeting a long-term technology plan, which includes autonomous driving... And then DAS – steering by wire – makes sense."

So DAS was developed, according to Bancon, as a computerised means of keeping the front wheels steering straight ahead or slightly left, hard right – or whatever is appropriate – rather than as an all-round solution for fallible humans with differing preferences.

"When you move to AD [autonomous driving] – say level three [or] four autonomous drive – you need to control the steering perfectly," Bancon continued.

"When you’re going to drive the QX50 [the new SUV coming to Australia]... we have AD 1 – you’re going to see our curve following is perfect..."

Bancon believes the media criticism of DAS is emotional rather than entirely rational.

"I think it's psychology here..." he observed, noting also that the world's motoring media was "expecting something radically different."

"Actually it’s not so different, it’s just safer."