Years Ago I Purchased A Electric Helm From Morse Controls, I Needed A Zero To Low Effort Steering Due To A Disability. It Was Not Recommended For Speeds Over 60.
Its A Litte Sluggish In Response But Worked/s Fine For Me, But They Stopped Selling It And I Can't Even Find Anyone At Morse To Admit It Existed - So I Guess That Speeks For It.
I Do Know A Disabled Lobster Fishermen That Had A Joy Stick Throttle/steering Installed By The Company That Puts Them In The Navy Seals- Big 60-70' Fast Insertion Boat- But Probaby Big $$ - They Donated The System After He Was Injured So He Could Still Captain His Boat

You are also talking major money differences in up front cost. This equates to a totally different factory setup and tolerances.

For example if boat manufacturers had aircraft grade facilities, cross testing procedures, etc. my boat would have cost a million dollars. Sure, everything comes out perfect out of the box but it just wouldn't be worth it.

Most auto pilots are electric over hydraulic and not expensive at all comparatively. If there was a need or a want it would be fairly easy to add electric joystick steering (with some kind of override) to virtually any boat.

The new Gen IV Ilmors (650 and 725) plus all their ski boat engines are fly-by-wire throttle, as that's the way the intake systems come from Chrysler and GM, so there is little added expense. The proprietary Ilmor transmission that mates with the Indy stern drive is designed to operate on a fly-by-wire basis, but properly vetted and tested controls are not yet available.

Volvo's D-series Diesel sterndrives and IPS (pod) packages are all fly-by-wire throttle and shift, as they were designed that way from the start. In addition, the IPS systems are electric-over-hydraulic steering, which is also an option on the sterndrive packages. (This is what makes the joystick operation possible.) To date, Volvo has over 11,000 IPS systems and several thousand sterndrive systems in the field with few (if any) failures reported.

Mercury's first Axius system (steer-by-wire sterndrives) proved so problematic, that it was scrapped and replaced by Axius II, which seems to be far better.

Anyone who has ever had to thread a new push-pull cable down through an existing tightly-rigged boat won't miss the demise of those things...

That's no ****!!

Here's some more new throttle, shift, and maneuver by wire marine componentry...

All great input, thanks guys.

The reason why I started this thread is simple. boat builders (i.e. cigarette, OL, nortech, skater, etc) spend millions of dollars developing new hulls, carbon fiber inlays, digital read outs, etc...state of the art stuff, yet the steering and throttle technology is as archaic as the 1970's. the teleflex lines always seem to gum up and become resistant after only a few years use. quite sad. just my 0.02.