For comparison, 3 minutes on google turned up a thesis by Chris Post at MIT comparing alternative steering interfaces for "next generation" electric vehicles, including yokes. Apparently they were more difficult to use and had worse performance across almost all metrics, especially braking time. Maybe Tesla's implementation resolves these issues, but they should demonstrate that.
This idea that you can stick a round wheel in some of these terrible sports cars and hypercars and it makes them safe is the height of stupidity. It's the whole package, traction control, safety cage, crumple zones, emergency braking etc.
Have you driven either ?
Nobody said that.
A car might invest a ton in structural safety, and trade that for some cool or sexy features. Be that speed, horrendous visibility or whatever. Some cars this trade results in terrible safety results. Tesla is not one of those yet. There are PLENTY that are.
The irony of course is this adamant view around steering wheels ignores their long history of being an actual safety hazard! Those of us with some memory of early safe issues will remember the data showing that in frontal impacts, steering wheels were being forcibly driven into the chests and bodies of drivers, killing them. There are still issues (usually if folks are too close to the wheel) with skull fractures / hand and wrist injuries etc.
For instance, if Honda put a car bomb in 1 Civic in a million, it'd still be one of the safest car designs around. But it's totally unnecessary, and they should be condemned. That they're overall much safer than my AMC Gremlin doesn't enter into it.
This makes my point even more clearly.
If you have Civics with bombs and civics without, and the ones without have a safety result that is higher overall, even if there is some arguable benefit of the bomb (ie, less likely to be carjacked?) if the design of the cars without the bomb results in a better safety result, those cars should be preferred.
I'm going to leave this here I think - I'm not sure who is on HN anymore, but it does feel like the actual engineering type folks are a smaller group, and so normal tradeoff analysis has turned into the outraged / condemn them type yelling.
And yes, they build vehicles with explosives in them, and those do drive around if there is a use, everything from military tanks, to construction and mining ops have vehicles with bombs in them. While MUCH more dangerous, the tradeoffs are considered worth it.
So you look at the whole package.
I want yellow blinkers on all vehicles. Something as basic as that is not required. Fast cars are allowed. And now we are not only saying that a different design shouldn't even be allowed to be considered, but the folks considering the design should be "condemned"?
Heads up - Tesla, and eventually others are pushing HARD on greater autonomy. I wouldn't be surprised if more and more designs started reducing the number of passenger controls. Airplanes have had this happen too. Spaceships same thing, crew dragon a lot fewer buttons. They were condemned for that as well.
My own guess? Tesla is too far ahead here (ie, their AI supplement is not yet ready), and may get reeled back.
But they are pushing this way. They don't want side mirrors, they want cameras as an example, and yes, folks condemn them for that too even through the fuel savings would be incredible. Folks condemned them for their "dangerous" batteries. They've been condemned repeatedly, but their death rates per mile driven are far better than the news stories make it seem.
However, in my experience with them as a Tesla Model Y owner, I don't trust Tesla to do it right. My Tesla's rain-sensing wipers are the worst rain-sensing wipers I've ever owned. To the point where my Tesla wipers are normally kept OFF instead of 'Auto' as I have had it in my BMW, Porsche and Volvo cars. I have to manually adjust wipers in the Tesla. Also, the FSD package makes the cruise control usable about 50% of the time. The rest of the time CC is worse than my 1982 Chevrolet Camaro. I could go on, but my point is made.
The only Tesla technology I'm impressed with is the motors and battery. That's what I bought it for, that's what I expected to get, and beyond that the car hasn't impressed me. So I won't give them benefit of the doubt with any new technology. They still can't get wipers or cruise control right, so why should I?