Tesla finally breaks and offers round steering wheel on Model S/X | Hacker News Reader

Tesla finally breaks and offers round steering wheel on Model S/X

electrek.co

97 pointsmfiguiere132 comments

I have 20k miles driving a Model S with a Yoke. While I'm not a huge fan, the yoke itself is only part of the problem. The bigger problems are:

1. The capacitive buttons for turn signals. They are dangerous. They require taking eyes from the road, offer no feedback, and are honestly dangerous.

2. The horn. It's not in the middle. It's off to the side as a no-feedback capacitive button. Every time I've needed to use the horn, I've been unable to find the button. I think recent S/X Updates have moved it back, but it's so dumb.

It's a feature set designed to look cool on Twitter. Not really for driving.

Yikes, buttons for turn signals? I can barely get a "legacy" horn to honk sometimes even

physical buttons are reliable, easily repairable, more accessible to people with a variety of conditions, allow you to memorize location with feel, etc. I've never met anyone who's preferred capacitive buttons over physical ones yet more and more every "smart" technology seems to be opting for them. Some have even added haptic touch-like software to them... just to regain the feeling of the thing that everyone misses but without actually giving them the thing they want...

Apart from regulation mandating that safety features work, are reliable and are easy to use (physical buttons), I think we need some new economic theory.

Why is it that for products with complex spec sheets, the free market (the auto industry is arguably not a free market) does not work to provide the desired diversity? Automakers clearly have the incentive to make any control a capacitive touch surface for many many reasons. Many people hate touch controls for important features in cars. Yet most automakers are switching to touch controls. Free market theory says that other manufacturers should appear and satisfy that desire for consumers. This isn't happening.

I do not know of a economic theoretical model that accurately explains the behaviour of complex (many orthogonal characteristics) goods.

The economic models assume consumers have more power than they do. It's easier for industry to convince (or force) people that they want (or have to take) what they produce, rather than produce what people want. For example, everyone wants a simple and reliable inkjet printer for home that doesn't have drm or other bullshit. But we aren't getting it and probably never will.

I sincerely hope that capacitance buttons and touchscreens are just a fad like digital speed dials from the 80s. They seemed cool, but ultmately analog dials (even if controlled by digital signals) were just better. I think physical knobs and buttons will come back for the same reason as round steering wheels. It's just the best solution to the problem.

> The economic models assume consumers have more power than they do.

That is a fair assessment. But what is the cause of it? What I am saying is we need better models. Better theory.

> It's easier for industry to convince (or force) people that they want (or have to take) what they produce, rather than produce what people want.

And what is the cause of the bandwagoning? I generally do not think it is a case of industry wide collusion (though in some cases it might be). Why is a company going the opposite direction of a trend and marketing that difference a somewhat rare phenomenon? At least partially, I think the cause is marketing driven development. But that still doesn't explain why marketing departments are shy to market going against a trend. It's as if marketing departments of companies buy into the marketing of the trendy company.

How many smartphone companies actively advertise they still have phone jacks? How many car companies actively advertise they are still using physical buttons? They could but they don't. Samsung used to make fun of Apple in their ads but even they became apathetic. Apple used to make fun of the rest of the industry with their Mac vs PC ads. Sony could easily make an ad showing how a DJ takes their Sony phone and plugs it in literally everywhere using the jack to play music to a crowd.

[s] Damnit, I want my car to have hot-swappable, RGB-illuminated, Cherry MX mechanical switches with double-shot keycaps. [/s]

There is probably more than one cause, but consider the headphone jack one. Apple decided it wanted to get rid of it. Reasons were that they could make regular headphones less convenient (needs dongle) while simultaneously convincing people that air pods are the thing to have. They didn't have to market 'against' the headphone jack, only add friction to use it (via dongle) while heavily marketing 'for' air pods. Nokia wouldn't have gotten away with this, but Apple could because of clout, product status symbology, and massive cash spends available for ads. Most people don't really like the loss, but the idea of not having the latest phone was worse, so they bought them. Other phone manufacturers then follow suit because they see apple sales and think, they must be doing the right thing. Meanwhile, we hate it.

Telsa was the same for cars. They came out with a bunch of style choices that most people don't really care for, but the status of having a telsa (at least until recently) was a more powerful driver so they bought the car. Other auto manufacturers interpret this as that its what the consumer wants (or will accept) and change accordingly, especially if it also saves them money. Then boom, we get cars with crappy UI.

So I guess my theory is that if an industry has a clear leader whose product offers status along with function, they can make the customer accept pretty much whatever they want. After that, the competition just copies it hoping to keep what market share they have.

I agree with your analysis and it matches my thoughts.

But then, wouldn't a naive conclusion be that in order to maintain the freedom of the market, the appearance of status symbol brands/products must be prevented?

That's a tall order. Humans really like status symbols, not only as proof of status but as reminders of status.

> Humans really like status symbols

I think this is HUGE understatement. Humans are all about status (speaking in general terms, of course there will be individual exceptions). Status means access to scarce resources, status means choice of mates, status is everything. People will optimize for status ahead of nearly everything else and in a way this is rational because with status can come anything else they may want or need.

With the tiny nitpick that there is a distinction between signalling status and having status itself. And the relationship between the two is not always straight forward.

Status symbols are more related to the former.

A further observation here is that selling status symbols is what Apple does. They have transitioned from being a computer manufacturer for the DTP and creative industry to being a luxury brand. But that itself is not enough. In the pre-iPhone days, Vertu was the luxury cellphone brand. Similarly, there are plenty of car brands that are more exclusivist than Tesla. Yet they do not have the same outsized influence on the market.

Therefore the issue probably is a status symbol that scales to the mass market.

Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) mentioned that his right capacitive turn signal button is occasionally unresponsive with his Model S Plaid and he's had to resort to lane changes without a turn signal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34VZzBWBDN0&t=648s

Granted, this is one anecdotal case. But when spending over 100K on a car, features like this should be bullet-proof.

Actually ... scratch that. Features like this should be bullet-proof because they have been a solved problem for ~50+ years. Tesla is sacrificing safety for minimal cost savings and/or style points.

Features like these should be bulletproof because they pose a serious safety hazard.

Safety features should be priority number one for any car manufacturer. You can ship with a crappy infotainment system but please don’t screw around with basic safety.

In the first place, how are non-working blinkers not illegal to drive with?

You can use hand signals, but obviously that's far from ideal.

How are they not illegal to sell to drivers? I am continually astonished about the social experiment being done on drivers buying these cars and others who have no choice but to share the road with them.

Do you feel like you’re happy with your model s given the issues/compromises of the yoke you mentioned above?

The industry wide reduction of real buttons/switches and gauges is something that gives me pause on my next car purchase. I was initially thinking of getting a golf r but the infotainment and steering wheel capacitive buttons are almost universally criticized as really bad and there not being any real way to fix it.

When I saw the yoke I thought it was a concept car and they would come to their senses and use a wheel for production.

My wish list for an electric car: 1) be a dumb car. Minimal screens/animations/annoyances 2) if you do OTA updates I want to be able to reject a version and or revert to any version from any other version of the system software 3) don’t track me or show me ads 4) no feature on the car should require additional or recurring payments to use with very limited exceptions (thinking navigation updates etc) specifically don’t disable something on my car because I don’t pay future moneys for its use. 5) I’m fine with fast but I would rather have a reasonably quick car that pushes 400miles of range without needing a 200kwh battery. I get that big motors also help make big regenerative power but I would like a car that has similar performance to say an Audi s4 or bmw 340m but electric. 6) simple is fine but the model 3 is oversimplified. they really can’t put simple gauges in front of the driver? I feel like every feature of most teslas is built for this looming full self driving where some of these features make more sense. I think the odds today are pretty good that someone who takes delivery today of a new Tesla will send it to the junkyard before fsd really fully self drives. 7) don’t try to drive for me and allow tweaking of things like brake /steering feel, suspension settings.

The VW CEO recently said that physical buttons would be coming back sometime this year, so you may be able to get that Golf after all. :-)

https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/tech/vw-infotainment-...

The horn is in the middle now.

Besides, if you cover multiple buttons on the right with your palm, the horn will sound.

Jesus the capacitive touch signaling is astoundingly stupid.

The horn, though. In decades of driving, I've used my horn maybe once or twice.

Here in India we have to use horns twice a minute.

If they want to sell cars in the developing world, they better make their inputs tactile or people won’t buy them.

Yeah but the Model 3 is a 58 lakh car before the import duty. If you have to pay 1 crore for a car, you're going to make your driver suffer through the horn.

IMHO India will have indigenous EVs far before Tesla.

I doubt India is of any concern to Tesla, except for cheap labor.

When that rare case happens, though, it can be rather important to signal fast.

How often have you used your airbag?

About as many times, but the key thing is that the horn is only useful if I'm static since otherwise it's faster for me to evade than honk. I estimate ~0.5 s to 1 s net delay to action if I were to honk, with 0.5 s to 1 s delay in action from other person if they're fast. At a 2 s delay, unless I'm not moving, evasion + braking seems superior. And evasion is made harder while honking. I've had many times where people run red lights in front of me (I live in SF) but I've never honked. It's frequently too late to do anything so I just brake.

The point I was making was that something doesn’t need to be used often for it to be important and for you to want it to be reliable.

Also, the horn is a signal. It allows you to evade and alert other users that something needs their attention. Maybe they need to avoid you while you avoid something else.

I used it with some degree of frequency, because I had to drive past that one specific curve. Sharp corner with a big elevation change, narrow road, narrow pavement. It was a visibility nightmare and honking the horn was the only way you could signal your presence to people coming in the other direction.

Once a pickup truck decided to back out of a failed left turn when the light turned red. Stupid and illegal.

I'd remained well behind the stop line, lots of space between us, so I figured he was just using up a little of it to get his nose out of the middle of the intersection and I hesitated.

He had no idea my sedan was there and backed right over my hood.

I'd never used the horn in that car. It took a firmer press than I expected, a slightly different angle... the milliseconds involved in figuring that out contributed to the accident.

It's worth practicing your horn in any car you're driving and it's worth honking at someone backing up if you're not absolutely sure they see you.

Hmm, that's a reasonable scenario. I don't envision I'll ever be in it, but the cost of knowing how to honk is low. Fair point. Convinced.

Sounds almost like the flat web UI that took over the desktops is now infecting physical gadgets.

Makes you wonder when they'll turn the pedals and steering wheel into capacitive touch interfaces.

Worse, they'll make them into the touch-screen where you have to do a specific gesture to turn right, a different one to turn left, and one needing both hands to apply the brakes.

Took me very little time to learn the signal buttons. I honestly prefer it now. I just barely wiggle my thumb. Laziness level 1000 reached!

I never use the horn… but yeah the middle airbag thing should just be a horn button. Leave the touch horn control if you want, no downside I guess.

It wasn't the shape of the wheel that was the problem. It was the unasked-for capacitive-touch turn signal buttons located on the left side of the wheel, instead of a turn-signal lever. The round wheel keeps those useless buttons, so is not a solution to the problem. You still have to use your left thumb to pick between these two buttons. They don't push in, have no feedback and they are often unresponsive, especially when you attempt to push one while turning the wheel at the same time with your left thumb at an odd angle. It just doesn't work. Bring back the turn signal lever.

Mercedes put a bunch of these in the $100k plus EQS.

Car companies: we are begging you, please stop with controls without pressure sensitivity and haptic feedback. Copy apple if you need to, just cut it out!

Apple is not the only or the first manufacturer that did this, they wouldn't be copying Apple if they do this.

Apparently, VW are going to bring back buttons after lots of feedback like yours:

https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/volkswagen-relents-and-brin...

I have a Model S Plaid and they do have haptic feedback when you press them, but the problem is they require muscle memory to know the exact place to press to get left/right turn signal or horn.

I'm 6'1" and the horn is particularly problematic because it requires stretching your right thumb an uncomfortable amount to hit it. It reminds me of using a very large smartphone and trying to use your thumb to reach a tap point at the top of the screen. Terrible UX. There have been several times I've needed to honk at someone quickly and been unable to hit the right button.

The other issue with the yoke is that it still requires the same amount of turns as a normal wheel, so 3 point turns and U turns become more challenging. I've adapted, but you also have to use the touchscreen to select forward/reverse, so 3 point turns are like this: - Turn the wheel hard left (hand over hand but you have to grab only the sides) - Brake, then slide reverse on the touchscreen (taking your eyes off the road) - Turn the wheel hard right (hand over hand again) - Brake, then slide forward on the touchscreen (taking your eyes off the road again) - accelerate out of the turn while straightening the wheel

I"m a pretty capable driver but this is way harder than it should be and I can't imagine my wife or many "normal" drivers being able to manage all of this, while taking their eyes off the road, and not causing an accident.

Tesla makes great cars, but it's amazing that NHTSA hasn't recalled the yoke yet...

You just explained it doesn't make great cars, and you wish the government could make them make great cars.

They make cars with some great features and a lot of bad ones. I thought we could get over Model 3 Performance issues because the drivetrain and range were great, but all the other stuff was just way too much. 3 years. It was an overall, if barely, positive experience. What is amusing is most of it is unforced problems. Purposeful bad design decisions that put critical car features in difficult to use places with bad feedback mechanisms for no apparent reason. It is honestly perplexing. Eventually we gave up, it was just not good having critical features of driving a car change year to year. We have an Audi e-tron now. Wish the range was better, but it is better in almost every other way.

I wish the government could make them make safe cars or not sell them for use on public roads. They used to do that and it wasn’t controversial for like 36? of my 40 years on this earth.

Do you need to go hand over hand or is single finger enough?

You need to go hand over hand. If you're good you can use the palm of a single hand to rotate the wheel (kind of like those handlebars that people used to put on steering wheels years ago to turn them easier).

Touchscreen for forward/reverse? That's totally, literally insane!

Yes, and this is the problem. The shape of the wheel is literally the only thing about it that's fine. At least you got something in return. The shape is "cool". There's nothing "cool" about these f'king buttons and touchscreen forward/reverse.

Any time you change something in UX, there is always a backlash. You have to give something back. You have to make the change worthwhile. Add some kind of benefit to the user in return for their having to swallow the crap. The shape of the wheel being "cool" is the benefit here. Changing it back to round without removing all the other surrounding bad UX changes is worse, because you're taking away the benefit while keeping in place most of the crap.

The shape is very much a problem since this steering rack is not a variable ratio one!

You should be happy that the pedals do not slide when you take turns. /s

That is what happens when web developers design cars.

The turn signals and horn are hidden in a hamburger menu. Brakes and accelerator both hang waiting on a callback from Google analytics. Approx 30mb of js are downloaded each time you want to roll the windows just to make pointless assanine "breezy/not breezy" animations play on hover. The windshield wipers do half a wipe and then the windshield goes dark and a modal pops up asking if you want to subscribe.

Absolutely horrible design was the yoke. Almost crashed into neighbours' car due to it. Had to dump the car itself since I hated the steering so much. Who came up with such a dumb idea. This is as dumb as the touchbar on the mac pros.

It was probably a cost-saving measure, just like the touchpad in lieu of a physical console.

Is a boxy yoke cheaper than a round wheel?

On Model 3 it's needed to have cost saving measures, on Model S it isn't.

Which is what makes it doubly tragic when they are not needed, but shipped anyways.

I suspect that a lot of Tesla design decisions boil down to positioning it as "innovative" and "disrupting" compared to normal cars.

Well, we've watched this at Twitter right - Musk will come in with a really strong dumb opinion on some weirdly specific issue, and then insist on a specific solution and only relent after the decision has been implemented and shown to be wrong. The yoke is the Tesla version of the Twitter Blue Tick. The rumours are that the guys at SpaceX are just much better at managing Elon and avoiding this, but it makes you wonder what weird decisions have been made there too.

I literally cancelled my Plaid S order and switched to a Model Y over the stupidity of the yoke. I simply could not square that circle, so to speak. They emailed me telling me it was going to be ready for delivery and I said, "you know what, I can tell I'm going to hate it."

I'm really glad I did that. I simply cannot understand how the yoke ever made sense, aside from being a 13-year-old's idea of what a cool car would look like. I'm not changing 25 years of functional muscle memory for... literally no practical improvements at all. And the removal of the stalks is goddamn criminal. To save, what, a couple hundred dollars on a $150k car?

That coupled with the rumored removal of ultrasonic sensors is some very stupid forest-for-trees regressions in "if it ain't broke, don't break it" world.

The yoke is very comfortable to rest your hand on while FSD is enabled, doesn't obscure the instrument cluster display, and you get used to it immediately. Like the old saying goes, don't knock it till you've tried it.

But the Y has no instrument cluster. Which is one of my favorite features! Because in any other car, I always find part of the instrument cluster occluded by the wheel.

I do agree that the yoke partially solves this problem, but it introduces many others (so I've heard; I admit I haven't tried it). Regardless, I'd just rather have no cluster.

> The yoke is very comfortable to rest your hand on while FSD is enabled

Seems like the opposite is true: https://youtu.be/-QBWfw_nkr0?t=152

Letting the wheel slide through your hand like that doesn't apply a torque, so you will get nagged and you will have to jiggle the wheel once in a while. By resting your hand on the corner of the yoke, it has just enough torque to keep the system happy indefinitely.

I reckon what you are seeing with Tesla's is kind of what Musk is doing with Twitter...

Essentially, remove and/or change a bunch of things (people & features) then see if it still works in production. Literally the same thing is happening with a range of Tesla's - the Model Y is the more "normal" car because its cheaper thus more popular. Whereas the more expensive Tesla's have the more experimental crap, because people with more money are tolerant of bespoke/weird shit.

My S was wrecked in a crash (I was unhurt luckily) and instead of replacing it with a new S I bought a Y instead, solely because of the yoke with the touch controls instead of a round wheel with stalks. I can't be the only person who reacted like that, because Tesla wouldn't even let you test drive a car with the yoke last I checked.

How do you like the Y coming from the S? We had a 3 and added a Y and now we barely drive the 3. Strictly a commuter.

Not OP but I own an S and a Y. The S has a generous air suspension while the Y feels like driving a deuce and a half; very rough suspension (although I’ve heard new Ys since a few months ago are getting something more fancy now). Higher ride height is also nice. Pros and cons. Still love the S even though she’s a chonk and rides low. Interior in both is spartan. Towing with the Y is a treat for trailers within its rating.

If you have to pick, I’d recommend a Y almost always over the others. It’s the optimal intersection of price and value across all models.

If you have to pick,

There's literally no one that is forced to choose from $50,000+ electric cars.

If one has chosen to buy a Tesla, one must choose which to purchase...? It’s pretty clearly an expensive luxury good with robust demand, sooooo what’s the argument? Don’t buy one if you’re not of the means to afford one. If you’ve decided to buy a Tesla, I’m sharing which you’ll get the most value out of.

Average price of a new car is $45k-48k btw. 17 million new auto sales per year in the US. $50k-$60k isn’t egregious considering total cost of ownership savings. One could buy an equally expensive combustion vehicle I suppose. Prices for a new Toyota Highlander currently range from $37k to $67k, for example.

I wasn't arguing, was just poking fun at the phrasing that suggested buyers were forced to choose between a couple of expensive cars from one company.

My apologies! I was in the mindset of “if you can only acquire one Tesla [for whatever reason], this is the one you’d want.” There are plenty of other fine EV models out there for a consumer to pick from if a Tesla isn’t right for them.

Are there a lot of people that decide they need a Tesla but aren't sure which one they need?

Seems like a strange approach to buying a car.

I debated really hard between trading in my Y for an X so I could have a bigger car for my growing family. Decided to keep the Y because the X just didn't add enough space to make it worthwhile. Not to mention the unnecessary doors (roof storage is now impossible!), the yoke, and the twice as big price tag. Y is perfect for me other than I wish it was bigger.

I love the Y. The extra storage and more upright driving position are great, and I am able to take more adventurous roads that would bottom out the S. My dog also has more room in the back.

As Fred mentions the main problem with the steering wheel is that the car doesn't change the steering ratio depending on the speed.

WHAT? Facepalm. Everytime I read something new about the yoke, I m amazed how incompetent the people are, that put that in a car.

Lexus already has steer-by-wire for its yoke steering wheel, hopefully Tesla will catch up this year

lol.... who would have thought that a circular shape would be better for a steering wheel in a consumer car...

If you set out to reinvent many of aspects that are conventional of a complex machine like a car, I’ll forgive you for not getting 100% of them right.

Which is why you shouldn't "set out to reinvent" just for the sake of looking cool, and why Tesla is starting to be valued at what it's actually worth, aka not a whole lot.

> aka not a whole lot

Lord grant me a business worth $400B, aka not a whole lot.

It's still got a way to go until it reaches a sane valuation, and the stock is still falling.

I'd love for it to drop to a 'sane' valuation so I could get in. Already itching to pull the trigger, but I think it could shave off another $20-30.

You could sell secured put options and end up making a decent return even if it doesn't drop

http://opcalc.com/PJM

Tesla's average transaction was $65K in 2022. There were 1.3 million transactions. That's $84.5B in transactions. Companies are typically valued at 7x their transactions which would be $591.5B - which we'll just call $600B. If Tesla is currently valued at $400B then they're undervalued by 33% and that would put Tesla at a BUY.

These are all back-of-the-napkin calculations and assumes Tesla will sell as many cars in 2023 as they did in 2022 and in fact will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I'm not an automotive industry expert but I don't see any reason why Tesla wouldn't. I think part of the reason Tesla's stock pulled back so much in 2022 is the realization that Tesla may not have that much GROWTH left.

A single u-turn should have been all Tesla needed to understand how terrible an idea yoke is. You try arm over arm, then crash the car.

There are other hand methods when using a yoke that work just as well. I think they assumed people would adapt. Considering it's already an EV maybe they thought people would be more willing to try new things.

I have over 25k miles in an S with a yoke, there was one day where I was exiting a parking lot and the yoke was upside down and the turn signals buttons were backwards that was a slight annoyance. Other than that I have never had an issue turning with the yoke and wouldn't want to go back to a wheel that blocks the instrument cluster constantly.

> that blocks the instrument cluster constantly.

they also could move the instruments (but besides the speedometer... most of them are somewhat useless anyways... and with a FSD car, even the speedometer should be useless)

never driven a tesla, but also steer by palming rather than hand over hand so can't people just do that?

This is a pretty generous framing. The use case differences between round and rectangular steering wheels are well understood. There was something else motivating this, not "reinventing the conventional", as it would be phrased in a TV spot.

I won't forgive Elon Musk for trying to put a transmission in an electric car... luckily it didn't work.

I have an S with a yoke and prefer it to a round steering wheel. 95% of the time it’s better: you can see the entire dashboard and your body can feel the angle of the wheel instinctively. 5% of the time it’s worse, during low speed maneuvers.

> low speed maneuvers

AKA maneuvers. Driving on the highway in a straight line is not a maneuver.

You should be able to see the entire dash board with any steering wheel

It really depends on your height and preferred wheel height setting. I'm tall and in some cars the wheel obscures a good portion of the insturments.

There are significant and effective federal regulations around this. If you are telling the truth, your steering wheel is way too high, and you need to lower it

Not who you are responding to, but I have a tall sitting height and I suspect that the steering wheel is too low. Consider this diagram of a properly adjusted steering wheel (instrumentation is where the "II" is):

     /----\
    /  II  \
    |------|
    \      /
     \----/

If you are tall what can happen is:

     /-II-\
    /      \
    |------|
    \      /
     \----/

A telescoping steering wheel helps quite a bit because you can adjust your seat back/forth more to get a good angle, but in cars without telescoping steering wheels, I have the second sight-picture at any position in which it is comfortable to hold the steering wheel.

If you are suggesting:

       II
     /----\
    /      \
    |------|
    \      /
     \----/

then this will render the airbags ineffective.

Exactly. This happens to me because I'm tall. If I adjust the wheel to not obscure the cluster, then it's no longer comfortable for my back/shoulders.

My single favorite feature of the 3/Y is that there is no instrument cluster.

Some cars like a prius just center the cluster

There are better solutions than chopping off half the wheel though. For example, Volkswagen ditched the binnacle and put the gauge cluster screen on the steering column instead of on the dashboard. This is so that it can move up and down with the steering wheel to whatever height it's set at. Unfortunately VW also used capacitive buttons, but apparently they will go back to real buttons in the future.

It's a very natural thing to unwind a wheel with a dragged hand when entering traffic from a stop on a perpendicular side street. And I'd argue that's far more than 5% of the substantial steering a driver does.

They could have just flattened the circle on the top like a D wheel to give some clearance on the instrumentation. Interrupting the continuous shape with a yoke is the problem, not that it isn't a circle.

It's as if the decision makers behind the yoke don't drive themselves, or were actively trying to make the driving experience worse to compel FSD adoption

Depends on where you drive. I live in SE PA. Roads here tend to be winding, even in the suburbs. Like "slow down to 20 mph so you don't slide off the road" winding. Never mind going into Philly with its weird intersections and tight turns.

Maybe 5% of your driving it's worse, it would be more like 70% of mine. I don't need to see the entire dashboard, I can get all the info I need just fine through the wheel, which adjusts. Also, cars with HUDs are a thing if you go for top level trims.

But when muscle memory matters, I want a wheel to grab. One double-take because the yoke isn't where my instincts expect could be one too many, it's like taking the shoulder-harness off your seat belt so that you look better while driving. Just serves no good purpose beyond vanity.

You know what's even better? A proper HUD.

Thank God! Maybe this means they'll offer a round wheel (as an option or whatever) on the CyberTruck!!!!!!!! I despise the yolk with a fiery passion, but have zero problems with other people having one. Just give us the option! I won't even consider a car with a yolk (maybe if there is an easy modification).

Blocking the dash screen is a non-argument. Never had a problem in many cars with seeing the display through the wheel. With a yolk, you are forced to hold it in a certain way. In an emergency, grabbing the yolk is less certain than grabbing a wheel. It's easier to put way too much torque in the yolk causing more steering than desired. The capacitive buttons are dumb (yolk or not).

The stalk for PRND and a separate stalk for signals is better, and put back the wiper controls while you're at it!

What did eggs ever do to you? I will see myself out :)

I drove a friends plaid. I would buy one on the spot if it had more physical controls and a round steering wheel. The performance of them is just so fun for daily driving and the range is amazing too. Ahh well, Elon gonna Elon.

Literally tried to reinvent the wheel and is now paying the consequences.

Yeah but I'm glad they are trying new things. If it isn't better, then revert.

With cars especially, I'd rather they don't do it "in prod" - meaning on the roads where I also drive.

The problem isn't trying new things, it's trying new things in stupid ways. The car industry has a whole structure for this - the concept car. And you can see, most of the time, they show the concept people go "But that's dumb because of <x>, and then they don't try and sell it to customers! They're constantly putting out new concept cars to explore new ideas, and the good ones they then incorporate into production cars - like Lexus did, producing a car that has a yoke that actually has a technology solution to the obvious problems of a yoke.

Instead, Tesla goes "We're going to do this cool new thing!" people quite rightly respond "Ok, how did you solve <obvious problem>" and then Tesla sells the car with the obvious flaw anyway. You don't actually need to sell a shitty steering wheel for several years.

People aren't asking them to be less creative, they're asking them to be competent.

This isn't how you do things when there's the possibility of injuring people. Even worse, those being injured aren't necessarily those who made the decision to buy the vehicle - it's everybody else on the road.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable in saying I don't want my life dependent on the whims of Tesla.

The yoke only makes sense if you use FSD beta 24/7

Actually isn't it more annoying? FSD will be turning the wheel a lot more than regular autopilot, but you still have to keep hands on the wheel frequently or it will disengage. It will only be better when hands on wheel is no longer required.

Some new FSD systems only require that you look forward. There is a camera that monitors your eyes

What if you wear sunglasses while driving?

Then you have to jiggle the wheel.

Not Tesla's. They have a camera but it still requires wheel movement very frequently. Though Elon did say they'll remove that, who knows.

You don't have to keep your hands on the yoke during hard turns with the FSD beta. Even with a wheel, it would be hard to signal the right amount of pressure without disengaging when their is a lot of movement going on.

Yeah but with the wheel you can grip it loosely and let it slide through your fingers whenever you want. With the yoke you'll be forced to constantly let go and grab it again to silence the nagging.

Hmm, I wonder if that's exactly when I'd want a conventional steering wheel, when I have to quickly override the computer.

> There are even some driving scenarios where the butterfly not only becomes impractical but potentially dangerous....

> As for the lack of stalks, Tesla replaced all of their functions with force touch buttons on the wheel, even for things like turn signals and the horn. Musk’s logic is that “all input is an error,” and that the car should automatically perform all the functions that were on the stalks (now on the force touch buttons).

Was Musk's New Year's resolution to shatter, one and for all, the world's belief in his competence?

All of these choices were really, really stupid.

any indication on whether people with yokes can get a normal steering wheel replacement?

i don't mind the turn signal buttons but the driving experience is not ideal for quick reactions, and the horn...has got to go

Yes, there will be a $700 retrofit.

Does Tesla do any real usability testing? Or is it strictly yes-man grab ass and fanboys?

/capacitive/ turn signals without even haptic feedback? How the fuck did that get through initial design? How is that even legal?

With the fiasco that is the objectively stupid cabin design of the Semi on top of bullshit like this it really makes you wonder what the hell they do over there.

The yoke was just gratuitous. In addition to being a stupid and atypical design even for a yoke--where the grip is under the center of rotation and (as mentioned) it has a constant ratio (making low-speed turns ridiculous)--the mechanism was never designed for use in cars where you need to make complex parking maneuvers: the concept comes from racecars.

When I saw they were going in that direction, I nearly considered not wanting to even try a Tesla, as "worse case" I'd actually like the car and then one day I'd need a new one and I wouldn't be able to get one anymore without a yoke. I finally decided they were probably going to cave, and "lo and behold" they did ;P.

One thing I did was watched a ton of videos of Tesla fanbois defending it on YouTube with videos claiming "if you don't like the yoke you clearly don't know how to drive, let me show you how easy it is to use" and then confidently driving around a parking lot while constantly fumbling with the wheel which they clearly weren't good at using and they were so self-absorbed into their narrative that they somehow failed to even realize their video was proving the opposite of what they wanted to anyone who actually cares about driving feeling natural rather than being something you have to concentrate hard to pull off.

But like, if you try to analyze the wheel just from a business perspective, it feels like an unforced error: I can't imagine many people at all--possibly not even anyone--were making the decision to buy a Tesla because of the yoke steering wheel. They aren't on the fence about this car that is already so unlike every other car on the market and then suddenly they see the wheel and think "wow... that's it: that's the detail that is selling me on it".

Here's the scenario which feels much more likely: people are already trying to decide whether a Tesla is right for them, trying to get over the "range anxiety" that plagues electric vehicles and having to be convinced that they were going to be able to find convenient opportunities to charge (in my case, I rent an apartment, like a lot of people, and virtually everyone I know; I thereby simply can't charge at home) and then they do a test drive and now realize they have another problem: they need to decide if they can tolerate the yoke steering wheel.

And, maybe they can! But now the sales person is having to defend multiple things at once, and this one is frankly a doozy as you are dealing with someone who has been driving a car so far their entire life and has potentially decades of motor memory--many tens of thousands of hours--working with round steering wheels and are suddenly feeling a bit relieved that these electric cars are some kind of joke because of the yoke.

Even if the yoke were a good thing (and I'm pretty confident it isn't) in the long term, it seems absolutely daft to try to introduce it in a car that is already--by its very nature--having to be extremely different from every other car on the market on another critical axis unless it is a clear and obvious win where almost everyone who tries it thinks "omg I didn't even realize I was missing this until I tried it and now I can't go back" (which, btw, I'd claim Tesla actually pulls off surprisingly often): if the feature is even slightly controversial it is almost certainly going to cost you too many idiosyncrasy credits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiosyncrasy_credit

The yoke would work if a full turn was at 90 degrees. This yoke is just a steering wheel cut funny

So now they can call it steering wheel. Before it was steering rounded rectangle.

I've driven the Model S for 13 months. Initially I was very apprehensive. But here is how my thinking has progressed: 1. 30 days prior to acquiring the car, I solely drove with hands on 3-and-9 in my conventional car; 2. First 30 days of driving, I practiced the turn signals and and horn at random parts of my drive to develop muscle memory; 3. First 6 months, I fully adapted to the 3-and-9 handling. I had 'button mishaps' maybe 2-5% of the time; 4. Final 7 months, button-errors diminished to sub-1%. Some maneuvers are actually easier in the yoke than with a regular wheel. A U-turn is reminiscent of using the old rotary-dial telephones. You just dial the wheel counter-clockwise by hooking your left pointer-finger in the small valley on the upper left of the yoke.

I drive with some quirks that remove certain issues others have with the yoke. I never park next to a car -- and benefit from longer walks to stores, etc. Consequently, I rarely have any surprises as I pull in and out, and don't need to make sudden maneuvers. Moreover, even in the telephone-dial turn technique, my turning hand knows exactly where the 3 O'clock or 9 O'clock position is, and can adjust from 'dialing' to grasping.

Now I've had experience piloting various aircraft -- so, its remotely possible I have slightly more brain plasticity than your average bear. So your mileage may vary. I also benefit from the advantage of driving through icy conditions once every 3 years or so.

TL;DR: By six months of driving, my early apprehensions were allayed, and all phases of driving are no worse while driving the yoke.

Oh, and in case you think I have any weird biases: Elon Musk sucks in managing Tesla for the last 12 months, at least.

So for six months you were driving less safely, even while benefitting from your extra "brain plasticity"? Extrapolate that to a wide variety of consumers who dont have any experience piloting aircraft and what do you get?

Less safe roads for no reason other than style points. No one remotely capable of driving a car thinks doing a u-turn needs to be "easier".

That’s a new selling point: if you’re an experienced pilot, you can probably learn to drive our car in a mere six months!

Article is a bit of a joke. Honestly we should be able to control a car with that degree of freedom.

I'm a big for of smaller steering wheels that are out of the way. They use to make sense when you needed to apply lots of torque manually (aka no power steering) but gone are those days.

> For example, if you lose control on an icy road, it could be harder to do some quick maneuvers to regain control.

No F1 driver is winning a world championship with a wheel and not a yoke. The statement in the article is incorrect. The yoke actually makes it easier to do quick moves but in icy conditions that's not what you want.

No F1 driver is doing a 3-point turn using a 14:1 steering ratio either.

    > No F1 driver is winning a world championship with a 
    wheel and not a yoke. The statement in the article is 
    incorrect. The yoke actually makes it easier to do 
    quick moves but in icy conditions that's not what you 
    want.

This is a misunderstanding. The steering ratios on F1 cars are way, way tighter. They never have to turn the wheel more than a few degrees during a race and aren't turning the yoke more than a few degrees during a race. F1 drivers are also high-performance athletes and aren't tasked with driving their cars in the snow, maneuvering into tight parking spaces, etc.

Lots of design decisions on F1 cars don't make sense for road cars, and vice-versa.

An F1 wheel only goes slightly more than 180 in either direction. Regular cars typically go 540 degrees in each direction.

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