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An honest review of the yoke

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Enough said!
 
I think there is something we all can agree on. It isn't that it is a yoke. It is HOW Tesla implemented the yoke that it could have been so much better. The should have gone DBW or at least variable-ratio power steering.

Another thing I think they could have done a better job is the ability to wrap your hands around the wheel better at the 9&3 position. That is something that annoyed me since I was usually at 10&2 on a normal wheel and wrapped my fingers around. Now my fingers can't really wrap but more of a pinching motion.

If you look at the Lexus yoke, you can wrap your hands around the wheel at that position. In addition, they took advantage of the real estate on the yoke and added more buttons that are easier to get to than reaching a touch screen far away.

I think Tesla clearly got way ahead of their skis with respect to how well they thought FSD was working when they slapped a yoke on the car when you might actually have to drive it.
 
I think there is something we all can agree on. It isn't that it is a yoke. It is HOW Tesla implemented the yoke that it could have been so much better. The should have gone DBW or at least variable-ratio power steering.

Another thing I think they could have done a better job is the ability to wrap your hands around the wheel better at the 9&3 position. That is something that annoyed me since I was usually at 10&2 on a normal wheel and wrapped my fingers around. Now my fingers can't really wrap but more of a pinching motion.

If you look at the Lexus yoke, you can wrap your hands around the wheel at that position. In addition, they took advantage of the real estate on the yoke and added more buttons that are easier to get to than reaching a touch screen far away.

I think Tesla clearly got way ahead of their skis with respect to how well they thought FSD was working when they slapped a yoke on the car when you might actually have to drive it.

Laggards always get to benefit from the missteps of the first movers. Who really thinks Lexus would even have a yoke on anything if it weren't for the Plaid. Much like who thinks that the current crop of electric vehicles in the market would have happened had Tesla not shown them the market and forced their hand.

I will always be a fan of first movers. Those that aren't afraid to take their own off-ramp and head into uncharted water. They don't always come up with the best ideas and the first iteration of anything certainly will likely not be the best but it plants a seed. It blazes an unforeseen trail for others to follow that can then improve upon the idea and learn from it. The end result is we wind up with a better product at some point.
 
To be fair, the Lexus is drive-by-wire and only rotates about 150 degrees. There seems to be significant consensus that to go with a yoke you really need to do it the way Lexus has. Heck, Elon has basically admitted as much himself.

I've not found the yoke in the MS to be a problem, but I do wish it only rotated 150-180 degrees, too.

BTW, I think the Lexus yoke looks absolutely hideous, but that's obviously a subjective thing.
 
Laggards always get to benefit from the missteps of the first movers. Who really thinks Lexus would even have a yoke on anything if it weren't for the Plaid. Much like who thinks that the current crop of electric vehicles in the market would have happened had Tesla not shown them the market and forced their hand.

I will always be a fan of first movers. Those that aren't afraid to take their own off-ramp and head into uncharted water. They don't always come up with the best ideas and the first iteration of anything certainly will likely not be the best but it plants a seed. It blazes an unforeseen trail for others to follow that can then improve upon the idea and learn from it. The end result is we wind up with a better product at some point.
There are some things that even being a first mover they should have understood or at least thought about. Even if you aren't a pilot, it would be simple enough to google how a yoke as a control is typically used. Usually it is NOT in a situation were you do multiple turns lock to lock. You could ask any student pilot whose flown with one and they could tell.

This clearly was not an issue that was even remotely thought through. If they had put more effort into the implementation, I would agree with you however this was clearly half-@$$ed from the start. I could have told them shortly after I started flying, 40+ years ago, that their implementation of the yoke was way off base. Even a little more thought would have had a much better output than the far from optimal implementation we got.

There is getting it close and kudos to that but this wasn't even remotely close to what they could have done with it even taking into account when the started designing it. It was basically slap a different style control (yoke) and screw up the associated controls around it because we didn't have time to think it through. Instead of removing the stalks, they could have put the effort into a variable ratio power steering even if they couldn't get to a DBW system.

Even way back in 1997 Honda had a variable ratio power steering on the JDM Accord. So Tesla could have easily adopted 20+ tech and made it work on the S considering Honda could put it on a mainstream car like the Accord.
 
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Agreed with all the points about the details of a yoke implementation being critical.

When I first heard the new S had a yoke I thought awesome, Tesla probably fitted it with a crazy fast ratio so there's no need to shuffle steer, I'm going to love it. Then I read more and was like...wtf? Normal car ratio so you need to shuffle a yoke or palm it like a bus? And then try to find buttons on the spokes while doing this? It makes no sense to me.

The S yoke looks great for highway cruising, I'll give it that. Living in TX now that's probably most of Elon's driving and that's why the yoke was allowed to launch as-is, it works for him. But city driving+parking and twisty back roads? I guess Elon has left those behind leaving CA.
 
Laggards always get to benefit from the missteps of the first movers. Who really thinks Lexus would even have a yoke on anything if it weren't for the Plaid. Much like who thinks that the current crop of electric vehicles in the market would have happened had Tesla not shown them the market and forced their hand.

I will always be a fan of first movers. Those that aren't afraid to take their own off-ramp and head into uncharted water. They don't always come up with the best ideas and the first iteration of anything certainly will likely not be the best but it plants a seed. It blazes an unforeseen trail for others to follow that can then improve upon the idea and learn from it. The end result is we wind up with a better product at some point.
Vehicle development takes a while. Especially since they did it the right way and limited rotation to 150 degrees, this was probably in development well before the Plaid was originally announced.
 
There are some things that even being a first mover they should have understood or at least thought about. Even if you aren't a pilot, it would be simple enough to google how a yoke as a control is typically used. Usually it is NOT in a situation were you do multiple turns lock to lock. You could ask any student pilot whose flown with one and they could tell.

This clearly was not an issue that was even remotely thought through. If they had put more effort into the implementation, I would agree with you however this was clearly half-@$$ed from the start. I could have told them shortly after I started flying, 40+ years ago, that their implementation of the yoke was way off base. Even a little more thought would have had a much better output than the far from optimal implementation we got.

There is getting it close and kudos to that but this wasn't even remotely close to what they could have done with it even taking into account when the started designing it. It was basically slap a different style control (yoke) and screw up the associated controls around it because we didn't have time to think it through. Instead of removing the stalks, they could have put the effort into a variable ratio power steering even if they couldn't get to a DBW system.

Even way back in 1997 Honda had a variable ratio power steering on the JDM Accord. So Tesla could have easily adopted 20+ tech and made it work on the S considering Honda could put it on a mainstream car like the Accord.

Monday morning quarterbacking is always easy. Quarterbacking in real time in the game is hard.

And suddenly everyone is an expert on the nuances of steering yokes as opposed to steering wheels 🤣

My 1961 Imperial had a rectangular steering wheel which was quite odd for the time but it wasn't that big of a deal to figure out how to operate it and drive the car.
 
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Monday morning quarterbacking is always easy. Quarterbacking in real time in the game is hard.

And suddenly everyone is an expert on the nuances of steering yokes as opposed to steering wheels 🤣

My 1961 Imperial had a rectangular steering wheel which was quite odd for the time but it wasn't that big of a deal to figure out how to operate it and drive the car.
All they had to do with the car was have a few people drive it from a wide cross-section of users. A little beta testing would have gone a long way. They might have done that and just ignored the feedback anyway.

I worked in the automotive industry for some time so I am not clueless about it. That is why often I am more appreciative of many of the things Tesla does because I know how hard it is to get some of these things right. At the same time, a lot of their design decisions are baffling. Any novice engineer or UX designer would have known they were bad ideas.

At a higher price point vehicle, you should definitely spend more time and effort on it to get it right.

As for the people who love/hate the wheel, I would sum it up as follows. The people who like the yoke don't exactly say it is the best thing since sliced bread. They've adapted to it and I don't really see a lot of people loving it here though there appear to be a few. For the anti-yoke crowd, it pretty much runs the gamut from distaste all the way to hatred/loathing. So if you look at the intensity of the sentiment, the people that are anti-yoke seem to have a lot great intensity.

The deficiencies of the current yoke don't really become an issue in a lot of the driving. They can become a major issue in though in a lot of situations outlined in the many threads here.

I monitor a lot of different Tesla-related forums and what we see here is pretty common. Could be the same people as here but I suspect there are a lot of other people that are participating as well.

I have grown to tolerate the yoke, and don't hate it anymore, and mostly it doesn't get in the way of some of my driving. I remain vehemently against the removal of the stalks. Come up with a better gear selector approach and that will satisfy a lot of my complaints with the current implementation.

It is also quite telling that Tesla put a wheel on the car to run the Nurburgring course. That pretty much told me what they thought of the yoke and its current implementation for spirited driving. At least there they didn't have to worry about changing drive direction so lack of stalks wasn't an issue. Put it in D and go.
 
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It is also quite telling that Tesla put a wheel on the car to run the Nurburgring course. That pretty much told me what they thought of the yoke and its current implementation for spirited driving. At least there they didn't have to worry about changing drive direction so lack of stalks wasn't an issue. Put it in D and go.
They didn't put a wheel on the car to run the Nurburgring.
 
Yes, it wasn't Randy Probst I was thinking of. Pikes Peak has a lot tighter turns.

While trying to find one of the Plaid racing videos of Nurburgring, I stumbled across this vid. The reaction of the guy who drove the Plaid to the "wheel" is priceless. It is about 5:28 sec in.


I found this other one before the launch of the S that had some good content. Goes into a bit about NHTSA involvement.

 
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I do find many of these comments interesting in that most of the things that are on the yolk as it exists are nothing new. I can remember several cars that I had having a small horn button on either side of the wheel at 3:00 and 9:00. I also have had cars with a rim blow horn where you actually squeezed the steering wheel. I had another with the horn that was actually actuated by the turn signal stalk by pushing it in.

Additionally all the crazy videos with people having their arms twisted up like pretzels trying to make turns clearly over dramatizing the situation. Why not just drive it like a steering wheel put the heel of your hand on the wheel and spin it around as needed when in close quarters such as parking situations and such. We've been doing this for decades this really is not a big deal.

I've driven some weird crap in my nearly 50 years of driving. In my opinion most are making a mountain out of a molehill. Yes you'll have to adapt a bit, muscle memory will change, and in no time most will be cruising around with their yolks wondering why all cars aren't controlled with a steering yoke instead of a steering wheel.