I received my new Model S LR on the 29th, and while I’ve unfortunately only had limited time to drive it so far due to holiday plans, I wanted to write down my initial impressions of the steering yoke.
First, I think you have to separate out two things: the shape of the steering apparatus (yoke instead of circular), and the stalkless design.
I’ll start with the shape. My initial impression was that it was far easier to use right off the bat than I expected. Others may have a different experience, but I took to manipulating it as needed without much effort.
For highway use, with or without AP, it’s great. Very comfortable, and the improved visibility it affords makes it a pleasure for cruising. Just as I expected.
Getting in and out of my driveway is more complicated. However tricky you are imagining this to be (in any car), I promise it’s harder. We’re theoretically redoing and widening the driveway soon, but even then getting onto the crowded street on a hill with parked cars in questionably legal positions will always take some effort. I had no *problem* doing this with the yoke, but it isn’t in any way helpful, and does feel somewhat awkward at times. Fortunately our street doesn’t have much traffic so I can generally take my time, but I’d be more worried about doing it in a hurry, and especially having another driver who isn’t experienced with it trying to maneuver under pressure.
Around town, I quickly took to using one hand around regular 90 degree turns and it works fine. I haven’t had a chance to try roundabouts or other situations yet though. I don’t foresee any major problems but I also don’t think it’s any better, probably marginally worse, than a round wheel.
Overall it’s sort of a wash for me. As a “grand tourer” for long road trips maybe I can weigh the highway use case a bit more and convince myself it might be worthwhile, but that’s kind of a stretch. I generally subscribe to the “change is bad unless it’s great” principle of UX design, and this is a change that overall isn’t great - even if there are situations where it is somewhat better.
Now to the stalkless design. For the majority of functions (i.e. AP, wipers), I think this is fine. However, I have major concerns about the turn signals. For one thing, I have found myself needing to make a conscious effort each time I enable them, which includes *looking* at the buttons to make sure I get the right one, and making an effort to press hard enough to fully engage them. Perhaps I will get used to this and learn to use them without looking, but it bothers me that there’s no tactile difference between the buttons, so it seems hard to feel confident you’ve got the right one without looking.
I am confounded that they didn’t add some texture or bumps that you could feel which would uniquely identify each one. I may even try to add something simply myself - maybe a good aftermarket opportunity here. In fact I think adding a “lip” at the bottom of the lower button (left signal), and at the top of the upper button (right signal), might be the ideal addition. I hope Tesla considers changes like this in the future.
Another small mitigation they could perhaps try with software would be to change the pitch of the left vs right turn signal sound, so at least I could have confirmation that I enabled the correct one without looking.
The other problem I have with it is that the “buttons” are very sensitive touch sensors, and it’s far too easy to accidentally blink a turn signal. Again this will hopefully become less of a problem over time, but I think it’s especially problematic when using the left hand scroller. This was immediately troublesome while setting my mirror positions, and again when I was tweaking them after getting on the highway. But even when adjusting volume or skipping tracks, it turns out every use of that scroller comes with a >50% chance of accidentally flashing one of the turn signals momentarily.
I think a software option to disable the “light touch” behavior of these buttons would be worth considering. I’d prefer that they instead use a short press to do the 3 flash lane change thing, and a longer press to fully enable it for a turn. Ultimately I hope they figure out an automatic turn signal feature using the AP system. Originally I imagined this would be just like the “FSD Beta” behavior but without the car driving - just signaling based on your route. However another alternative might be to have a short (but full pressure) press of the button do either a 3 flash lane change indicator or a full turn indicator behavior based on what AP sees. Basically if you’re at an intersection, do the latter, if you’re on a highway or otherwise indicating in a direction where there’s an adjacent lane to move into, so the three flashes. You could always do a longer press to force it to stay on.
The one place where they feel pretty good is again on the highway, when used with AP (+ “FSD”), where the buttons initiate automatic lane changes. It makes driving with AP feel just a little bit more futuristic. That’s a nice “delighter” as a driver, but I don’t think I can honestly say it’s worth all the other downsides I mentioned.
I hope they iterate on this design, both hardware and software. However I also think they need to offer a round steering wheel as an option. Not just because the yoke is of questionable value, or because I would prefer a round one - I’m mostly fine with it. Instead, I think this is important because I have family members who were planing to get an S even before the refresh, and now are holding off because they are too weirded out and afraid of the yoke. Just offering the round shape like was seen in some test mules would probably get them past this trepidation - but I do wonder if a round but still stalkless setup would make them unhappy even if they didn’t realize it until they drove it. This could lead to test drives putting people off, and seems like a silly thing to have cause customers to be unhappy and to have them communicate that unhappiness to others potential buyers.
However, if they make some improvements - like the tactile indicators on the turn signal buttons, that plus a round wheel might be enough to make stalkless work well and avoid scaring new drivers off.
Hope that’s helpful for those anxious about the new setup. I’ll come back and provide an update once I’ve had a little more time with it (and will share if I end up trying a makeshift addition to the turn signal buttons to “prototype” what I think they should do).
First, I think you have to separate out two things: the shape of the steering apparatus (yoke instead of circular), and the stalkless design.
I’ll start with the shape. My initial impression was that it was far easier to use right off the bat than I expected. Others may have a different experience, but I took to manipulating it as needed without much effort.
For highway use, with or without AP, it’s great. Very comfortable, and the improved visibility it affords makes it a pleasure for cruising. Just as I expected.
Getting in and out of my driveway is more complicated. However tricky you are imagining this to be (in any car), I promise it’s harder. We’re theoretically redoing and widening the driveway soon, but even then getting onto the crowded street on a hill with parked cars in questionably legal positions will always take some effort. I had no *problem* doing this with the yoke, but it isn’t in any way helpful, and does feel somewhat awkward at times. Fortunately our street doesn’t have much traffic so I can generally take my time, but I’d be more worried about doing it in a hurry, and especially having another driver who isn’t experienced with it trying to maneuver under pressure.
Around town, I quickly took to using one hand around regular 90 degree turns and it works fine. I haven’t had a chance to try roundabouts or other situations yet though. I don’t foresee any major problems but I also don’t think it’s any better, probably marginally worse, than a round wheel.
Overall it’s sort of a wash for me. As a “grand tourer” for long road trips maybe I can weigh the highway use case a bit more and convince myself it might be worthwhile, but that’s kind of a stretch. I generally subscribe to the “change is bad unless it’s great” principle of UX design, and this is a change that overall isn’t great - even if there are situations where it is somewhat better.
Now to the stalkless design. For the majority of functions (i.e. AP, wipers), I think this is fine. However, I have major concerns about the turn signals. For one thing, I have found myself needing to make a conscious effort each time I enable them, which includes *looking* at the buttons to make sure I get the right one, and making an effort to press hard enough to fully engage them. Perhaps I will get used to this and learn to use them without looking, but it bothers me that there’s no tactile difference between the buttons, so it seems hard to feel confident you’ve got the right one without looking.
I am confounded that they didn’t add some texture or bumps that you could feel which would uniquely identify each one. I may even try to add something simply myself - maybe a good aftermarket opportunity here. In fact I think adding a “lip” at the bottom of the lower button (left signal), and at the top of the upper button (right signal), might be the ideal addition. I hope Tesla considers changes like this in the future.
Another small mitigation they could perhaps try with software would be to change the pitch of the left vs right turn signal sound, so at least I could have confirmation that I enabled the correct one without looking.
The other problem I have with it is that the “buttons” are very sensitive touch sensors, and it’s far too easy to accidentally blink a turn signal. Again this will hopefully become less of a problem over time, but I think it’s especially problematic when using the left hand scroller. This was immediately troublesome while setting my mirror positions, and again when I was tweaking them after getting on the highway. But even when adjusting volume or skipping tracks, it turns out every use of that scroller comes with a >50% chance of accidentally flashing one of the turn signals momentarily.
I think a software option to disable the “light touch” behavior of these buttons would be worth considering. I’d prefer that they instead use a short press to do the 3 flash lane change thing, and a longer press to fully enable it for a turn. Ultimately I hope they figure out an automatic turn signal feature using the AP system. Originally I imagined this would be just like the “FSD Beta” behavior but without the car driving - just signaling based on your route. However another alternative might be to have a short (but full pressure) press of the button do either a 3 flash lane change indicator or a full turn indicator behavior based on what AP sees. Basically if you’re at an intersection, do the latter, if you’re on a highway or otherwise indicating in a direction where there’s an adjacent lane to move into, so the three flashes. You could always do a longer press to force it to stay on.
The one place where they feel pretty good is again on the highway, when used with AP (+ “FSD”), where the buttons initiate automatic lane changes. It makes driving with AP feel just a little bit more futuristic. That’s a nice “delighter” as a driver, but I don’t think I can honestly say it’s worth all the other downsides I mentioned.
I hope they iterate on this design, both hardware and software. However I also think they need to offer a round steering wheel as an option. Not just because the yoke is of questionable value, or because I would prefer a round one - I’m mostly fine with it. Instead, I think this is important because I have family members who were planing to get an S even before the refresh, and now are holding off because they are too weirded out and afraid of the yoke. Just offering the round shape like was seen in some test mules would probably get them past this trepidation - but I do wonder if a round but still stalkless setup would make them unhappy even if they didn’t realize it until they drove it. This could lead to test drives putting people off, and seems like a silly thing to have cause customers to be unhappy and to have them communicate that unhappiness to others potential buyers.
However, if they make some improvements - like the tactile indicators on the turn signal buttons, that plus a round wheel might be enough to make stalkless work well and avoid scaring new drivers off.
Hope that’s helpful for those anxious about the new setup. I’ll come back and provide an update once I’ve had a little more time with it (and will share if I end up trying a makeshift addition to the turn signal buttons to “prototype” what I think they should do).
Not to bad for price tag 175K!!!
