Tesla's new steering wheel comes with Autopilot sensor-based drive modes, force touch buttons, and more - Electrek
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The vehicle uses its Autopilot sensors to intelligently and automatically determine intended drive modes and select them. For example, if the front of Model S/X is facing a garage wall, it will detect this and automatically shift to Reverse once the driver presses the brake pedal. This eliminates one more step for the drivers of the world’s most intelligent production cars.”
That’s quite a change in the way to operate a car, but Tesla is making sure that people are not too confused about it by adding force touch controls for “Park, Reverse, Neutral, and Drive’ drive modes at the base of the phone charger on the center console.”
I’m not going to trust the car whether to put the car to reverse or drive.
The refresh almost tempted me, 1100hp (perhaps only the 3 motors could do it but not the rest of the car - wouldn't be the first time Tesla marketing did that), but advertised 0-60 in <1.99s (at least the first few launches before they start limiting it). My next car budget would cover Plaid+, but seeing the steering wheel gave me pause, I started thinking about parallel parking and tight city driving, then I thought, perhaps it's drive-by-wire and always adjusts, when parallel parking for example the turn of the wheel turns full wheel deflection in <90 degrees or something like that. Then I read the above, though of myself pulling into the garage, hitting the brake one too many times, and the car reverses itself into my garage freezers because it decided to shift to reverse for me. I'm kind of glad I read that, having experienced Tesla software for years (including auto park, EAP, predictive pre-conditioning, etc), no way am I willing for the Tesla software to decide all that for me and do things like shift gear based it's AI (and Tesla taking no responsibility for the results, since I am certain the fine print will say the driver is responsible for any bad decisions the car makes). Also, having experienced MCU failures (both random reboots, etc) I really don't want them to be responsible for things like changing gears - at least the prior generations you could limp home when MCU died.
I am kind of glad Tesla went that far on this refresh, or I would have been very conflicted, with not really wanting another Tesla (software and production quality combined with parts&service) but having a hard time resisting the price/performance. One less dilemma for me, as I was already pretty much decided on an Audi eTron GT RS, if I like it in person, but the fallback would be the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo (I drove the Taycan, if it was a hatchback I would have had it already - no room for 2 cars for me in the garage, need something which can handle larger cargo from time to time).
On a lighter note, is it time to start another "Model S range and Interion update is imminent" thread? With "imminent" defined as almost 4 years, as the case turned out this time, there could be another refresh in 4 years.