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Thoughts on Yoke from Plaid owner
- Thread starter Plaid to Mod 3
- Start date
FSD is in beta now, I have driven with it many times in an X one year older than my Model S Plaid and it works fine. I only drive it about 20 miles to and from the airport for work, but it works pretty well. Not sure why you say it is snake oil. And with the massive amount of automated feedback that gets sent back to Tesla with every FSD mile driven, it will only get better. My new MS is a far cry from my 2017 MS. Technology marches on.
I did not buy my Tesla as a race car, so for me, the steering wheel works fine. I drive about 20 miles each way to work on a combination of city streets and highway and still, the wheel works just fine for me. I even have a tight round-about on the way and it still works fine for me. I don't anticipate having to save a second or two sliding my finger across the screen or touching the shift bar in the center console over a shift stalk being a major issue for me in any of the driving that I do day-to-day.
Ultimately each of us will buy a car for a different reason and a different purpose. I fell in love with the yoke and the simplistic control layout, but I can see that others don't like that layout at all.
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Absolutely true. The rest of us have to drive in parking lots, steer in reverse, use turn signals, and be able to instinctively find the horn to honk.
I’d honestly have expected the yoke to excel most in racing (short of auto cross).I’m sure Pobst would have eventually started preferring the yoke had he just listened to people on here and stuck with it a little bit longer.
_Redshift_
Member
This is not just about track driving. It is about making emergency maneuvers, and fast, tight turns without hitting the capacitive buttons unintentionally.
whitex
Well-Known Member
No stalks on a round wheel means you now really have to hunt for those touch controls like the blinkers or horn.
I wouldn't be so sure. They would have rolled out the yoke to the full line by now if they really wanted to do it - there was a bunch of changes to the 3/Y since the introduction of the yoke, including redesigned Y with completely new batteries. The yoke would not have been a big change to make, yet they didn't make that change, not even as an option.
strider
Active Member
Agreed. Glass offered a quantum leap in SA and automation over steam. It was objectively superior even if it meant some retraining. The yoke offers no benefits. It is purely different for the sake of being different. Again, as I have stated multiple times, if you like the yoke, then enjoy it. But trying to say that it is objectively superior is BS.
No.
The wheel doesn't change the location of those buttons. If your hands are not at 9 and 3 then you will have to hunt for the buttons regardless of the shape of the control. There is nothing stopping you from keeping your hands at 9 and 3 with the wheel like you do with the yoke. You can use the wheel like the yoke but you cannot use the yoke like a wheel.
I said will. Elon has always said that S/X will be the vanguard of the rest of the line. At this point they are working on the 4680 packs for 3/Y but they still have a long way to go. At some point they will go stalkless on all of their cars. Ever-cheaper everything has been Tesla's watchword for years now.
whitex
Well-Known Member
Except there is a problem if we were to believe Elon. Elon also said next Tesla cars will come with no steering wheel at all, and you cannot argue that yoke is cheaper than no steering wheel at all. So if by stalkless you mean no steering wheel at all, sure, but of course that will have to wait for FSD to be 100% delivered. Elon claims they already had is 100% solved a few years ago, so apply your own timeline how long from 100% solved to 100% delivered.
Honestly, the yoke is too much of an impractical gimmick, they will not put it on their money making 3/Y, unless it comes with an option for a regular steering wheel. Even if regulatory bodies don't force Tesla, the customer demand hit would be too great.
I don't understand how the yoke is uncomfortable. You can literally rest your arm on the armrest while driving. I've done several long trips and it was awesome being able to turn on autopilot and rest my hand on the yoke and never have to move it or fatigue.
I just picked up a model 3 and drove it back to my house 200 miles and the whole time I was wishing it had a yoke so my arm didn't fatigue.
I just picked up a model 3 and drove it back to my house 200 miles and the whole time I was wishing it had a yoke so my arm didn't fatigue.
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Sad to say, I agree with you. Why would Tesla care, given that they cannot meet demand?
Unless the new Model S is drastically different from other cars, isn't the tendency of the car to return the steering to the straight position mostly a function of steering and suspension design and proper tire pressures? Any car I have ever owned would return to center fairly quickly after letting go of the wheel after a turn, if the tire pressures were correct and if the alignment is correct. I do not think it has much if anything to do with the steering wheel itself. The weight or inertia of the steering wheel or yoke is small compared to the other forces at play on the tires and steering system....Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by the yoke being "weight balanced"?....
Another interesting fact I discovered is that given the yoke is weight balanced to favour always being in the straight position (gravity), whenever I’m taking a turn it tends wants to return to its original straight position. Since there is no top section, the bottom section wants to remain ….well..at the bottom. Coming out of a turn has become so simple given the car wants to remain straight. Hard to explain but oddly it also helps with the car remaining straighter within the lanes(Less drift).
....
Right, in my own case, the yoke and the removal of stalks is a major factor in my reluctance to consider another Model S when my current one approaches its 8-year mark next year. So there may be others like me who have simply not purchased a new Model S because of their hesitation about the yoke/stalks. No way to know, of course -- I well may be in a small minority.
Destiny1701
22’ M3LR ‘DrkNite’/ 22’ MYP BliueRocket
You are 100% correct with respect to suspension, steering etc being the main cause of a wheel returning to centre. What I’ve noticed is when driving a yoke, even the slightest turn or adjustment returns back to centre a bit faster. Almost as if it acts as somewhat a pendulum weight.
Given steering ratios these days and the model 3 being a tight ratio allowing for quick point and shoot driving dynamics, even that slight little bit of extra centre force makes a difference in my view. All cars tend to want to stay straight (alignment assumed) but even staying within lanes seems easier given the yoke wants to stay vertically aligned. Not so with a wheel. What I mean to say is that drifting out of a lane seems to be less an issue. As least that’s my experience
I've had my Plaid for 10 months now, just did my first long(ish) distance road trip from Chicago to Northern WI. My opinion about the yoke did not change: It works great and at no point did I regret not having a wheel. Side note, My 2 cars prior to the Plaid were both Mercedes S Classes...and the Plaid was every bit as comfortable on the long-term drive as they were. To each their own.
Not to beat a dead horse about the yoke. Most of the comments are generally positive when using the yoke on a trip. I am probably one of the more vocal anti-yoke people but in steady state cruise it works fine. I can't say I totally like the hand positions it forces me too but I use AP/FSD so less of an issue. It is a situation where I find I need steering inputs the least so it doesn't suck as a control input in that situation.
I too was a USAF & commercial airline APD (airplane driver). Some stick time and most with a yoke. NOTE: I haven't driven a Tesla yoke. I never noticed using a yoke to be as uncomfortable as you believe it to be. Back in the old days they used to teach 10 & 2 o'clock positions for driving autos with two hands (without power steering, probably). With power steering most use one hand on either 7-8 or 4-5 position. I use a lot of AP/FSDb and use one the lower clock positions ALL the time. Not noticing any fatigue or blood flow issues. Anyway, just my observation.
For some it isn't that it is a yoke, but the actual design of the yoke. The way the yoke is designed, if I have my hands and 9 & 3, I can't wrap my fingers around the yoke because of how it attaches to the center steering column. I can't really grip it as much as squeeze it. Your fingers can't really curl around the yoke if you like that. The back goes from the 9 & 3 position to the center column and the back is pretty wide.
Here is a post I made today after a more time with the mod S and now the Mod 3. I'll post it here as well so that those that have been interested in this topic will get a notification of further thoughts and reflections. I have put a good deal of thought into what I wrote here so hopefully it will be of benifit to some:
Hello, I would like to offer a deeper analysis on why the yoke steering for model S and X is not a good substitute for a 360-degree circular steering wheel. This in going to be a detailed and lengthy analysis for those that are interested.
I will also caution those who are trying to make a rational and well-informed decision about purchasing a vehicle with the yolk to take those that are very enthusiastic and vocal about the yoke being a positive thing very critically. There seems to be a group of people that are very vocal and supposedly enthusiastic about the yoke but I question their true motives and experience, especially with long distance driving, with the yoke. Buying a Model S with a yoke was a very costly decision for me and I'm trying to help people that care to learn from my experience to avoid the same fate if they wish.
Background: I owned a 2022 Plaid for the last 5 months or so. The yoke steering did not bother me too much until I did some cross-country travel. At that time, it became so apparent that the yoke lacks the basic ability to control the car that I took a 40K hit (yes you read that right, your Tesla may not be holding the value you think) to get into a model 3 for only one reason—a steering wheel.
I am also a former AF pilot.
What Happened? During cross county travel (10 hours or more of driving each day for multiple days in a row) it became apparent that I did not have good manual control of the vehicle. I RELIED on the autopilot BECAUSE it was ergonomically, mechanically, and from a physics standpoint infeasible to manually operate the vehicle for long periods of time.
This is what cross-country travel looked like for me with the model S: 1) Get going. 2) Put it on autopilot because manually steering the car for long periods of time is nearly impossible from a fatigue standpoint. 3) Spend the next 10 hours is sort of a daze monitoring the computer and wondering if and hoping that it does not end your life.
Ok, I like autopilot and like to use it quite a bit. I do not like having to use it nearly 100% of the time on a road trip because I can not manually operate the car.
I want to steer the car effectively for several reasons:
1) It’s fun to be able to manually operate the vehicle effectively. Tesla’s are so fun and sporty, why would you not want to hand drive it a good amount?
2) Going from autopilot to hand steering is a good exercise during a road trip that helps change things up, wake you up, and keep you from getting rusty on manually operating the car (yes, my driving skills did in fact deteriorate just after owing a mod S for 5 months—not good). In the AF I always liked to hand fly the plane a good amount each day to make sure my flying skills were not deteriorating. It is a real confidence builder knowing that you can switch off the automated systems at any time and for any reason and manually operate the vehicle. I flew with many pilots that I cannot say the same about because they did not take the time on a regular basis to get off the automated systems and it could get scary when the autopilot was acting up and their first reaction was not to take control of the aircraft because they were not confident in their skills. There is much carryover here to the world of driving.
3) Manually steering the car for while can allow for the driver to change position a bit in the seat, increase blood flow through the spinal and leg regions and generally offer a safer and more comfortable trip. With the yoke there is nothing to grab onto on the upper portions of the wheel to do this (and no, I am not buying the argument that it is intrinsically unsafe to handle the steering wheel anywhere above 9 and 3. I have never read this as a warning in any operator’s manual before. If you do not like to handle the steering wheel in the upper portions, just don’t do it with your steering wheel, you don’t need to remove the whole thing for the majority of people that utilize those positions.
4) I do not always want to be in the center of my lane. Autopilot tends to do a very good job of placing meet right in the middle of my lane or, even worse a little closer to center line than I'd like to be. Driving, on the other hand necessitates different lane placements. If I'm passing by a semi, I'd rather be pushing the limits away from the truck not right in the middle of my lane. If I'm going by cyclists or pedestrians, I might push the limits to the side of the lane away from them. This is not another reason why it’s necessary the driver has the capabilities to manually operate the vehicle when wanted or when necessary and the yoke simply does not allow for this to be done effectively.
Why does the yolk offer less control than a 360 degree circular wheel? Because there are simply less points of control for hand placement. If you have a steering wheel, just imagine chopping the top of it off, and even worse making the bottom part of it rectangular. It's hard to argue how you'll have more control over the vehicle over time with this being the case. Furthermore, just imagine removing the entire steering wheel and steering it with a nob using your hand. Would this be more or less fatiguing in operating the car, especially for long periods of time? Obviously, this is a rhetorical question.
With the yoke, you have limited options of control points with your hands. Do you put your hand on the right hand side of the yolk and watch gravity pull it down overtime? Do you put your left hand on the left side of the yolk and watch gravity pull it to the left, even worse do you try to put two hands on the yolk and predict which hand we'll fatigue the fastest and pull the car to that side? It is truly a nightmare.
With the steering wheel you have many more points of balance and control to work with different driving positions, body types, and so on.
Let talk for a moment about why airplanes have yokes and why cars have steering wheels:
Why airplanes have rectangular yokes: For starters a rectangular yoke mimics the primary control surface of an aircraft, it’s wings. Although there are some similarities between flying and driving there are some critical differences as well. In terms of horizontal control with the wings, the pilot is constantly trying to trim off forces and is essentially trying to achieve as close as possible to hands free flying. In a car there is not an equivalent.
Airplanes also need to achieve vertical control which the pilot achieves by pushing up and down on the yoke which effectively controls the vertical stabilizer. Cars do not have this function of vertical control. This is one reason why airplanes do not have steering wheels. It would become awkward and non-uniform if the pilot had to push up and down on a steering wheel in order to control vertical flight. This is because the steering wheel would offer too many hand positions away from the center of gravity of the pilot to offer a uniform method of vertical control.
Let's talk about why cars have steering wheels for a moment. First of all, the primary method of controlling a car, unlike rectangular wings and yokes in airplanes, is circular wheels on the car. The reason why a steering wheel is circular has to do with the circular motion of a car’s wheels, it's primary control force. This is a lesson in basic physics. In addition, driving is an activity that's unlike flying in many ways. It may sound counterintuitive but driving, by and large, is a much more precise activity than flying. When you are flying you have critical moments of flight such as takeoff and landing but in most other instances of flight there is a lot more space available than when you are traveling on I-5 just feet away from thousands of other cars on the road. In addition, in driving it is impossible to trim out the horizontal forces needed to maintain lane placement. This is an activity that requires constant small and precise inputs to maintain appropriate distances from other vehicles, barriers and the like. In driving, your life literally depends on feet or inches nearly the entire time. This is simply not the case with most instances of flying.
Let's talk a moment of this idea that people have that steering by wire will actually fix the problems of putting a yoke into an automobile. I disagree with this concept. In fact, I think, after having owned a Model S with a yoke for five months, steering by wire will actually make the car even more difficult to control over long periods of time (which is really saying something!) The reason why I think steering by wire is not going to make the yoke any better, and possibly quite a bit worse, is that it doesn't fix any of the intrinsic operator issues with the yoke as it relates to a human being able to control it. In addition, it will essentially make yoke steering much more sensitive which I think will prove to be a real disaster in trying to control the car. I think steer-by-wire will make the yoke worse not better.
After having driven the Model S with the yoke for five months and now my model 3 for about one month I've noticed some other things that could be helpful to people trying to make this decision. Another negative thing about the yoke is that it does not offer any better control or monitoring of the vehicle while autopilot is engaged. I can say from experience that I have much greater monitoring and control abilities (to take over when necessary) with the steering wheel in my model 3. This actually causes me to want to use autopilot more in my model 3 that I wanted to use it in my Model S.
With autopilot on with the yoke I noticed that I would typically have my right hand on the right side of the yolk which tended to pull down making a quick up motion difficult to do. Another common position I found myself using in my Model S was my hand palm down on the bottom part of the yoke which is not hard to imagine, made it really hard to make a quick motion up using my shoulder muscles.
In contrast, with a steering wheel on autopilot granted much better takeover and monitoring capabilities. While using autopilot with a wheel I typically have a rock-solid grip on the 4:00 position of the wheel. It is easy to push up or pull down if needed to take over.
I'm here to say that I'm much more confident in using the autopilot with a steering wheel rather than a yoke. All this probably comes down to the point that the better control you have over the car in manual conditions, the better you're going to be able to monitor the car and take over while using automated functions. This is a critical concept.
There's also a lot of good historical precedence on a 360 degree steering wheel as opposed to yoke steering for automobiles. Although yoke steering has been attempted over the last 50 to 70 years, it has been almost completely unsuccessful. It's not because people haven't thought of using a rectangular device to operate an automobile it's just that a 360 degree steering wheel works really well in controlling the wheels on an automobile in a precise and unfatiguing fashion. This boils down to the ergonomic and physics fdiscussed in detail above.
Even though my model 3 has a steering wheel, I think Tesla could do a lot of things to make the steering wheel better. Primarily I think that there should be an opening in the bottom of the steering wheel for fingers to be placed. This simply allows for more control areas of the 360-degree wheel. You'll be hard pressed to find a steering wheel made by a reputable automotive company that does not have some openings in the bottom of the wheel for finger placement and touch-familiarization. There's a reason for this from an ergonomic and physics standpoint. I think Tesla would be well off to adopt some of these well proven tools rather than trying to “reinvent the wheel” in every sense. There's a lot of things particularly with battery, electric motor, and software engineering that Tesla truly excels at. I think that they would be well off to make a better car by simply taking a closer look at what other automotive companies have discovered over the last 100 years. Other companies do a great job of building a car. Tesla does not do a very good job of building a car but an outstanding job in some of the technology mentioned above. I think Tesla would be a much better company if they make an automobile with the comfort and specifications any of many of the other automotive companies in the world but continue to excel at what they do best. I think a lot of people buy a Tesla nowadays not necessarily because they want to but because they have to. As time goes on, and other automotive companies catch up to what Tesla is doing I fear that this will put Tesla at a competitive disadvantage and deteriorate their market capitalization and ability to innovate in the future.
I will also caution people that are trying to make the steering wheel/yoke decision to listen very critically to the people that are enthusiastic about the yolk. I think there could be several reasons for this. I will also note that I, before doing several cross-country road trips, was fairly positive about the yolk and told other people that I actually thought it was a good thing. The cross-country trips ruined this for me. I suspect many of these people have less experience with the yoke then they claim and I'm not sure how many of them have actually tried to put the vehicle to the test in a serious cross-country event.
I was skeptical at first with the yoke but then I decided to give Tesla engineers the benefit of the doubt and bought the Model S anyways. Obviously, there was a huge financial mistake for me and I should have gone with my initial instincts about the yoke and not necessarily what people, some of which have experience and some of which don't, we're saying about the yoke.
I hope that this article helps some people avoid the very serious financial mistake I made with purchasing a model S.
Hello, I would like to offer a deeper analysis on why the yoke steering for model S and X is not a good substitute for a 360-degree circular steering wheel. This in going to be a detailed and lengthy analysis for those that are interested.
I will also caution those who are trying to make a rational and well-informed decision about purchasing a vehicle with the yolk to take those that are very enthusiastic and vocal about the yoke being a positive thing very critically. There seems to be a group of people that are very vocal and supposedly enthusiastic about the yoke but I question their true motives and experience, especially with long distance driving, with the yoke. Buying a Model S with a yoke was a very costly decision for me and I'm trying to help people that care to learn from my experience to avoid the same fate if they wish.
Background: I owned a 2022 Plaid for the last 5 months or so. The yoke steering did not bother me too much until I did some cross-country travel. At that time, it became so apparent that the yoke lacks the basic ability to control the car that I took a 40K hit (yes you read that right, your Tesla may not be holding the value you think) to get into a model 3 for only one reason—a steering wheel.
I am also a former AF pilot.
What Happened? During cross county travel (10 hours or more of driving each day for multiple days in a row) it became apparent that I did not have good manual control of the vehicle. I RELIED on the autopilot BECAUSE it was ergonomically, mechanically, and from a physics standpoint infeasible to manually operate the vehicle for long periods of time.
This is what cross-country travel looked like for me with the model S: 1) Get going. 2) Put it on autopilot because manually steering the car for long periods of time is nearly impossible from a fatigue standpoint. 3) Spend the next 10 hours is sort of a daze monitoring the computer and wondering if and hoping that it does not end your life.
Ok, I like autopilot and like to use it quite a bit. I do not like having to use it nearly 100% of the time on a road trip because I can not manually operate the car.
I want to steer the car effectively for several reasons:
1) It’s fun to be able to manually operate the vehicle effectively. Tesla’s are so fun and sporty, why would you not want to hand drive it a good amount?
2) Going from autopilot to hand steering is a good exercise during a road trip that helps change things up, wake you up, and keep you from getting rusty on manually operating the car (yes, my driving skills did in fact deteriorate just after owing a mod S for 5 months—not good). In the AF I always liked to hand fly the plane a good amount each day to make sure my flying skills were not deteriorating. It is a real confidence builder knowing that you can switch off the automated systems at any time and for any reason and manually operate the vehicle. I flew with many pilots that I cannot say the same about because they did not take the time on a regular basis to get off the automated systems and it could get scary when the autopilot was acting up and their first reaction was not to take control of the aircraft because they were not confident in their skills. There is much carryover here to the world of driving.
3) Manually steering the car for while can allow for the driver to change position a bit in the seat, increase blood flow through the spinal and leg regions and generally offer a safer and more comfortable trip. With the yoke there is nothing to grab onto on the upper portions of the wheel to do this (and no, I am not buying the argument that it is intrinsically unsafe to handle the steering wheel anywhere above 9 and 3. I have never read this as a warning in any operator’s manual before. If you do not like to handle the steering wheel in the upper portions, just don’t do it with your steering wheel, you don’t need to remove the whole thing for the majority of people that utilize those positions.
4) I do not always want to be in the center of my lane. Autopilot tends to do a very good job of placing meet right in the middle of my lane or, even worse a little closer to center line than I'd like to be. Driving, on the other hand necessitates different lane placements. If I'm passing by a semi, I'd rather be pushing the limits away from the truck not right in the middle of my lane. If I'm going by cyclists or pedestrians, I might push the limits to the side of the lane away from them. This is not another reason why it’s necessary the driver has the capabilities to manually operate the vehicle when wanted or when necessary and the yoke simply does not allow for this to be done effectively.
Why does the yolk offer less control than a 360 degree circular wheel? Because there are simply less points of control for hand placement. If you have a steering wheel, just imagine chopping the top of it off, and even worse making the bottom part of it rectangular. It's hard to argue how you'll have more control over the vehicle over time with this being the case. Furthermore, just imagine removing the entire steering wheel and steering it with a nob using your hand. Would this be more or less fatiguing in operating the car, especially for long periods of time? Obviously, this is a rhetorical question.
With the yoke, you have limited options of control points with your hands. Do you put your hand on the right hand side of the yolk and watch gravity pull it down overtime? Do you put your left hand on the left side of the yolk and watch gravity pull it to the left, even worse do you try to put two hands on the yolk and predict which hand we'll fatigue the fastest and pull the car to that side? It is truly a nightmare.
With the steering wheel you have many more points of balance and control to work with different driving positions, body types, and so on.
Let talk for a moment about why airplanes have yokes and why cars have steering wheels:
Why airplanes have rectangular yokes: For starters a rectangular yoke mimics the primary control surface of an aircraft, it’s wings. Although there are some similarities between flying and driving there are some critical differences as well. In terms of horizontal control with the wings, the pilot is constantly trying to trim off forces and is essentially trying to achieve as close as possible to hands free flying. In a car there is not an equivalent.
Airplanes also need to achieve vertical control which the pilot achieves by pushing up and down on the yoke which effectively controls the vertical stabilizer. Cars do not have this function of vertical control. This is one reason why airplanes do not have steering wheels. It would become awkward and non-uniform if the pilot had to push up and down on a steering wheel in order to control vertical flight. This is because the steering wheel would offer too many hand positions away from the center of gravity of the pilot to offer a uniform method of vertical control.
Let's talk about why cars have steering wheels for a moment. First of all, the primary method of controlling a car, unlike rectangular wings and yokes in airplanes, is circular wheels on the car. The reason why a steering wheel is circular has to do with the circular motion of a car’s wheels, it's primary control force. This is a lesson in basic physics. In addition, driving is an activity that's unlike flying in many ways. It may sound counterintuitive but driving, by and large, is a much more precise activity than flying. When you are flying you have critical moments of flight such as takeoff and landing but in most other instances of flight there is a lot more space available than when you are traveling on I-5 just feet away from thousands of other cars on the road. In addition, in driving it is impossible to trim out the horizontal forces needed to maintain lane placement. This is an activity that requires constant small and precise inputs to maintain appropriate distances from other vehicles, barriers and the like. In driving, your life literally depends on feet or inches nearly the entire time. This is simply not the case with most instances of flying.
Let's talk a moment of this idea that people have that steering by wire will actually fix the problems of putting a yoke into an automobile. I disagree with this concept. In fact, I think, after having owned a Model S with a yoke for five months, steering by wire will actually make the car even more difficult to control over long periods of time (which is really saying something!) The reason why I think steering by wire is not going to make the yoke any better, and possibly quite a bit worse, is that it doesn't fix any of the intrinsic operator issues with the yoke as it relates to a human being able to control it. In addition, it will essentially make yoke steering much more sensitive which I think will prove to be a real disaster in trying to control the car. I think steer-by-wire will make the yoke worse not better.
After having driven the Model S with the yoke for five months and now my model 3 for about one month I've noticed some other things that could be helpful to people trying to make this decision. Another negative thing about the yoke is that it does not offer any better control or monitoring of the vehicle while autopilot is engaged. I can say from experience that I have much greater monitoring and control abilities (to take over when necessary) with the steering wheel in my model 3. This actually causes me to want to use autopilot more in my model 3 that I wanted to use it in my Model S.
With autopilot on with the yoke I noticed that I would typically have my right hand on the right side of the yolk which tended to pull down making a quick up motion difficult to do. Another common position I found myself using in my Model S was my hand palm down on the bottom part of the yoke which is not hard to imagine, made it really hard to make a quick motion up using my shoulder muscles.
In contrast, with a steering wheel on autopilot granted much better takeover and monitoring capabilities. While using autopilot with a wheel I typically have a rock-solid grip on the 4:00 position of the wheel. It is easy to push up or pull down if needed to take over.
I'm here to say that I'm much more confident in using the autopilot with a steering wheel rather than a yoke. All this probably comes down to the point that the better control you have over the car in manual conditions, the better you're going to be able to monitor the car and take over while using automated functions. This is a critical concept.
There's also a lot of good historical precedence on a 360 degree steering wheel as opposed to yoke steering for automobiles. Although yoke steering has been attempted over the last 50 to 70 years, it has been almost completely unsuccessful. It's not because people haven't thought of using a rectangular device to operate an automobile it's just that a 360 degree steering wheel works really well in controlling the wheels on an automobile in a precise and unfatiguing fashion. This boils down to the ergonomic and physics fdiscussed in detail above.
Even though my model 3 has a steering wheel, I think Tesla could do a lot of things to make the steering wheel better. Primarily I think that there should be an opening in the bottom of the steering wheel for fingers to be placed. This simply allows for more control areas of the 360-degree wheel. You'll be hard pressed to find a steering wheel made by a reputable automotive company that does not have some openings in the bottom of the wheel for finger placement and touch-familiarization. There's a reason for this from an ergonomic and physics standpoint. I think Tesla would be well off to adopt some of these well proven tools rather than trying to “reinvent the wheel” in every sense. There's a lot of things particularly with battery, electric motor, and software engineering that Tesla truly excels at. I think that they would be well off to make a better car by simply taking a closer look at what other automotive companies have discovered over the last 100 years. Other companies do a great job of building a car. Tesla does not do a very good job of building a car but an outstanding job in some of the technology mentioned above. I think Tesla would be a much better company if they make an automobile with the comfort and specifications any of many of the other automotive companies in the world but continue to excel at what they do best. I think a lot of people buy a Tesla nowadays not necessarily because they want to but because they have to. As time goes on, and other automotive companies catch up to what Tesla is doing I fear that this will put Tesla at a competitive disadvantage and deteriorate their market capitalization and ability to innovate in the future.
I will also caution people that are trying to make the steering wheel/yoke decision to listen very critically to the people that are enthusiastic about the yolk. I think there could be several reasons for this. I will also note that I, before doing several cross-country road trips, was fairly positive about the yolk and told other people that I actually thought it was a good thing. The cross-country trips ruined this for me. I suspect many of these people have less experience with the yoke then they claim and I'm not sure how many of them have actually tried to put the vehicle to the test in a serious cross-country event.
I was skeptical at first with the yoke but then I decided to give Tesla engineers the benefit of the doubt and bought the Model S anyways. Obviously, there was a huge financial mistake for me and I should have gone with my initial instincts about the yoke and not necessarily what people, some of which have experience and some of which don't, we're saying about the yoke.
I hope that this article helps some people avoid the very serious financial mistake I made with purchasing a model S.
Wol747
Active Member
>>I hope that this article helps some people avoid the very serious financial mistake I made with purchasing a model S.<<
Good analysis IMO.
However I don't think it'll change too many minds: the ONLY reason for many people opting for a car with it is a perceived "cool" factor - I cannot see any actual advantage but many disadvantages, compounded by the lack of traditional stalks.
An aircraft yoke only rotates something like 90 degrees plus or minus and that only during control checks: a car often requires full turns which place anything attached to the yoke in any old position.
I also take your point seriously regarding use of a/p - watching many videos of beta (we don't get that here in Australia) there are multiple examples of the car indecisively jerking the yoke back and forth while trying to make up its mind which way to go. If you try and hang on you will probably knock out the a/p and if you don't you may well make a grab for a non-existent part of the yoke just when you need to take over.
My commiserations about the mistake and financial penalty!
Good analysis IMO.
However I don't think it'll change too many minds: the ONLY reason for many people opting for a car with it is a perceived "cool" factor - I cannot see any actual advantage but many disadvantages, compounded by the lack of traditional stalks.
An aircraft yoke only rotates something like 90 degrees plus or minus and that only during control checks: a car often requires full turns which place anything attached to the yoke in any old position.
I also take your point seriously regarding use of a/p - watching many videos of beta (we don't get that here in Australia) there are multiple examples of the car indecisively jerking the yoke back and forth while trying to make up its mind which way to go. If you try and hang on you will probably knock out the a/p and if you don't you may well make a grab for a non-existent part of the yoke just when you need to take over.
My commiserations about the mistake and financial penalty!
Yes, I was driving my model 3 today on autopilot and it decided it wanted to veer off the road a couple times. I cannot even begin to tell you how much more control I had over the steering wheel versus the yoke. With the steering wheel, I had a rock solid grip with My right hand at the 4:00 position on the steering wheel. I'm able to grip it up or down very easily with this. When I was driving the yoke, I was either resting my right hand on the lower portion of the yoke or resting it on the side portion of the yoke and neither one offered nearly the grip that I have with the steering wheel. It is a remarkable difference in control with the steering wheel
The fact it tends to “center bias” more or not, has absolutely nothing to do with the “symmetric” turning apparatus.You are 100% correct with respect to suspension, steering etc being the main cause of a wheel returning to centre. What I’ve noticed is when driving a yoke, even the slightest turn or adjustment returns back to centre a bit faster. Almost as if it acts as somewhat a pendulum weight.
Given steering ratios these days and the model 3 being a tight ratio allowing for quick point and shoot driving dynamics, even that slight little bit of extra centre force makes a difference in my view. All cars tend to want to stay straight (alignment assumed) but even staying within lanes seems easier given the yoke wants to stay vertically aligned. Not so with a wheel. What I mean to say is that drifting out of a lane seems to be less an issue. As least that’s my experience
