QOTD: Would You Drive a Yoke?
Tesla’s steering yoke is making news again, sort of, in part because of a video circulating Twitter and in part because our competition over at Jalopnik took some bad-faith criticism over a minor mistake.
I won’t get too deep into the weeds over the Jalopnik kerfuffle, which involved a yoke, an exposed airbag, and an incorrect claim of car ownership from a TikTok user — it’s beside the point of this QOTD — other to point out that even if the author got the ownership of the car wrong, it doesn’t change the main concern at hand about the airbag falling out. And it’s disingenuous, intellectually dishonest bullshit to use an honest mistake our peers made to try to distract from the main problem.
Rant over (sorry, I have just about had it up to here with bad faith and intellectual dishonesty, especially on Twitter, and especially from the Tesla cult) — let’s get to the question I actually want to ask. Would you want to drive a car with a yoke?
So many people make fun of the yoke steering. But it’s actually very easy with a small learning curve. Here’s it explained by Fred. @elonmusk source https://t.co/wjsRUh1phS pic.twitter.com/W2t97emDD6
— Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) June 27, 2021
“Don’t judge the yoke and the lack of shifters until you try it,” they said. pic.twitter.com/bG0lCbJr5f
— Quinn Nelson (@SnazzyQ) June 26, 2021
On the one hand, I grew up watching the Hoff and KITT in Knight Rider and thought the yoke was pretty damn cool. On the other, the videos I saw on Twitter seem to suggest that maybe it’s not very practical.
How about you? Would you wheel a car using a yoke? Or are they best left for aircraft and bad ’80s crime dramas?
[Image: Tesla]
Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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This falls squarely in the “if it ain’t broke” category for me like the PRND shifter without actual physical feedback which in a Grand Cherokee killed Anton Yelchin. What Star Trek actor will the Yoke kill?
Just a reminder, Tesla's competition has things worse than a yoke steering in the works. I think when GM got wind of the yoke wheel, one of their engineers said "hold my beer": https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/01/22/276146/gms-cruise-has-unveiled-a-self-driving-car-with-no-steering-wheel/