Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla finally breaks and offers round steering wheel on Model S/X

electrek.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 135 posts

Re: Tesla finally breaks and offers round steering wheel on Model S/X

#101

Post by SilverBirch »

electriclove wrote: post #36
JoshTko wrote: post #34

Literally tried to reinvent the wheel and is now paying the consequences.

Yeah but I'm glad they are trying new things. If it isn't better, then revert.

The problem isn't trying new things, it's trying new things in stupid ways. The car industry has a whole structure for this - the concept car. And you can see, most of the time, they show the concept people go "But that's dumb because of , and then they don't try and sell it to customers! They're constantly putting out new concept cars to explore new ideas, and the good ones they then incorporate into production cars - like Lexus did, producing a car that has a yoke that actually has a technology solution to the obvious problems of a yoke.

Instead, Tesla goes "We're going to do this cool new thing!" people quite rightly respond "Ok, how did you solve " and then Tesla sells the car with the obvious flaw anyway. You don't actually need to sell a shitty steering wheel for several years.

People aren't asking them to be less creative, they're asking them to be competent.

Re: Tesla finally breaks and offers round steering wheel on Model S/X

#102

Post by abrawill »

renewiltord wrote: post #86
devnulll wrote: post #32

I have 20k miles driving a Model S with a Yoke. While I'm not a huge fan, the yoke itself is only part of the problem. The bigger problems are: 1. The capacitive buttons for turn signals. They are dangerous. They require taking eyes from the road, offer no feedback, and are honestly dangerous. 2. The horn. It's not in the middle. It's off to the side as a no-feedback capacitive button. Every time I've needed to use t…

Jesus the capacitive touch signaling is astoundingly stupid. The horn, though. In decades of driving, I've used my horn maybe once or twice.

How often have you used your airbag?

Re: Tesla finally breaks and offers round steering wheel on Model S/X

#103

Post by pdpi »

renewiltord wrote: post #86
devnulll wrote: post #32

I have 20k miles driving a Model S with a Yoke. While I'm not a huge fan, the yoke itself is only part of the problem. The bigger problems are: 1. The capacitive buttons for turn signals. They are dangerous. They require taking eyes from the road, offer no feedback, and are honestly dangerous. 2. The horn. It's not in the middle. It's off to the side as a no-feedback capacitive button. Every time I've needed to use t…

Jesus the capacitive touch signaling is astoundingly stupid. The horn, though. In decades of driving, I've used my horn maybe once or twice.

I used it with some degree of frequency, because I had to drive past that one specific curve. Sharp corner with a big elevation change, narrow road, narrow pavement. It was a visibility nightmare and honking the horn was the only way you could signal your presence to people coming in the other direction.

Re: Tesla finally breaks and offers round steering wheel on Model S/X

#104

Post by hulitu »

Lendal wrote: post #22

It wasn't the shape of the wheel that was the problem. It was the unasked-for capacitive-touch turn signal buttons located on the left side of the wheel, instead of a turn-signal lever. The round wheel keeps those useless buttons, so is not a solution to the problem. You still have to use your left thumb to pick between these two buttons. They don't push in, have no feedback and they are often unresponsive, especiall…

You should be happy that the pedals do not slide when you take turns. /s

That is what happens when web developers design cars.

Re: Tesla finally breaks and offers round steering wheel on Model S/X

#105

Post by dawdaway »

powerbroker wrote: post #75

I've driven the Model S for 13 months. Initially I was very apprehensive. But here is how my thinking has progressed: 1. 30 days prior to acquiring the car, I solely drove with hands on 3-and-9 in my conventional car; 2. First 30 days of driving, I practiced the turn signals and and horn at random parts of my drive to develop muscle memory; 3. First 6 months, I fully adapted to the 3-and-9 handling. I had 'button mis…

So for six months you were driving less safely, even while benefitting from your extra "brain plasticity"? Extrapolate that to a wide variety of consumers who dont have any experience piloting aircraft and what do you get?

Less safe roads for no reason other than style points. No one remotely capable of driving a car thinks doing a u-turn needs to be "easier".

Re: Tesla finally breaks and offers round steering wheel on Model S/X

#106

Post by alexvoda »

culi wrote: post #59
devnulll wrote: post #32

I have 20k miles driving a Model S with a Yoke. While I'm not a huge fan, the yoke itself is only part of the problem. The bigger problems are: 1. The capacitive buttons for turn signals. They are dangerous. They require taking eyes from the road, offer no feedback, and are honestly dangerous. 2. The horn. It's not in the middle. It's off to the side as a no-feedback capacitive button. Every time I've needed to use t…

physical buttons are reliable, easily repairable, more accessible to people with a variety of conditions, allow you to memorize location with feel, etc. I've never met anyone who's preferred capacitive buttons over physical ones yet more and more every "smart" technology seems to be opting for them. Some have even added haptic touch-like software to them... just to regain the feeling of the thing that everyone misses…

Apart from regulation mandating that safety features work, are reliable and are easy to use (physical buttons), I think we need some new economic theory.

Why is it that for products with complex spec sheets, the free market (the auto industry is arguably not a free market) does not work to provide the desired diversity? Automakers clearly have the incentive to make any control a capacitive touch surface for many many reasons. Many people hate touch controls for important features in cars. Yet most automakers are switching to touch controls. Free market theory says that other manufacturers should appear and satisfy that desire for consumers. This isn't happening.

I do not know of a economic theoretical model that accurately explains the behaviour of complex (many orthogonal characteristics) goods.

Re: Tesla finally breaks and offers round steering wheel on Model S/X

#107

Post by laserdancepony »

sometimes_all wrote: post #87
renewiltord wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus the capacitive touch signaling is astoundingly stupid. The horn, though. In decades of driving, I've used my horn maybe once or twice.

Here in India we have to use horns twice a minute. If they want to sell cars in the developing world, they better make their inputs tactile or people won’t buy them.

I doubt India is of any concern to Tesla, except for cheap labor.

Re: Tesla finally breaks and offers round steering wheel on Model S/X

#108

Post by Mawr »

porphyra wrote: post #71
disillusioned wrote: post #70

I literally cancelled my Plaid S order and switched to a Model Y over the stupidity of the yoke. I simply could not square that circle, so to speak. They emailed me telling me it was going to be ready for delivery and I said, "you know what, I can tell I'm going to hate it." I'm really glad I did that. I simply cannot understand how the yoke ever made sense, aside from being a 13-year-old's idea of what a cool car wo…

The yoke is very comfortable to rest your hand on while FSD is enabled, doesn't obscure the instrument cluster display, and you get used to it immediately. Like the old saying goes, don't knock it till you've tried it.

> The yoke is very comfortable to rest your hand on while FSD is enabled

Seems like the opposite is true: https://youtu.be/-QBWfw_nkr0?t=152

Re: Tesla finally breaks and offers round steering wheel on Model S/X

#109

Post by solarkraft »

devnulll wrote: post #32

I have 20k miles driving a Model S with a Yoke. While I'm not a huge fan, the yoke itself is only part of the problem. The bigger problems are: 1. The capacitive buttons for turn signals. They are dangerous. They require taking eyes from the road, offer no feedback, and are honestly dangerous. 2. The horn. It's not in the middle. It's off to the side as a no-feedback capacitive button. Every time I've needed to use t…

Makes you wonder when they'll turn the pedals and steering wheel into capacitive touch interfaces.

Re: Tesla finally breaks and offers round steering wheel on Model S/X

#110

Post by Lendal »

albertopv wrote: post #99
illumin8 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Model S Plaid and they do have haptic feedback when you press them, but the problem is they require muscle memory to know the exact place to press to get left/right turn signal or horn. I'm 6'1" and the horn is particularly problematic because it requires stretching your right thumb an uncomfortable amount to hit it. It reminds me of using a very large smartphone and trying to use your thumb to reach a tap p…

Touchscreen for forward/reverse? That's totally, literally insane!

Yes, and this is the problem. The shape of the wheel is literally the only thing about it that's fine. At least you got something in return. The shape is "cool". There's nothing "cool" about these f'king buttons and touchscreen forward/reverse.

Any time you change something in UX, there is always a backlash. You have to give something back. You have to make the change worthwhile. Add some kind of benefit to the user in return for their having to swallow the crap. The shape of the wheel being "cool" is the benefit here. Changing it back to round without removing all the other surrounding bad UX changes is worse, because you're taking away the benefit while keeping in place most of the crap.

Post reply on HN