The wheel-shaped steering wheels are so outdated. They objectively follow the best solution for driving road vehicles that have conventional 900-degree locking steering systems, but manufacturers of taste have decided arbitrarily the yokes are fresher. And so I fully anticipate that there will be more car manufacturers following Tesla’s example over time, not because the idea is good, but because everyone desperately i want to be tesla.
I note that I study this representation / sketch published a GM Design Instagram page of an address – I don’t know, device – which seems to exist to ask the Model S yoke to keep its beer. Of course, unlike this yoke, this is not real or goes in a real vehicle. If I ever did, my first question would be how could the airbag be deployed without throwing fragments of Gorilla Glass into the driver’s face.
A yoke with grips is really preferable to this, because at least one yoke would have openings on either side to wrap your hands. This thing, on the other hand, has to be done in the same way that a hand game system is. Or, as my colleague Rory specifically said in Slack, a Sega Game Gear. A Game Gear with leather-wrapped sides that presumably doesn’t burn through six AA batteries in the afternoon, but a Game Gear.
We see this “wheel” with two modes: one labeled “Autonomous” and another “Human”. In a world with perfect autonomy, you wouldn’t drive at all, and if you did, you probably wouldn’t want to use this blown tablet to do so.
Aside from philosophical questions, there are many aspects of that confuses me. What makes this indescribable circular cyan button on the right? Is the brake control between the transmission and reverse arrows left to park or slow down? If it’s the latter, he would miss it absolutely nine out of ten and play what he doesn’t, as if he were playing Asphalt on my iPhone. Speaking of which, look at how tiny the speedometer and other on-screen buttons are.
G / O Media may receive a commission
The Human Drive mode screen shows what I assume navigation overlaps with a view of the road, which is a good idea, but why explain the traffic signs and vehicles? To let you know he sees them, even if you are the one driving?
The standalone screen is especially weird: an Instagram commenter actually described it as a Winamp skin, which made me laugh. Foil and oil indicators which it is apparently a vision of the distant future is probably the strangest part of it all.
I’ve always loved seeing concepts in this industry, even the extravagant ones. As an outsider, I really believe that designers have perhaps the most fun job but also one of the hardest jobs. – bThe challenge of dreaming of something better, more refined and more exciting, while at the same time engaging this vision with what is really possible and what bean counters will allow you to get out of. By understanding that the bolder an idea is, the more it will polarize its reception. There seems to be a lot of strong ropes to walk on.
Sure, this is a fun little experiment, but the fact that Tesla has put a yoke in a car that can be bought right now makes it feel a little less pasty than the designer might have intended it to be. And it makes me think that someone will try something like this eventually, even though it doesn’t solve any problems and would result in so many new ones. Because ergonomics is not attractive: yokes and screens are.