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]
Related
