I have used a production steering yoke on a normal passenger car exactly one time in my life. It was a few years back, when I was working for Road & Track, and we held our first-ever EV Performance Car of the Year test. Among the contenders was none other than the Tesla Model S Plaid.
This was back when the Plaid was still pretty new, and before any of us even got behind the wheel, many of my colleagues had strong opinions on it. I like to reserve any judgment until I actually drive cars, and I’m glad I did for this one, because it surprised me in a couple of ways.
For one, the Model S Plaid wasn’t a total mess on the road, as many suggested it might be. It handled fairly well, actually, and it was explosively quick out of corners (obviously). Had it not had a steering yoke, I think I would’ve actually defended it in that comparison test.
Alas, I absolutely hated that yoke. It ruined the entire driving experience, not only because it looked ridiculous, but also because it was clumsy to use, whether you were driving normally or maneuvering through tight parking lots. Interestingly, neither of these reasons is why China is banning steering yokes from new cars starting next year.
The Shape Simply Isn’t Safe Enough, Says MIIT
According to Chinese-language publication Autohome, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published a draft outlining “Regulations for Preventing Injuries to Drivers from Automobile Steering Mechanisms,” which will go into law on January 1, 2027.
The new regulations outline stricter rules for testing and just how much the steering column can be displaced in a collision, but curiously, all of the provisions regarding steering yokes or “half-spoke” steering wheels have been removed, according to Autohome.
After experiencing the yoke first-hand, I first assumed the wheel style was being banned because it might be deemed too unsafe to handle in an emergency situation. But really, MIIT is banning the design for three other reasons. The first is that there simply aren’t enough points on a yoke-shaped wheel to evaluate it properly using the new testing procedures. From Autohome:
The new regulations require that in the head impact test, a total of 10 test points must be tested, including the “midpoint of the weakest area” and the “midpoint of the shortest unsupported area” on the wheel rim.
For the missing upper half of the steering wheel, these key test points simply do not exist physically, leading to a logical dead end under the existing evaluation system where “failure to test equals failure.”
Regulators also aren’t fans of how the lack of an upper portion of the wheel can make it easier for parts of the driver’s body to more easily strike hard points of the vehicle’s interior, like the dashboard and steering column:
Traffic accident statistics show that 46% of driver injuries originate from the steering mechanism. Traditional circular steering wheels provide a large area of cushioning when the driver leans forward, while the open structure of a half-spoke steering wheel makes it very easy for a person to bypass the steering wheel and directly impact the steering column or dashboard in a secondary collision, drastically increasing the risk.
The last piece of reasoning centers on the airbag deployment:
The new regulations specifically require that no hard debris (such as metal or plastic parts) should be directed towards the occupant during airbag deployment. The irregular cover of the half-spoke steering wheel has an extremely unstable fragmentation path and support structure when the airbag deploys instantly, making it difficult to pass the rigorous testing verified by high-speed camera capture.
While the first and third reasons are mostly down to testing incompatibilities, the second reason does make a lot of sense. In the event of a crash, the rim of a steering wheel, combined with the air bag, can act as a sort of blocker for flailing limbs. Eliminating half of the wheel can only hurt that benefit. And safety at the cost of aesthetics is not usually worth compromising on.
This Isn’t Just A Tesla Thing
Tesla was the first manufacturer to popularize the steering yoke in production cars, so it’s easy to assume they’re being targeted here. But since the yoke’s appearance on the Model S, several manufacturers have begun to adopt similar yoke designs for their cars.
In addition to the Model S and Model X, you can get a steering yoke on cars like the Lexus RZ, the company’s electric crossover. In China, steering yokes can also be found on the Jiyue 07 sedan, built in a collaboration between Baidu and Geely, as well as the IM Motors LS6 and LS7 crossovers, which were designed by a joint venture formed by SAIC, Alibaba, and Zhangjiang Hi-Tec.
Mercedes promised last year plans to add a yoke to complement its upcoming steer-by-wire system, though there’s no word if that’s still the plan.
Either way, there are a handful of manufacturers that have some rejiggering to do. Brand-new cars will have to comply with the new regulations from day one, but vehicles currently in production will, according to Autohome, have roughly 13 months to adjust their designs to comply. While yokes sure look cool, I think it’s for the better.
Top graphic image: Tesla
The “failure to test equals test failure” was most likely designed specifically to ban yoke wheels, they could’ve made accommodations for yokes if they wanted to. The fact that there was only 3 Chinese cars with yoke wheels out of the 549385749 startups who want to make a splash show how unpopular they are. Ji Yue is a startup that collapsed quite dramatically in late 2024, only a couple months after the 07 launched. The IM LS6 and LS7 were not very successful at first, so they added the yoke wheel (as an option) to try and get in the news cycle; the regular wheel kept the yoke wheel’s stupidly squared off bottom too. The heavily refreshed (and now much more successful) LS6 replaced the wheel with a normal fully round one, which looks much better. The yoke is still an option, but I suspect it’s just so they can dump the remaining inventory.
I like my steering devices the way I like my eggs.
Round-ish.
I’m glad China is putting an end to this yoke of a steering device.
If it ain’t an F1 car, it doesn’t need a yoke. Full stop.
I even agree in the case of GT3s. I guess the handheld console shaped wheels make it easier to change drivers and are a bit lighter, but, c’mon, guys, you don’t need an F1 wheel in a production based car.
This is going to be such a dated trend in ten years, like opera windows or floating roof designs. I don’t know why everyone in the auto industry thought that it should be a “thing”
The same reason all wheels are now painted black, floating roof D pillars proliferate, and practically every crossover has black plastic surrounding the wheel wells and rocker panels, physical buttons were quashed, and we ended up with touch screens controlling air vents. Group think.
I think they’re terrible to use and terrible to look at.
When shifting during daily commuting or driving long stretches, I like having options for where to put a single hand on the wheel. Sometimes that’s the top of the wheel, sometimes that’s the 7 o’clock position, sometimes that is the “proper” 8 or 9 o’clock. Very occasionally it’s at the bottom of the wheel.
Anyway, the point is that parking lot maneuvers aren’t the only time a yoke is annoying, so variable steering ratios don’t address my concerns with a yoke. I guess the idea is there’s more self-driving tech coming so you don’t have to keep a hand on the wheel for hours straight, but we’re not there yet.
Just China moving farther from its agrarian roots. Yokes are for Yaks.
(Autocorrect tried to replace Yokes with Yikes when I typed that. It knows.)
I didn’t mind driving the yoke, for the most part, but it did take some getting used to which is less-than-ideal for something as important as steering. Similar for the rounded-square style. It would make more sense on a track car or something similar with fast steering that will never see crowded parking lots or multi-point turns.
The most annoying part of Tesla’s yoke is the cap-touch turn signals and they carried that over to the wheel, IIRC. I’m not against removing stalks/buttons but that implementation was flat-out dumb.
Leave the yokes to Cessna. If you need more than 90 degrees rotation there you’re probably in trouble.
Race cars can retain their Nintendo Switch shaped things I guess, due to low turns lock-to-lock and the fact you have anywhere from 5 to 9 belts holding you in.
I’m not here to defend a steering yoke, far from it, but using incompatibility with a standard test as a reason to preclude the design entirely is 100% weak sauce and will only collapse the possible design envelope (although, the steering wheel works pretty darn well…). Tests should be designed around components, not the other way a round. Doesn’t fit the test? Revise and generalize the test. It keeps me and my kind employed, so I’m a bit more than biased.
Which comes first the gimmicks from the car makers or the idiot buyers demanding gimmicks?
1) Tesla introduces a fix to something that wasn’t a problem
2) Legacy automakers bounce this off of focus groups with poorly selected participants
3) Legacy automaker introduces a fix to something that wasn’t a problem
For another example, electric door handles.
I can see, though, how you could talk to a regular non-engineery person and tell them “hey, check out these cool handles that pop in and out and help aerodynamics” and they’d think it’s cool and probably not be too concerned about what happens when it’s icy or whatever. And no one would ask “hey what happens when you’re in a crash, will they work?” because it would be inconceivable that no one would have thought of that.
But I can’t imagine a reaction to the yoke being more extreme than “that’s kind of cool I guess” in to “for” column while getting a lot of “oh fuck naw” in the “against” column.
People sit in the car for 1 minute, think “wow this is so futuristic and cool”. These people are also bad at thinking into the future and how annoying the feature is to actually live with.
I did not like yokes, I do not like yokes, I won’t like yokes. Good riddance.