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
There is zero reason to reinvent the wheel.
Yokes do not look cool.
Why am I keep being asked to provide comments on the story and not a reply to the dozen comments I have already made?
But, is Ford’s Wrist Twist still OK?
I think the yoke looks ugly and probably makes drivers drive worse so I applaud the Chinese getting ahead of a bad idea. The only point I don’t agree on is part of the yoke that is not there would allow the driver to smack his head on the hard dashboard. Now a softer dash would solve this but I fail to see how you could hit your head on the dash as your chest would hit the wheel and stop it from hitting anything. But also where is this concern for the passenger?
Hot take: I think yokes have potential to be a good idea. With a variable steering ratio (like in the Lexus) they don’t need to be turned 180-360 degrees and they’re smaller. That means it’s less effort to turn (fewer rotations of the “wheel”) and they don’t block the gauge cluster.
The wheel was there from a time when you needed to make multiple rotations to turn the car, but if that’s not true anymore why not explore potentially better options? I’m open to it, at least.
Oh Jamaha you poor soul. Have you learned nothing about about over steer and under steer from watching Top Gear? With change on the ratio one will go from changing lanes to doing a UTurn in centimeters. Who taught you to drive? Richard Hammond? He can’t even reach the pedals and always needs a booster seat. (Read in the voice a Jeremy Clarkson)
Because such a variable ratio would wreck havoc with our brain and hand eye coordination. It may work fine on the highway but be a menace in a parking a garage or city street. Imagine navigating a parking a garage where a 1/3 turn of the wheel is full lock.
Yokes. The Carolina Squat of steering wheels.
As a New Yorker who moved to South Carolina, I hate the Carolina squat.
Not that I want a control stick, but if you’re going to emulate an aircraft design, why model it after some boring shit that uses a yoke? (OK, fine the P-38 and Mosquito were badass, but they were unusual.)
And how have we gotten to the place where China is the sensible country? First banning stupid electronic door handles, now these useless monstrosities.
You’d rather people be given a car with a control stick sticking up between their legs? That’s even more foreign to most drivers than the stupid yoke.
Not so half the driving age population is used to operating based on the control stick between their legs.
I get it, I have ADHD, so I’ll paste this part from my post in here: Not that I want a control stick…
I’m not exactly following your argument, but planes are also moving to all glass cockpits and away from analog controls…
Aircraft controls for a car are stupid. Elon started this nonsense because he thought it was cool and because it’s different for the sake of different (if not even original), but because he’s terminally uncool, even within the realm of options of this particular dumb idea, he managed to pick the least cool option he could have.
As I imagine the conversation with an engineer: “Steering wheels are dumb because they’re old and I didn’t invent them. Let’s do aircraft-like controls in a car, it’ll be so boss and futuristic seeming!”
“OK, something like old fighter planes?”
“No, something from flying box cars, buses, and econoboxes!”
Oh, I’m in no way defending the idea of touch screens or weird steering wheels in cars.
None of my cars have touch screens. The newest one is fancy though- its MFD is color! 😉
I didn’t get that you were, it seems my OP was unclear.
My car has a touchscreen, but it’s properly implemented in that there is pretty much no need to use it while driving. Any driving controls are switches and dials and even the touchscreen has buttons and dials redundant to steering wheel controls for the normal adjustments you might want to make while driving, like changing songs or something. It’ll even keep running a playlist with the screen turned off and it’s a reasonable size that’s about as well integrated into the interior as any I’ve seen. Of course, it’s a UX unique to the BRZ/GR86, two cars whose production numbers are rounding errors to their parent companies.
Back in the day I had a PhatBox HDD based audio player in my S4. It replaced the CD changer and used the head unit controls to navigate. The really neat thing it that it spoke the information as you were navigating through artists, albums, etc. You could keep your eyes 100% on the road and still use it. I really liked that idea and it worked well in practice too.
An old aftermarket unit did that? That’s pretty neat.
VW got this right in the MK7 era in much the same way. Then ruined it a bit with the M7.5 and completely lost the plot with the MK8. BMW and Mercedes had reached perfection with iDrive/Comand, but then ruined those by adding touch and Dear God, gesture idiocy in the case of BMW.
I LOATHE steering wheel controls. The only thing I want on the steering wheel is the horn. I would find them more acceptable if there was a standard for them, but they are completely and utterly random, and far too often inscrutable. And far too many in too many cases.
Gesture control is one of those ideas so shockingly bad that it’s mind-boggling to think it made it past the beginning of a brainstorming session.
My Ford and Toyota (Subaru?) reversed the side of the stereo controls on the wheel and it took me quite a number of times of switching gauge display data instead of music tracks to redevelop the muscle memory. The Ford made more sense as the stereo controls were on the stereo side, though I think the other side was primarily phone stuff I never use, so I didn’t need them at all or maybe it was CC, I don’t use that, either. While I do use the buttons to switch tracks and check tire pressures or oil temp on the display, I’d willingly give up steering wheel controls for an old school steering wheel. Though with EPAS, I doubt it would deliver the old school feedback, at least it wouldn’t ask me what I want when I hit the useless voice control command while sliding the car around.
GM experimented with a control stick in the concept firebirds in the late 50s early 60s. Wobble the stick (on a center console) left and right to steer and fore/aft to accelerate and brake (can’t remember which did which). If it was pull to accelerate, it could result in a “whiskey throttle” feed back loop that would make “unintended acceleration” look like a gentle nudge.
They abandoned the idea when the controls of the day made steering smoothly a difficult task.
Saab, I believe, also had an experimental 9000 that tried that. It’s just not a good method for automotive control. Not that I don’t think things should be revisited and questioned, but sometimes they’re already perfected and change is being done for the sake of it and, rather than improvement, the change is detrimental. In Elon’s case, I think he tries to pass off novelty as genius because the former is all he has, but wishes desperately that he had the latter so that maybe then people would like him and respect him for him rather than his money and highly embellished CV. It’s quite sad and, if he weren’t such a POS, I might feel bad for him.
Those glass cockpits have a lot more functionality than the old “steam gauge” stuff. Manual flight controls and glass cockpits for maps, navigation, comms etc. are far from mutually exclusive. I’d take some Garmin stuff over a bunch of separate nav/comm units any day.
Glass “cockpits” in cars have a lot more functionality than the analog controls they replace.
(That being said, I think the practicality and usability in an aircraft is miles beyond what has been done in cars. They actually make the pilot’s job easier, where touch screens in a car make the drivers job harder.)
Airplanes need to display a LOT more information than cars do, and generally require a LOT less attention being paid outside than cars do – there is a hell of a lot less to hit up in the air than on the ground. And in the situations where attention is needed outside the cockpit, quite a lot of that information is intentionally suppressed to reduce critical distractions. Completely different environment.
Agreed. My point was that panel displays aren’t inherently bad. Learning to fly, the club I belonged to had a REALLY ancient C-150 with the bare minimum of instrumentation. And I’m sure there are people here who have piloted planes with even more primitive panels.
They are growing on me. Now if they would quit killing people and trying to take over the world. Pinky
They are requiring a lot of physical controls too.
They’re way ahead of us. Thankfully, as they’e a huge market that drives trends. At least, for once, that can work in our favor.
I just think of the 90s GM wheels with practically a typewriter keyboard on them
Will flat bottom wheels still be ok? Mostly concerned about leg room, as without tilt they can really help. Miata really needs one, mazdaspeed miata I’m looking at you.
Flat bottom wheels will be okay but only if carrying flat bottom girls.
We really need the ability to insert Gifs and embed links here.
Flat bottom steering wheels are not ok. OEMs should fix their cabin ergonomics for taller drivers instead.
I’ve driven loads of cars with flat bottomed wheels “for more leg room” and not one of those cars wouldn’t have worked just fine with the wheel raised up instead. It’s style over function.
On my Focus ST, the flat bottom was unnecessary (regular Focus didn’t have it), but if there was a need, it would have been more that the seat didn’t go down far enough. Same thing with my GR86. In the latter case, I’d keep it on the higher side for around town just to be able to see better at intersections with all the tall hatchbacks (and lately, snow banks), but there are times I would like to drop it to traditional old sports car height. The OEMs appear to think that because most people are buying CUVs because they want to sit up higher doesn’t mean the few alternative choices need to be the same way, especially cars that are sold as entry level track cars where people would wear a helmet.
They do not look cool.
They look stupid.
In my humble opinion.
I would not, could not, in a car.
You may like them. You will see.
You may like them in a tree!
I would not, could not in a tree.
Not in a car! You let me be.
Would you, could you, on a boat?
Would you, could you, on a plane?
Not on a boat, yes on a plane
Not in a car, that is insane!
Unless I was drinking in a bar…
Would I could I in a boat
Not even if I was asked by a baby goat.
(Baby goats are extremely cute)
To the makers of yokes, the yokes on you…
Yokes no in cars yes in eggs.
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.
Squircles ok (looking at you, BMW)?
1960 Mopar and Austin Allegro
And the current KIA Sportage, oddly enough.
Sorry if you are going eggs yokes are a winner.
I’m glad China is putting an end to this yoke of a steering device.
Boo
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.
I would also accept KITT.
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.
OMG so much groupthink in the auto industry. I remember being in meetings and they are literally asking what XYZ OEM is doing and why can’t we do that. valid question for some things, but certain OEMs were regarded as trendsetters and we had to at least consider doing what they did even if it was stupid.
The worst part about the car industry is they refuse to admit a mistake and go back to before the mistakes were made. They try to veer right or left from down the road after the mistakes were made.
As with all “innovations” (touchscreens, electric door releases, etc.) it all comes down to cost.
Yes that is why the cost of a new automobile has been kept so low and financing at very few months. It is profitability they will spend $20k if they can charge $30k
It wasn’t the people in the auto industry it was computer nerds in the computer industry wanting to build cars.
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.
Proper 8 or 9?
It was always 10 and 2 or you flunked Dover’s Ed!
10 and 2 has been replaced I think
The “9 and 3” hand position on the steering wheel is optimal for control and safety. This position allows for better maneuverability and response during emergency driving situations.
(Source: emergency vehicle operator courses.)
They also teach to not hook your thumbs through the wheel, but rather keep them resting on the surface closest to you. The idea is that if something happens to jar the wheels and the steering wheel spins forcefully, it won’t break your thumbs.
The steering wheel being forcefully spun by the tires encountering an obstacle is pretty low in modern cars w/ electric power steering. That said, another reason to keep your hands ant 9&3 or lower and not hoook your thumbs through the wheel is an exploding airbag won’t break your forearms or rip your thumbs off.
I find it delightful that a “safety device” can maim you and prevents using the steering technique that was considered optimal for a good 80 years or so.
I think the old school 10&2 steering position was because of the giant-sized steering wheels and lack of power steering assistance.
I was in my 2022 Maverick yesterday and found that the steering wheel has thumb rests at the… 10 and 2 positions. So it’s still being used!
Yeah, I was in Driver’s ed around the time they were switching from “10 and 2” to “8 and 4”. That way an inflating airbag pushes your hands into your lap rather than up and out where there’s more risk of injury.
9 and 3 isn’t taught by driver’s ed but is the better hand position for performance driving.
In general, I found that 10 and 2 is good for easily keeping a stable line, especially as a new driver and especially with a quick steering ratio. But 9 and 3 or even a bit lower allows faster response.
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.)
Actually we could use more Yaks here
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.
Definitely smacks of circular reasoning (petitio principii) straight out of 1984…
In soviet China, test fails yoke.
I suspect it’s a way to ban them without explicitly banning them.
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.
Then you get the reflexive, mindless defense of bad engineering by the focus group idiots who never had a creative thought in their lives, “Yer jUsT 4 LuDdite! Y dOnt U h1Tch uP yer HoRse, hur hur hur.”
This ⬆️
They do legitimately help aerodynamics and therefore range. Not a lot, but probably a measurable amount. Of course, I think everyone but Tesla chose to implement the fancy handles in a way that let you just physically push one part to make the other part pop out if the motorized part didn’t work right.
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.
These people bad at thinking.
THIS!
I did not like yokes, I do not like yokes, I won’t like yokes. Good riddance.