Two years ago, restyling brought an ergonomically controversial element in the form of a steering wheel to the interior of Tesla’s flagship electric vehicles, replacing the classic round steering wheel. Since it still coexists with steering without a progressive gear ratio, in practice the steering wheel turned out to be inconvenient, and Tesla was forced to return the round steering wheel to the list of options available to Model S and Model X buyers.
Image Source: Tesla
As reminds Electrek, formally, the round steering wheel returned to the configurator on the Tesla website back in February last year, but it was impossible to order a car with it, and some car owners used the services of craftsmen or experimented with replacing the steering wheel with a steering wheel on their own. Now, Model S and Model X buyers can choose a round steering wheel instead of a steering wheel when ordering a car on the company’s website, and such a replacement will not require an additional payment, although it may eventually affect the delivery time of an electric car.
Along with the round steering wheel, the steering column switches also disappeared, but Tesla gradually implemented their functions through buttons on the steering wheel hub with a feedback function. Elon Musk explained all these innovations by the fact that over time, automation should learn how to switch the operating modes of the power plant and turn on the direction indicators, and the steering wheel truncated in height allegedly provided improved visibility. Since the “bright future with autopilot” has not yet arrived, the reality is that the driver is more comfortable with a round steering wheel, and its return to the list of Model S and Model X options can only be welcomed. Especially since Tesla has not yet implemented a progressive gear ratio that would make the steering more “sharp” at high speeds.
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