Technology

Is nobody gonna mention this horrible KITT steering wheel?!? That damn thing is dangerous.

It’s great for Tesla, for one reason - modularity.

If your input/control has a physical button, that immediately needs independent wiring, assembly steps, A THOUGHT OUT PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PLAN, another BoM item to build the car/widget, and usually markings that limit its use for other functions (present and planned).

Tesla can bury controls and change interfaces as much as they like on the main touchscreen, or even add new features. It’s still trash for driver usability except when parked for all the obvious reasons, but hey they get to ‘push’ new features over cellular networks as they’re developed. Y’know, instead of selling a complete product in the first place.

Tesla is going with buttons on the steering wheel instead of a stick to the left of the wheel

Its even worse than that. The buttons are smooth surface (like a touch screen) with haptic feedback. These are truly a horrible idea:

If I had one of these Tesla cars I'd look into retrofitting the stalks back in.

Wtf, seriously? I've tried using media buttons on the steering wheel during a turn. It's not reliable in the slightest, because it's a moving target.

Does the non circular steering non-wheel never go past 90 degrees or something?

In Norway, you have to indicate your exit in a roundabout by activating your turn signal, and he found it difficult while turning the steering wheel, which you have to do in a roundabout. A driving student would fail their test if they don’t activate their turn signal in a roundabout in Norway.

He said:

I tested the Model 3, and noticed that I lost both focus and direction in roundabouts. It’s not directly life-threatening, but you run the risk of both driving on curbs and other cars if there are two lanes.

After posting his findings in a group for driving schools, he was met with agreement by many other instructors who said that they experienced the same issue and the risk is much higher with students.

a turn signal will soon be unnecessary with the advent of self-driving

That's like not including a stick for the manual transmission, because the automatic one is just around the corner.

I wish I possessed this kind of optimism in my daily life :D

Meanwhile Teslas are quickly building a reputation of being impossible to repair, so replacing an industry standard component that never breaks for a digital system is a great way to keep the title.

will soon be unnecessary with the advent of self-driving.

by next year, they said for the umpteenth time this decade.

It's not designed with any common sense in mind. They just figured they could a) cut costs and b) make the vehicle look "cleaner", because Musk and the people who work for him are intellectually incurious morons who refuse to learn why things are designed the way they are before trying to reinvent them.

The thing about breaking the rules is that if you want to really do it well, you have to understand why those rules exist in the first place. That's hard to do when you start from the position of just assuming that you're smarter than everyone else.

It was designed to cut costs and hope fanbois would think it was innovation. It's so dangerous a change it should be banned in countries where drivers are expected to properly indicate while traversing roundabouts.

What? Physical controls? It'll be a touch screen.

It regularly kills people. It can't be used on a lot of road types (but people still do because Tesla makes no effort to prevent it). It's still marketed as Full Self Driving despite the fact that Tesla has stated on the record that it is, and I quote, "Not capable of driving itself."

They're trying to have their cake and eat it too. Any time it benefits them, they claim that their cars are completely autonomous vehicles powered by the most advanced AI. Any time they get their wrists slapped, they claim that it's an assistive feature like cruise control that cannot and will not ever replace the human behind the wheel.

Rapid acceleration, with your eyes pointed a center touch screen. What could go wrong?!