Yoke vs. steering wheel

[Rutrow]

The CT will have flush capacitance…

You misspelled “flux capacitor”

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[FarAway]

You guys are soooo conventional. Get out of the BOX!

Since we no longer have to worry about a front center seat (sorry), I believe we should use that center console space for a joystick controller. Now that's a WOW!

The aviation industry has already moved on from wheels, "steam gauges" and yokes (so yesterday); to the glass cockpit displays and sidestick controllers.

In the photo's below, contrast a 1960's DC9 cockpit with yokes to a much newer generation Airbus A320 with sidestick controls. Ask any pilot that has transitioned from a yoke to a sidestick and the VAST majority will tell you it takes about 5 minutes to get used to it and they LOVE it! If one can handle the complexities of flying a jet with a sidestick, then driving a pickup truck should be easy.

Notice the Airbus cockpit is cleaner, simpler, modern and more functional. Information is easier to find and process. The whole idea is to base the design on human ergonomics and not an engineer's whims. An ancillary benefit is one can now have a fold out tray/desk in front of them since that space is not otherwise occupied. The ingress/egress to the seat is also much easier (and safer) also without the wheel/yoke.

What about all the items controlled by the buttons and knobs on the yoke? Well, the number of items that can be controlled from a joystick, as pilots (and gamers!) know, is amazing. Here is a joystick from an F16 and what controls the pilot literally has at his fingertips. The F16, interestingly enough, also has a sidestick controller as opposed to the more traditional "stick" between the pilots' legs.

I would think acceleration and braking could easily be incorporated into a sidestick controller, also. Now, without floor pedals relegating which seat is the driver and which is a passenger, TESLA could build the first true worldwide vehicle that does not have to make a single design change to enter a different market. The vehicle could be driven from either seat. One would just have to learn to drive with either the left or right hand, depending on their seat. Think of the efficiencies and cost savings this would generate!! I also think one could build a much safer vehicle without a yoke literally aimed at the driver's chest. Someone please send this to Elon,lol,


So, here's to hoping the CT will get sidestick controller (and a fold down desk tray).
Cheers.

 

[Dids]

I'll agree. In all the CT interior photos, I notice the yoke is barren - no buttons, no stalks. I guess Elon thinks we like punching touch screens or talking to voice assistants? I have considerable experience with voice assistants. Alexa and Cortana do a pretty good job of understanding me. But Siri and Bixby only get it right half the time. If you drive a vehicle often, you get used to the button/stalk layout and can hit the right one without taking your eyes off the road. You have to take your eyes off the road to look at a screen. Maybe this is why so many Teslas crash? If you are Bluetoothed up and want to set the cruise control, how can you talk to a voice assistant? Really need buttons to set cruise and hang up the phone. You just got your windshield splashed by a semi, how do you quickley turn on the wipers without CyberGus' stalks?

Tesla has just released crash data.... looks like you want to revise tesla crashing comment.

 

[Stuck4ger]

You guys are soooo conventional. Get out of the BOX!

Since we no longer have to worry about a front center seat (sorry), I believe we should use that center console space for a joystick controller. Now that's a WOW!

The aviation industry has already moved on from wheels, "steam gauges" and yokes (so yesterday); to the glass cockpit displays and sidestick controllers.

In the photo's below, contrast a 1960's DC9 cockpit with yokes to a much newer generation Airbus A320 with sidestick controls. Ask any pilot that has transitioned from a yoke to a sidestick and the VAST majority will tell you it takes about 5 minutes to get used to it and they LOVE it! If one can handle the complexities of flying a jet with a sidestick, then driving a pickup truck should be easy.

Notice the Airbus cockpit is cleaner, simpler, modern and more functional. Information is easier to find and process. The whole idea is to base the design on human ergonomics and not an engineer's whims. An ancillary benefit is one can now have a fold out tray/desk in front of them since that space is not otherwise occupied. The ingress/egress to the seat is also much easier (and safer) also without the wheel/yoke.

What about all the items controlled by the buttons and knobs on the yoke? Well, the number of items that can be controlled from a joystick, as pilots (and gamers!) know, is amazing. Here is a joystick from an F16 and what controls the pilot literally has at his fingertips. The F16, interestingly enough, also has a sidestick controller as opposed to the more traditional "stick" between the pilots' legs.

I would think acceleration and braking could easily be incorporated into a sidestick controller, also. Now, without floor pedals relegating which seat is the driver and which is a passenger, TESLA could build the first true worldwide vehicle that does not have to make a single design change to enter a different market. The vehicle could be driven from either seat. One would just have to learn to drive with either the left or right hand, depending on their seat. Think of the efficiencies and cost savings this would generate!! I also think one could build a much safer vehicle without a yoke literally aimed at the driver's chest. Someone please send this to Elon,lol,


So, here's to hoping the CT will get sidestick controller (and a fold down desk tray).
Cheers.

Yawn, I’ve been arguing for that since 1986

 

[FarAway]

Yawn, I’ve been arguing for that since 1986

Not very effectively, huh?

 

[Crissa]

Tesla has just released crash data.... looks like you want to revise tesla crashing comment.

68/18≠5 Mr YouTube guy. That's the reason for giving the base Tesla number, so you don't get weird results.

...3.7 is still alot safer, tho.

-Crissa

 

[fhteagle]

Is the Lexus (in video below) close to your #2 above?

I haven't driven the Lexus, so I cannot say from firsthand experience. I did watch the EE video, though, and yes the distinction between the Lexus and the Tesla implementation is night and day.

The aviation industry has already moved on from wheels, "steam gauges" and yokes (so yesterday); to the glass cockpit displays and sidestick controllers.

Okay, I'll bite. Your conflation of glass cockpits with sidestick controllers is a little bit specious. You can have glass without sidestick and vice versa. Your pictures are from two very different era aircraft, the older is what a DC-9 from early 70s, the second one maybe a A320 from mid 90s? If you want to see a much closer before / after for what just the sidestick does to approximately equivalent cockpits, look at the Global 6000 ( has a yoke )

https://defense.bombardier.com/site.../2020-02/Global6000_Cockpit.jpg?itok=Q8toSeDJ

vs Global 7500 (same make and similar generation of avionics, changes to sidestick).

https://i.insider.com/59e1347ed4e9200c058b5412?width=750&format=jpeg&auto=webp

Here the yoke makes a huge difference in ease of access of the pilot seats, because you enter the flight deck between the pilot seats. In a car you enter from outboard, and there is no yoke column messing up your ease of entry.

Sidesticks in the large business jets and airliners are only really practical with "fly by wire" computerized systems between the stick and the flight controls. There's just too much torque input difference between high speed and low speed flight to do it with a straight through mechanical connection. I suspect the same is true of driving, that a sidekick would be too sensitive in a high speed regime, or too slow and sloppy in the low speed maneuvering in a parking lot, or both, without a computer between the stick and the steered wheels. Can it be done? Absolutely. But that's the opposite of simplifying things.

A downside of a sidestick mounted in the middle of the car is how easily it could get bumped. Passenger having a fit in their sleep (or freaking out on bath salts), pet jumping up from the back, item shifting forward on a hard braking event, etc could all possibly hit the sidestick and cause an unintended steering input. Still technically possible with a wheel or yoke, but way less likely.

Wheels and yokes let you control the car with either hand, in case you need to reach something that's definitely on your left or right. Sidestick can only be ergonomically controlled by the hand on that side.

Not saying a center mounted control joystick can't / shouldn't be done, just that there's more plus and minus aspects to your idea than you wrote up here. Honestly it would take some real scientific studies to determine which of fixed wheel, fixed yoke, "throwover yoke" like in the really old Beechcraft Bonanzas, yokes that retract forward into the dash for front left and front right car occupants, or sidestick is really better for control.

 

[FarAway]

Okay, I'll bite. Your conflation of glass cockpits with sidestick controllers is a little bit specious. You can have glass without sidestick and vice versa. Your pictures are from two very different era aircraft, the older is what a DC-9 from early 70s, the second one maybe a A320 from mid 90s? ....

Never said you couldn't have both, or one, or the other. It should be intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer the jets are from totally different eras. I said as much in my post. The juxtaposition of the two photo's was meant to do nothing more than visually contrast the technologies and show the advancement in aviation cockpits. Interestingly, very little of this technology is truly new, even to the automobile universe.

Some of the first cars were controlled, one handed, by "joysticks", aka tillers.

Oldsmobile, Ford, Mercedes, Honda, Saab, Hyundai amongst other have all publicly exhibited concept cars with joystick steering. Saab (also a jet manufacturer) did a lot of research in the area. This article is interesting, Saab, born from jets... from the article:

But, the joystick was doomed from its inception. The self-driving car and associated technology turned the joystick into a redundancy. Daimler had already begun work on self-driving technology under the program.

While the FSD technology that TESLA is now working on, may one day make a steering wheel, yoke or joystick redundant on the highway. I still foresee the occasional need to manually steer the car whether it is just around the home driveway or to get to a remote campsite.

As for a joystick, I can see benefits... it is only now becoming practical because of the computers and the efficiencies gained by controlling remote systems either by wire or by over the air technology (Tesla specifically mentioned this as a cost saving measure in their last investor day call). Personally, I would be shocked if Tesla has not already looked at a joystick controller. Like so many things today, government agencies, regulations and attorneys often serve to stifle innovation.

Now, want to discuss installing aviation style transponders in new cars and the benefits an automobile adapted TCAS (Traffic collision avoidance system) system could have?

 

[CyberGus]

You guys are soooo conventional. Get out of the BOX!

Since we no longer have to worry about a front center seat (sorry), I believe we should use that center console space for a joystick controller. Now that's a WOW!

The aviation industry has already moved on from wheels, "steam gauges" and yokes (so yesterday); to the glass cockpit displays and sidestick controllers.

In the photo's below, contrast a 1960's DC9 cockpit with yokes to a much newer generation Airbus A320 with sidestick controls. Ask any pilot that has transitioned from a yoke to a sidestick and the VAST majority will tell you it takes about 5 minutes to get used to it and they LOVE it! If one can handle the complexities of flying a jet with a sidestick, then driving a pickup truck should be easy.

Notice the Airbus cockpit is cleaner, simpler, modern and more functional. Information is easier to find and process. The whole idea is to base the design on human ergonomics and not an engineer's whims. An ancillary benefit is one can now have a fold out tray/desk in front of them since that space is not otherwise occupied. The ingress/egress to the seat is also much easier (and safer) also without the wheel/yoke.

What about all the items controlled by the buttons and knobs on the yoke? Well, the number of items that can be controlled from a joystick, as pilots (and gamers!) know, is amazing. Here is a joystick from an F16 and what controls the pilot literally has at his fingertips. The F16, interestingly enough, also has a sidestick controller as opposed to the more traditional "stick" between the pilots' legs.

I would think acceleration and braking could easily be incorporated into a sidestick controller, also. Now, without floor pedals relegating which seat is the driver and which is a passenger, TESLA could build the first true worldwide vehicle that does not have to make a single design change to enter a different market. The vehicle could be driven from either seat. One would just have to learn to drive with either the left or right hand, depending on their seat. Think of the efficiencies and cost savings this would generate!! I also think one could build a much safer vehicle without a yoke literally aimed at the driver's chest. Someone please send this to Elon,lol,


So, here's to hoping the CT will get sidestick controller (and a fold down desk tray).
Cheers.

If airplane yokes are so great, how come every time I see a plane it has its blinkers on

 

[Bill906]

The only experience I've had with side stick is the Cirrus SR-22. Which I'm very confident is not fly by wire.

Sidesticks in the large business jets and airliners are only really practical with "fly by wire" computerized systems between the stick and the flight controls. There's just too much torque input difference between high speed and low speed flight to do it with a straight through mechanical connection.

Large jets are more likely the be fly-by-wire regardless of wheel, yoke or sidestick. You can have (and unless I'm wrong, the SR-22 is proof) direct mechanical linkage with a sidestick.

Here the yoke makes a huge difference in ease of access of the pilot seats, because you enter the flight deck between the pilot seats. In a car you enter from outboard, and there is no yoke column messing up your ease of entry.

The Cirrus SR-22 pilot seat is entered through the door on the outboard side of the seat.

 

[FarAway]

If airplane yokes are so great, how come every time I see a plane it has its blinkers on

For the airline pilots, it is because they keep raising the mandatory retirement age! LOL

 

[Stuck4ger]

I've got quite a bit of experience with side sticks and center sticks, just not in a car. But Mercedes did a concept car late last century, luckily after I first though of it : https://www.thedrive.com/news/37391...-joystick-control-system-in-the-1998-sl-class

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