Tesla May Offer New Model S/X With A Traditional Steering Wheel Too

The online configurator has a photo showing the updated interior without the yoke and a conventional wheel in its place.

By: Andrei Nedelea

Jan 30, 2021 at 9:46am ET

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Did you laugh out loud or at least just raise an eyebrow upon hearing the revised Tesla Model S and Model X were not going to be sold with a steering wheel, but a kind of yoke instead? If you didn’t really find it funny and thought it might be a safety hazard, then you’re on the same page with the NHTSA, which is not yet sure the yoke even meets Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.

And there is a chance it may end up not being legal outside the U.S. too, so you’d think Tesla had a backup plan in case this happened. Well, if you browse the official online configurator, you won’t find a traditional steering wheel among any of the options - it would appear then that Tesla is going all out on the yoke, but as The Drive discovered, that’s not entirely accurate.

Gallery: 2022 Tesla Model X

After playing around with the URL of one of the images generated by the configurator, they discovered that Tesla does indeed have at least one photo in there showing the new interior with a conventional round helm. This isn’t accessible to users just configuring a car via the app, but you could find the image by changing the link itself slightly.

What do you think?

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Well, as the source article points out, Tesla has since pulled the image and you can no longer access it via the link, but they did save the photo they found and here it is. We’re sure this photo will be far more pleasing to many people who just didn’t get why Tesla went all in on the yoke and thought it being the only option was a bit weird.

Tesla clearly didn’t want you to see this photo - which is why it’s no longer available - but it would have been positively daft if the manufacturer had not considered fitting the car with a traditional wheel. Sure, the yoke might be approved for use on public roads in some countries, but in others it may not be, and Tesla would still like to sell as many cars as it can, so it makes a lot of sense to have both and tailor the vehicles for each individual market.

Source: The Drive