Tesla ended up with egg on its face when it launched the yoke steering wheel for the Model S and X. Reviewers who had the chance to drive yoke-equipped cars discovered that it was a case over style over substance and became frustratingly hard to use in tight turns when you had to cross your hands and found there was no wheel rim to grab.
So having no doubt listened to all that criticism what made Lexus think it was a still a good idea to press ahead with its open yoke wheel on the new RZ electric SUV? We’ve already had a chance to get try the RZ and its yoke for ourselves (see link below) and now Jason Fenske, the brains behind the Engineering Explained YouTube channel, explains why the Lexus works so much better in a video that you might be pleased to hear involves no brain-melting maths on a whiteboard.
But before he gets to why it’s better, he also covers exactly how the steer by wire system works, answers the kind of questions all of us have about the biggest change to steering since tillers became passé, including whether it’s safe and whether it can possibly still deliver feedback without a mechanical connection to the wheels. And he then goes on to outline the RZ’s faults and how Lexus could make it better, because as is apparent by the end of the video, and our own testing, it’s not perfect.
Review: The Lexus RZ’s Yoke And Steer By Wire System Are Solutions Looking For A Problem
So why is the Tesla terrible and the Lexus, if not great, at least less terrible? If you hadn’t already guessed, it’s down to the RZ’s variable ratio. At low speeds, when you’re likely to need to make tight turns and potentially cross your hands, which causes problems with the Tesla yoke, the RZ uses a fast steering ratio that allows you to swing from lock to lock without taking your hands from the wheel. Conversely, at high speeds it gets a slower ratio so it feels less nervous on the highway.
Now I’m no engineer but it sounds too me like Fenske has his high and low ratios confused – when he says the RZ has a low ratio at low speed perhaps he’s referring to the lower number of that ratio. Other than that it’s a great video and you should prepare to be shocked by the footage showing the delay between Fenske turning the steering wheel and the wheel itself moving. It shows that the RZ is hardly the last word in instant response it claims to be and has us asking whether the wheel really needed reinventing.
