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Don't Call it a Yoke - Lexus Steer By Wire Review in the RZ 450e

Autoblog

The Lexus RZ 450e will eventually be available with something very different: a yoke in place of the steering wheel. However, it’s not just a yoke bolted onto the steering column for drivers to pretend they’re Batman. It is in fact an intrinsic part of an entirely new steering concept, officially called Steer by Wire, that could revolutionize the way we interact with the front wheels of a car. An angle sensor in the column senses how much you turned and sends that info to the usual electric power steering system, while the car determines how fast the car is going. Those two pieces of info are then used to radically alter the steering ratio and therefore how much you have to steer. In this video, Autoblog Senior Editor James Riswick climbs behind the wheel, err yoke, to tell you what the system and its yoke are like to drive.

Video Transcript

JAMES RISWICK: This is the new Lexus RC 450e, and I want to talk about something a little different about this car, the steering wheel. It doesn't have one.

So obviously this is a yoke, not unlike the Tesla yoke. However, there is a very big difference between that and this. This is what is called the Lexus Steer by Wire system. Basically what it does is it changes the steering ratio so that when you're in a low-speed situation while you're parking, you don't have to steer as much. So I'm not going to be, in theory, moving the steering yoke around as much as I would with a regular wheel or the Tesla yoke.

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But I have never driven this before, so you are joining me on the maiden voyage. So OK, I've never used this thing before. I'm going to put it in drive. We're going to be in a little cone course here. So here we go into the future.

Oh, yeah, so immediately, like, you just turn just a little bit, and it's turning way more than you would expect it to at kind of like small steering angles. So, I mean, you-- yeah, this is kind of a trip, honestly. And again, this is a low-speed scenario, so I will have no idea what it does.