Even with Nominal Demand, Tesla Yoke Is Now a Pricey Option

• Tesla begins offering the yoke style steering as a $1000 option, after removing it as a standard feature from the Model S and Model X.

• The automaker is still expected to offer the yoke in the Cybertruck, the first deliveries of which are expected to begin in a matter of weeks.

• Tesla has not made the yoke part of a steer-by-wire system, unlike Toyota, though it is understood to have been working on such a system for the next generation of vehicles.

Tesla's yoke steering arrived without much prior warning, landing in the Model S sedan in 2021 just as the automaker was readying an update for the now decade-old model. It also arrived seemingly without any prior demand for such a feature from buyers.

Initially offered as a standard feature in the Model S without the option of a regular steering wheel, the yoke quickly drew mixed reactions from Tesla fans and owners, with quite a few YouTube videos demonstrating some shortcomings as well as some advantages, like the ability to see the instrument cluster better.

But a number of industry observers pointed out early on, the yoke worked in Formula One cars because the steering ratio was dramatically different, requiring far less than a 360 degree rotation lock to lock.

In Teslas, on the other hand, the yoke required a few spins of the wheel to go from lock to lock, making it notably less advantageous for in town driving and maneuvers in tight quarters. Tesla also removed the column stalk that controlled driving modes in the process of adding the yoke, migrating that function to the touchscreen.

The automaker responded by eventually making the yoke a $250 optional feature rather than a standard item, but not before quite a few Model S and Model X cars had been sold with the yoke steering.

Tesla also started offering retrofits of the round steering wheel to yoke-equipped cars for $700, in effect charging owners who had wanted to get rid of a standard feature.