Tesla Yokes Are a Joke, Plagued by Horrible Quality Issues

Image: Tesla

The Tesla yoke “steering wheel” in itself is a dumb idea that we’ve explained, illustrated and pointed out many times before. This yoke, in fact, is so bad that it even affected the brand’s Consumer Reports rating, which haven’t seen a good day or rating in quite some time. It’s not just its overall design that’s bad, as some owners are now reporting quality issues, including peeling and coming apart, according to The Drive. 

The quality issue shares began with a yoke first posted on Twitter. User @klwtts tweeted that the yoke in his Model S had started peeling at just 20,000 miles.

Then another user, @therealjfokay posted his yoke peeling in his Model S at around 12,000 miles. A follow-up tweet just a few minutes later showed the wheel had peeled even more just in the mile or so that he had driven since the first tweet.

G/O Media may get a commission

Soon the Model S owner forums started filling up with different owners talking about their yokes’ quality issues. Of course, there are some that stan Elon Musk had to place blame on something, for this it was on the owners, rather than Tesla’s shoddy quality. But for the most part, everyone agrees the yokes are made out of cheap material. However, some of the blame on owners themselves got out of hand as The Drive pointed out:

“@MeetKevin was facetiously accused of spilling beer in the interior, with a Twitter user hunting down a mugshot from an apparent DUI arrest. Posters scrutinized images and criticized @jf.okay in particular for excessive fingernail pressure on the yoke. Others spuriously asserted that excessive alcohol consumption could cause the problem via ethanol leaching out of the skin. Less cutting theories put the blame on hand sanitizers or lotions degrading the coating on the yoke.”

While steering wheel degradation over time isn’t anything new, it’s pretty disturbing on cars with less than 30,000 miles on them. Even more so on cars with less than 15,000 miles. My car has over 146,000 miles on it and the steering wheel just started peeling in certain places not too long ago. For this to be happening in cars with way less mileage that costs much more is pretty unacceptable whether some Tesla owners want to believe its a quality issue or not.