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Tesla Model S And X Steering Wheel Retrofit Is Already Sold Out

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It turns out many owners happily spent $700 to get rid of the steering yoke – the initial inventory disappeared in eight days.

It only took a little over a week for Tesla’s Model S/X steering wheel retrofit to sell out on the automaker’s online store.

Last week, we reported that Tesla started offering this option for owners of Model S and Model X vehicles equipped with the steering yoke from the factory. 

While the EV maker did not say how many steering wheels it had in stock, it’s pretty clear that demand went through the roof, despite the fact the retrofit option wasn’t exactly cheap.

Apparently, many owners of refreshed Model S and Model X vehicles want to get rid of the steering yoke, which was the only steering wheel option before January 2023 when Tesla introduced a round wheel as a no-cost option for new Model S/X EVs orders.

Customers interested in the Model S/X Wheel Retrofit were able to purchase it through the Tesla App, but only if they owned a Model S or Model X factory-fitted with the steering yoke. 

Priced at $700 including installation through Tesla service, the Model S/X Wheel Retrofit product now appears as “out of stock” on Tesla’s online shop, as Teslarati found out. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the option is gone forever, but more like the initial stock sold out. Hopefully, Tesla will replenish the supply in the future.

When Tesla introduced the yoke as standard equipment on the refreshed Model S and Model X in 2021, it got mixed reviews from owners and journalists alike. 

Many users complained that it wasn’t practical for everyday driving, especially when taking tight turns. Others criticized the yoke for being cheaply made – there were reports of the finish peeling off on cars with less than 20,000 miles.

People also weren’t happy with the fact Tesla deleted the stalks for the wipers and transmission, along with the capacitive touch buttons for the turn signals and the horn. Mind you, the round steering wheel retrofit does not bring the stalks and buttons back. The traditional wheel offers exactly the same functionality as the yoke and is similarly integrated into the vehicle.

Tesla backtracking on the yoke may signal that the EV maker is starting to take customer feedback more seriously.

Even the Cybertruck, which was unveiled as a concept in 2019 with a yoke similar to the one later fitted to the Model S and Model X, has switched to a more traditional wheel in pre-production beta prototype form. Tesla may still call it a yoke, but it’s more of a conventional wheel with a flat top and bottom.

Thoughts On EV car buyers; Men versus Women: As the United States rolls out a plan to invest in charging infrastructure in all 50 states, it is becoming more important to understand how and why women aren’t making the transition to electric cars as quickly as men.  In the first half of 2021, less than 30 percent of electric vehicles were purchased by women. However, a separate 2022 survey found that 47 percent of women say that in the next five years, they’d be interested in purchasing one, compared with 53 percent of men.

There is no available data on nonbinary people in either data set. While most people might consider the electric car to be a modern invention, they’ve been around since the 1800s. Clara Ford, the wife of Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Co., drove an electric car, as did other wealthy women of the time. These cars were seen as “women’s cars” since they were cleaner and easier to use because you didn’t need to crank start the engine.

“Women were presumed to be too weak, timid and fastidious to want to drive noisy, smelly gasoline-powered cars,” historian Virginia Scharff wrote in an essay. “Thus at first, manufacturers, influenced by Victorian notions of masculinity and femininity, devised a kind of ‘separate spheres’ ideology about automobiles: gas cars were for men, electric cars were for women.”

Fast forward to today, and even though consumer choices viewed as more environmentally minded are stereotyped as feminine, men make up the majority of electric car drivers.  A survey conducted last January by consumer advocacy nonprofit Consumer Reports with over 8,000 respondents offers some insight as to why this gender gap persists.

Men were both more familiar with how electric car charging works and more likely to have been in an electric car than women. “So if women are being less exposed to them, it makes sense that they’re showing lower interest overall,” said Quinta Warren, associate director of sustainability policy at Consumer Reports. “There’s also the fact that women said they are less familiar with the fundamentals of owning an electric vehicle.

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