A Model S Plaid With a Regular Steering Wheel?

A Model S Plaid With a Regular Steering Wheel?

At first glance, this video doesn't seem to be anything special.

That is, until you take a look at the interior of the car - it's a Model S Plaid. See how the center console screen is nicely aligned with the trim around it? And the steering wheel is NOT a yoke. According to a thread on Reddit, this Model S Plaid owner took the steering wheel from a Model 3 and put it in the Model S Plaid vehicle shown here.

According to electrik.co, the owner of the Model S Plaid is Ryan Huber and he is one of the first people to take on the project of replacing the yoke steering wheel with a regular one.

He's the only one I've seen to actually show a new steering wheel in the Model S Plaid. However, his video is confusing and doesn't show the car doing much. I'd of liked to see some acceleration and some explanation in the video of what is happening.

According to electrik.co, Ryan says:

“When I started on this project, I planned to make everything, including the Model 3 wheel, work. Over the time I’ve had the car, I’d grown accustomed the yoke, minus the haptic controls, which remain awful (even in the new version). I planned to set the car up as Yoke + stalks for my normal config, and to toss the round wheel on for fun, rarely. But then I got the controls on the round wheel working, and I’m not going back to the Yoke.”

It appears that Ryan just does not like the yoke steering wheel of the Model S Plaid. I've heard complaints from others as well.

Are Others Going to Do This More Now?

According to electrik.co, Ryan plans to make his work available on Github. One of the nice things about a Tesla being a computer on wheels is the chance for people to make modifications - and for Tesla to rapidly improve the car, using software.

No seriously, there is a Github repository for this project Ryan is working on. If you are a software engineer, this is something you will probably want to nerd out to.

I think others are going to start tinkering more with their Tesla vehicle and see what they can do. I actually think this is a really good thing and if I were Tesla, I would make it easier to make modifications, but make it so that you could only use a yoke or a regular steering wheel and it had to be from a Tesla vehicle.

If this catches on enough, Tesla could sell steering wheels on its website and make them interchangeable in its vehicles. That would be a first and something never before seen in the auto industry. On the other hand, there may not be enough demand for Tesla to invest any resources in that.

So far, this seems to be legit. I'm eagerly awaiting further updates.

What do you think about this Tesla Model S Plaid having a regular steering wheel? Will Ryan be able to make this project work and make it open source?

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Jeremy Johnson is a Tesla investor and supporter. He first invested in Tesla in 2017 after years of following Elon Musk and admiring his work ethic and intelligence. Since then, he's become a Tesla bull, covering anything about Tesla he can find, while also dabbling in other electric vehicle companies. Jeremy covers Tesla developments at Torque News. You can follow him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram to stay in touch and follow his Tesla news coverage on Torque News.