A Toyota steering yoke as tested by Michael McAleer.
The entire turning circle is 150 degrees in either direction, so your hands never need to leave the quarter-to-three position. The benefit of the test track route was that we could repeat the same corners not only at different speeds but also with the same BZ4X fitted with a regular steering wheel. Even after three runs through the coned autocross circuit, I was still coming to grips with how tightly the car was hugging the apex, and compensating by going slightly wider into the bends. No doubt you will get to grips with it after a while, but it may cost you a few dents on your rear doors.
The system starts with the driver’s input in terms of turning the yoke and the speed of that turn but then crunches a myriad of other data including the vehicle’s speed, the crosswinds and angle of the road before crunching the data and sending the necessary instructions to the front wheels. While it won’t save the planet, or change the very nature of car ownership in the same way EVs hope to, clearly it’s going to be a pretty major shift for many motorists, on a par with opting for automatic over manual.