The emergence of Tesla yoke steering wheel, not only from the shape to bring a great visual subversion, but also represents the car in the future may be driving steering action changes, a few days ago BMW submitted a patent application to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, in the drawings of the application, we saw that BMW announced a similar tesla yoke steering wheel, or this patent application is not a steering wheel, but more like with steering function and with a grasp handle, this steering system than tesla yoke steering wheel more than a set of auxiliary steering grip handle.
From the patent declaration drawing, BMW declared the steering handle belt is not fixed, in the handle base point with a pivot point that can be steered, look at the figure shows that the grip handle on this set of steering handles always point upwards, no matter how to turn the grip handle can be rotated around the center point.
When not in use, or when the vehicle is on autopilot, the steering handle can be folded and retracted back into the interior of the vehicle to take up as little space as possible. It can be seen that BMW's forward-looking design is somewhat inspired by the design of tesla yoke steering wheel, but it is more convenient than Tesla yoke steering wheel, especially in the implementation of large steering, this set of grasp handles with auxiliary steering will be more aspect, fast, and will not let the driver's arms appear to be significantly crossed.
In fact, Toyota is also planning to use the yoke steering wheel in the future, as Musk said: "Progressive steering requires complex transmissions or drive-by-wire systems without direct mechanical connections." Our goal is achieved in a few years. "It can be said that if a drive-by-wire system is implanted, it will play a great role in the development of electric vehicles in the future." From these subtle changes, we can also see that the yoke steering wheel will develop more rapidly.