The yoke was just gratuitous. In addition to being a stupid and atypical design even for a yoke--where the grip is under the center of rotation and (as mentioned) it has a constant ratio (making low-speed turns ridiculous)--the mechanism was never designed for use in cars where you need to make complex parking maneuvers: the concept comes from racecars.

When I saw they were going in that direction, I nearly considered not wanting to even try a Tesla, as "worse case" I'd actually like the car and then one day I'd need a new one and I wouldn't be able to get one anymore without a yoke. I finally decided they were probably going to cave, and "lo and behold" they did ;P.

One thing I did was watched a ton of videos of Tesla fanbois defending it on YouTube with videos claiming "if you don't like the yoke you clearly don't know how to drive, let me show you how easy it is to use" and then confidently driving around a parking lot while constantly fumbling with the wheel which they clearly weren't good at using and they were so self-absorbed into their narrative that they somehow failed to even realize their video was proving the opposite of what they wanted to anyone who actually cares about driving feeling natural rather than being something you have to concentrate hard to pull off.

But like, if you try to analyze the wheel just from a business perspective, it feels like an unforced error: I can't imagine many people at all--possibly not even anyone--were making the decision to buy a Tesla because of the yoke steering wheel. They aren't on the fence about this car that is already so unlike every other car on the market and then suddenly they see the wheel and think "wow... that's it: that's the detail that is selling me on it".

Here's the scenario which feels much more likely: people are already trying to decide whether a Tesla is right for them, trying to get over the "range anxiety" that plagues electric vehicles and having to be convinced that they were going to be able to find convenient opportunities to charge (in my case, I rent an apartment, like a lot of people, and virtually everyone I know; I thereby simply can't charge at home) and then they do a test drive and now realize they have another problem: they need to decide if they can tolerate the yoke steering wheel.

And, maybe they can! But now the sales person is having to defend multiple things at once, and this one is frankly a doozy as you are dealing with someone who has been driving a car so far their entire life and has potentially decades of motor memory--many tens of thousands of hours--working with round steering wheels and are suddenly feeling a bit relieved that these electric cars are some kind of joke because of the yoke.

Even if the yoke were a good thing (and I'm pretty confident it isn't) in the long term, it seems absolutely daft to try to introduce it in a car that is already--by its very nature--having to be extremely different from every other car on the market on another critical axis unless it is a clear and obvious win where almost everyone who tries it thinks "omg I didn't even realize I was missing this until I tried it and now I can't go back" (which, btw, I'd claim Tesla actually pulls off surprisingly often): if the feature is even slightly controversial it is almost certainly going to cost you too many idiosyncrasy credits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiosyncrasy_credit