xponents
Active Member
..the tesla actually happened near to my house.
It is and they will fix it
Seems that this is a fairly widespread issue.
it is?
Seems to be, several here reporting same problem. SA reporting it is a known issue. Not a six sigma design.
This is the first I’ve honestly heard of this myself. There were a few other reports around the same time, but I wouldn’t call it widespread.
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- Lucid Air GT
The only somewhat widespread steering wheel issue I can recall was the “clicking” sound they made. My car had revision 1 (and clicked while steering when the car had sat outside and gotten a warm cabin) and will be returned to be soon with the latest revision 6, and I’m told that noise is long gone in this revision.
Hadn’t heard much about the buttons until recently though.
Hadn’t heard much about the buttons until recently though.
Steering wheel creaking seems to be very common from conversations I’ve had but I really dont know the scope of impact. Just that it’s been brought up a few times and affected me.
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Likewise! It went away in the winter for me, but returned a month or so ago. No issues whatsoever having it replaced by Lucid, and they acknowledged the issue. But I’ve talked to some others that never had the issue, luck of the draw!
When I took the car in Thursday for other items I told them the cruise button had fallen off. He said this is a known problem and will be corrected by a new steering wheel. I told him I thought this was a poor design and that it will need to be changed or Lucid will be in the steering wheel replacement business forever. He did not say the replacement wheel design was modified so I really don’t know if this is a long term fix.
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- Grand Touring
Yeah, this failed for me, too. And I wasn't even using it - I just got in the car one day and noticed it was gone. I suspect the button was bumped or caught on a backpack or purse getting in or out of the car, because the part was no where to be found.
This is a lesson in product management: if you implement a completely new, "cool" design, expect it to fail in new, "cool" ways. In this case, the failure was not just that the damn thing is prone to breakage, but that a very high fraction of the user community finds it silly, or outright hates it. This is a clearly self-inflicted injury.
This button and wheel design was clearly driven by aesthetic factors and a desire to have a market-differentiating steering wheel design. But when you already have a huge amount of design risk with the critical infrastructure of the car, why-o-why would you take on additional risk for something that is not part of the core product requirements?
If I am not mistaken, Tesla's first Model S steering wheels were identical to those on a Mercedes. That makes sense. By purchasing a proven subsystem, you benefit from millions of user hours of "testing" and de-risk your decision. The steering wheel (and associated stalks) is a high-touch piece of the UI, with lots of functionality packed into it. If you get it wrong, you upset your customers in a very "in your face" sort of way.
This is a lesson in product management: if you implement a completely new, "cool" design, expect it to fail in new, "cool" ways. In this case, the failure was not just that the damn thing is prone to breakage, but that a very high fraction of the user community finds it silly, or outright hates it. This is a clearly self-inflicted injury.
This button and wheel design was clearly driven by aesthetic factors and a desire to have a market-differentiating steering wheel design. But when you already have a huge amount of design risk with the critical infrastructure of the car, why-o-why would you take on additional risk for something that is not part of the core product requirements?
If I am not mistaken, Tesla's first Model S steering wheels were identical to those on a Mercedes. That makes sense. By purchasing a proven subsystem, you benefit from millions of user hours of "testing" and de-risk your decision. The steering wheel (and associated stalks) is a high-touch piece of the UI, with lots of functionality packed into it. If you get it wrong, you upset your customers in a very "in your face" sort of way.
Pretty funny that this entire argument would apply perfectly to the Tesla “Yoke.”
I have no issues with my Lucid Steering Wheel. The only place they got “fancy” is those two twist rockers, and I agree, they were likely better off with something more traditional there, since these seem to be prone to breaking off. They will learn from the experience and likely change the wheel for a future model. Or at least come up with a new version of this wheel with more robust buttons. So long as it’s fixed under warranty, I don’t particularly worry about it.
With some designs you really can’t know how they will pan out until thousands of real users start beating on them.
I disagree that just popping on a Mercedes wheel, or something similar, would have been a better choice. The wheel is the primary way a driver interacts with the vehicle. It’s pretty important to have that experience be at least somewhat bespoke.
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I had owned a Mercedes SL55 AMG prior to getting our first Tesla (2015 Model S), and the entire switchgear set -- steering wheel, turn signal stalk, window switches -- were sourced from Mercedes and identical to the ones in the SL55. I, too, found it to be a wise decision.
We now have a 2021 Model S Plaid, and it would take several paragraphs for me to lay out what I find so execrable about its design and execution. God, what a mess.
We put 17,000 miles on our first Lucid Air before it was wrecked and never had a problem with the steering wheel or the operation of anything on it other than the too-high resistance of the rotary switches. I don't really see them as a completely new design but rather an adaptation of the rotary switches ganged with press detents I've found on other vehicles. I suspect the silver detent button has broken off in some cases because drivers use it to exert the force necessary to overcome the excessively high spring rate on the rotary function. The whole issue could probably be resolved by changing the spring rate on the rotary. I think the location is handy and the look nice.
What I find to be more of a problem are the toggle switches in the dashboard to control temperature and fan speed. They were loose and imprecise in our first Dream Edition and are even more so in the second Dream Edition that replaced the first one. In the second car, they don't even line up visually when in rest position. I find this surprising, because in an early road demo video with Peter Rawlinson behind the wheel, he showed these switches and commented that they still had to work on the detent precision of them.
Perhaps it was explained indirectly in a later video in which Rawlinson said that the Covid pandemic had prevented his engineers from working on-site with many vendors, which is the normal practice in sourcing operations, and that it was causing them both quality and delivery problems with sourced components.
I'd be curious to know if this has since been addressed and what owners of more recent builds think of these toggle switches.
I picked my car up Saturday, new steering wheel in place. The feel of the buttons is the same to me so I will be surprised if they don’t break and fall off again. It is easy to second guess the design now that it is in use.
As a retired design engineer I would reduce the spring pressure required to rotate the knob and make the attachment of the button in metal instead of plastic.
As a retired design engineer I would reduce the spring pressure required to rotate the knob and make the attachment of the button in metal instead of plastic.
The toggle switches and volume button on the dash work flawlessly for me and stay aligned perfectly. Sept 22 build. I always use these dashboard devices instead of steering wheelsor pilot panel.
Mine line up fine and don’t feel loose. There is the issue with the bits around the text and icons flaking off, though. One of my buttons has that issue. But supposedly, it’s a big job to get those replaced, because the entire set of switches is one piece. So you can’t just pop in one new button cover.
This is pretty typical for a first product from a new company. Heck, the first few generations of iPhone required similar replacing of entire enclosures for what seemed like a simple part failing. (The first generation of Touch ID had this issue, and that was several generations in.)
xponents
Active Member
Wasnt he referring to the center stack buttons when he was talking about the detent? I think he compared it to some sort of swiss watch?
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That's what I was hoping to hear, as it means Lucid is continuing to address these early-build issues instead of just letting them proceed into later production.
I don't know if Lucid would view the looseness of my switches as a warranty issue, but I'm not going to worry about it. I suspect it would require removing the dashboard, and I wouldn't want to risk what that might entail in terms of introducing squeaks or rattles that don't now exist.
After my experiences over the years with brand-new-model issues from Chevrolet, Mercedes, Honda, and Tesla, I remain impressed with just how good a product Lucid put on the road during the earliest phases of its maiden production run . . . the trying days of UX 1.0 software aside.
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Let me add to the dogpile on the switches.
They feel "cheap" and there is too much play in them. They feel very loose and I don't like them at all.
They feel "cheap" and there is too much play in them. They feel very loose and I don't like them at all.
The wheel buttons went through many revisions in terms of spring tension and the current revision is what was decided to feel the most premium.
