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Two weeks back I shared this:
Can we puke on the Peugeot Vision RCZ's steering "wheel" or not yet?
I know it's a concept, but come on.
Yeesh.
And the interactions were… interesting. Mostly negative and rejecting change (in line with my initial message). Others more cautious.
Everyone tells you not to: “reinvent the wheel”.
Then Peugeot goes and gives it a try.
We are usually not comfortable with change, and our first reaction is rejection. Especially when something is not broken, then why fix it?
It is easy to “dismiss” a “radically different idea” out of habit. And I did.
I prefaced the post with “I know it’s a concept”, implying “there’s no way ‘this thing’ goes to production. It’s just too different.”.
The steering wheel, that has been a steering wheel since it first was employed over 100 years ago.
It has been bigger, smaller, with a flat side, with more or less real buttons, or touch capacitive ones, with or without airbag, with more or less spokes… you get it. But it was always (mostly) a steering wheel.
Then Daniel appears with a reality hammer and smacks it right in the middle of my forehead.
It's going into production next year on the new 208, and the RCZ concept's unit is exactly what the production one looks like
I was almost shocked. “Wait, what? They ARE doing it? And as soon as next year?”
I sat there for a while like that “Pablo Escobar on a bench” meme and started thinking stuff like “nothing is sacred anymore” and the like, as one does.
Don’t spiral… just yet
In a very empathetic way, Daniel tried to stop my spiralling by sharing a couple of articles (from Autocar, Auto Express and Top Gear) where people who actually tried it say it is actually good.
I even got to read someone saying “the biggest thing in your hands since power steering”, which is quite the claim.
I mean, since the power steering became the norm, I guess no one in their right mind would even consider a new car without it, right?
So what if this is another one of those cases? What if after it’s introduced, we feel like we can’t live without it?
What if it’s… good?
And the thing is, after reading these articles, I changed my mind a little bit.
No, I am not suddenly a “Hypersquare” advocate (which is not even a square, damn them), but I went from “what the hell are they thinking?” to giving them the benefit of the doubt and thinking “I won’t dismiss it until I try it. Maybe I don’t hate it. Maybe I even like it.” which is an improvement in mindset.
And driver’s enjoyment?
One of the things I’ve read people who used it say, is that it doesn’t have a real connection to the road. This is expected, because the way the “Hypersquare” (what a dumb name) works is via the “infamous” steer by wire.
It’s a way of decoupling the actual steering column from the fact that the wheels need to steer. In a way, very “futuristic'“, given that if a car is autonomous, it either needs to “steer the wheel for you”, which is less than ideal (since someone can try to grab it, get injured, etc.).
Or you can get rid of it entirely, and the “steering wheel” stops needing to be a wheel at all, and it’s just an interface for the driver to give commands to the computer that actually handles the steering.
The drawback of this, is that the little mechanical feedback that was left from years of evolution in suspension, ride quality, electronics and comfort, is all but gone.
Which means that a lot of what makes driving fun, the communication from the road through the car, feeling the limits and excitement those limits bring… will be either gone or replaced.
Recognise these?
Obsessed with “fixing” the steering wheel
This is not the first time Peugeot gets in people’s mouths for trying to “fix” the steering wheel.
In fact, it was almost 15 years ago to the day, with the then new Peugeot 208, that they first launched the I-Cockpit concept into production.
A lot of people “didn’t like it” or “thought it was dumb” to have a smaller, lower steering wheel to see the dashboard above it instead of through it (like it has been for decades).
But then people like our good friend Alan Bradley (half of the Motoring Podcast) replied the original Bluesky post with this photo and asked:
Have either of you tried Peugeot’s I-Cockpit? You think it’s going to be weird, but after a few minutes looking over the tiny steering wheel seems perfectly sensible, and it works well in tight bends too…
And in my case, the answer is no. I haven’t tried it. Which is why I will not say the whole “Hypersquare” idea is a bad one, until I do (and the same goes for the I-Cockpit).
It might be good. It might be bad. You might love or hate it. But to know any of that, you have to experience it before talking.
But is it the future?
I don’t know.
Peugeot thinks it is, since it’s…
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