This is a pretty generous framing. The use case differences between round and rectangular steering wheels are well understood. There was something else motivating this, not "reinventing the conventional", as it would be phrased in a TV spot.
Which is why you shouldn't "set out to reinvent" just for the sake of looking cool, and why Tesla is starting to be valued at what it's actually worth, aka not a whole lot.
Tesla's average transaction was $65K in 2022. There were 1.3 million transactions. That's $84.5B in transactions. Companies are typically valued at 7x their transactions which would be $591.5B - which we'll just call $600B. If Tesla is currently valued at $400B then they're undervalued by 33% and that would put Tesla at a BUY.
These are all back-of-the-napkin calculations and assumes Tesla will sell as many cars in 2023 as they did in 2022 and in fact will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I'm not an automotive industry expert but I don't see any reason why Tesla wouldn't. I think part of the reason Tesla's stock pulled back so much in 2022 is the realization that Tesla may not have that much GROWTH left.
I have over 25k miles in an S with a yoke, there was one day where I was exiting a parking lot and the yoke was upside down and the turn signals buttons were backwards that was a slight annoyance. Other than that I have never had an issue turning with the yoke and wouldn't want to go back to a wheel that blocks the instrument cluster constantly.
they also could move the instruments (but besides the speedometer... most of them are somewhat useless anyways... and with a FSD car, even the speedometer should be useless)
There are other hand methods when using a yoke that work just as well. I think they assumed people would adapt. Considering it's already an EV maybe they thought people would be more willing to try new things.