I’ve made no secret of the fact that I find Tesla’s removal of control stalks for controls like turn indicators in favor of buttons mounted on the steering wheel, to be gracious, idiotic. Also, stupid. The way turn signal stalks work in conjunction with the motion of the steering wheel is a sublime and under-appreciated bit of human-machine design. While I know there are some hardcore Tesla fans who disagree with me about this – and, let’s be honest, probably every significant decision I’ve made in my life – I think Team Stalk is being proved the winner here over Team Stupid Buttons thanks to the existence of one particular sort of aftermarket product exclusively for Teslas:
Yes, that’s right. There is a company out there making add-on stalks for your Tesla’s steering column that can be programmed to act as turn indicator stalks, windshield wiper controls, gear shifters, or any number (well, 60, so not any number) of other functions. The reason these stalks exist at all is, again, because Tesla’s insistence that steering-wheel-mounted buttons for these functions is better has proven to be abysmally wrong.
I say this despite such compelling arguments in favor of the buttons as this:
To everyone arguing against Tesla removing stalks: what looks easier to you? pic.twitter.com/UE0Cl57xZh
— Jeff ????✌️ (@JeffTutorials) May 25, 2023
Not only does that guy seem to approach the physical world with the same sort of motor skills and grace as a basic-cable everyman almost killing themselves with a bowl of chips and a remote control in some stupid late-night infomercial, but he’s just flat out-wrong, and the existence of these stalks proves it.
Stalks just work better, and Tesla accessory maker Enhance gets this, which is why they make their S3XY Stalks for your Model 3, which are available for both the left and right side of the steering column.
Look at that! A turn signal stalk, just like a car not forced into bad ideas by some sinister outside forces of clandestine dumbshit cabals, or whatever led to the no-stalks decision. And they’re wireless! They communicate via what appears to be Bluetooth, which seems incredibly simple to install until you realize that the Model 3 doesn’t have whatever sort of Bluetooth/radio interface into the systems you need for this to work, so you have to tear a bunch of trim off to install the “commander” as seen in this installation video:
Seriously, getting that commander in place isn’t exactly just a stick-on-and-go kind of deal:
And, once you do have it all installed and working, you will be privileged to be among the first in a new class of drivers, those who get to say a phrase like “hold on a sec; I need to change the battery in my turn signal stalk.”
Yes, you can drive by in your stalk-enhanced Tesla and really enjoy a good laugh at all those chumps in technically inferior cars that don’t get the opportunity to change batteries in their control stalks ever. Poor bastards.
This all feels like such a joke. Turn signal stalks – even if you can re-program them to turn on dome lights or heat your seats or whatever – just simply do not feel like something that one should ever have to buy as an aftermarket add-on part.
I think Enhance actually did a great job with these and they are fulfilling a need, but the fact that this need required fulfilling in the first place is just absurd. I was talking about this to our own captive designer The Bishop, and he came up with a possible similar product that is so inane and ridiculous I wish I’d thought of it:
A stick-on glovebox latch that works in the same way as these switches, so you don’t have to go through a stupid touchscreen to open the damn glove box.
That’s ridiculous, sure, but at the same time, not really? It’s basically doing the same thing as these stalks.
Reality sure has ended up ridiculous.
What is Hans buying 52 lbs of for $13,???
Scrap iron?
That Twitter thread is something, people talking about buttons as technological advancement, and telling others who disagree that “technology left you behind” as if people who wants stalks are just backward .. like wth?!
I know we are all auto enthusiasts here, but do we really think that we choose our cars using different criteria than the rest of the auto buying public? The reason I ask is that I doubt any of us would say “political beliefs” or “love of company’s CEO” are in our top ten reasons for choosing a particular car, but there seem to be a lot of people here who believe “those other people” choose their cars based on their political beliefs and/or their love for the company’s CEO. What if “those other people” buy their cars for the same reasons we do?
A lot of car buying is emotion not rational buying based on a list of needs and cost benefit analysis. A pretty good example of this is brand loyalty. I grew up in Michigan and there were a lot of brand loyal people. Are you team GM or Ford?. I know lots of people that would never by a GM product and others that would never by a Ford. People that will put a sticker on their truck with Calvin peeing on the other brand. None of that is rational and is similar to arbitrarily choosing to cheer for a sports team.
Brands can become toxic to a group of people for a variety of reasons. There is growing evidence that Musk is making the Tesla brand toxic. In just the last few months since Trump has taking an active role in politics in both the USA and Europe Tesla sales have been tanking in markets with positive sales trends:
Europe – Tesla down 45% while EV sales as a whole are up 34% (Jan 2025)
China – Tesla down 49% while BYD is up 161% (Feb 2025)
California – Tesla down 11.6% while EV sales up 1.2%
It is a bit early to make a claim that this is a longer term trend by it isn’t a positive
Another example is Bud Light. Almost 2 years later their sales are still down 40% based on backlash from a minor social media campaign.
Fair point about brand loyalty, but is a person’s brand loyalty in any way correlated with their political beliefs or their love of the company’s CEO? In other words, does the fact that someone is brand loyal to Tesla mean that they have a particular set of political beliefs or that they love Elon Musk? Could it be that they just like the cars better?
In general – Tesla buyers have been on the political left. Musk has been steadily moving to the political right. It didn’t seem to matter – until it did.
Tesla is currently having a Bud Light moment.
Tesla buyers have historically leaned left, but do they buy Teslas as an outward symbol of their political beliefs or because they love Elon Musk?
Personally I think it was a bit of both. I know people that bought Tesla’s because they like the environmental mission of the company and believed that Musk was fully invested in that. Musk used to say his goal for Tesla was not to make money but to move the world to completely renewable energy and EVs. Some people actually believed that. I don’t think many people believe that today.
As I said above – a brand can become toxic to it’s traditional core customers. I think that is happening to Tesla today.
I think it’s still much more likely than not that most of Tesla’s employees still believe in the environmental mission that the company was founded on. I suspect that Elon Musk himself even believed in it once upon a time. If the mission was making huge amounts of money, making cars is a terrible way to do that, especially EVs. At this point, I don’t think Elon Musk cares about Tesla and its mission. They need to cut him loose before he sinks the company.
I chose my car specifically because it had key start and no touchscreen.
So yes we choose our cars differently than the general public.
429 bucks! For years every accessory with the Tesla logo was selling for 3 or 4 times the equivalent for other brands. I think that party has ended recently.
This is a really cool product. The reason for its existence is dumb, but I wish I had a fully programmable array of switches within reach of the steering wheel. Or was just able to freely reprogram the switches and buttons that are already there. The product looks really polished and the wiring harness for the Commander is really well done.
I was designing a bluetooth media controller for the steering wheel of my old Fit but a stick-on stalk may be a better option.