I’ve been driving my new Rav4 Hybrid for a couple months now and love everything about it except for the steering wheel. I had never given my steering wheel a second thought until this car. It is a matte finish leather with basically no grip. The unexpected side effect of this is that my hands start to get tired after longer drives from having to hold on tighter. Any suggestions on how to add some grip/friction to this thing without using one of those cheap covers? Any sew on covers I find for this model are also in a matte finish leather.
If your hands are getting sore I think your first avenue to correct that is changing your driving posture and/or grip. You should not have to hold the wheel that tight, and certainly not that tight for an extended period of time. You can experiment with hand placement, rest your elbow on the door if possible, loosen your grip a bit.
Steering wheel covers are not a great idea, many covers can slip in relation to the steering wheel and in an emergency situation you’ve now lost steering control.