My Mazda had a nice combination of touch screen which disabled itself when the vehicle was in motion and you could then use the rotary control instead. Was really nice and intuitive with entirely separate AC, heated seats etc controls.
I had a rental Mazda and I have to say, that rotary control is the worst combination of tactile and touch interface I have seen to date. Maybe that gets better after using it for 6 months, but I can more or less memorize touch interface control positions in that same timeframe and without the distraction of figuring out which element the rotary dial highlight moved to this time.
I would rather have had full touch than that monstrosity.
I have a small built-in touchscreen on the top of the dashboard which is visible in my peripheral vision while driving. But it turns off touch controls while the car is moving. And the physical controls are in the center console behind my manual stick, on the passenger's side. So I have to blindly feel around for my knobs and buttons while driving, or take my eyes completely off the road to look down at my center console.
It would be safer if I could just tap the screen quick while keeping my eyes facing the road, versus trying to search for knobs down next to my passenger's thigh.
I also hate that this newer model removed the mute button from my steering wheel. I used to be able to immediately mute my radio by pressing that button on my 2010 Mazda. But in my new 2017 Mazda, I need to find the tiny volume knob by my passenger's thigh and slap that knob. I still have volume buttons on my steering wheel, but I can't immediately mute by holding the down volume button. So I need to go searching for that knob, which is more time I'm not looking at the road.
My Mazda has the same controls and I've never really felt like they're hard to find. The button layout makes a lot of sense and the large center wheel is easy to find so you can use it as a reference point to find the other buttons easily (I pretty much just use the home and music buttons and that volume knob).
I turned down my dash panel for the “plus lights” night mode (my car is a 2012 Honda civic, so night mode is literally whenever I turn on the headlights) because it was so blindingly bright I couldn’t stand it.
I was in car with a friend with a Prius.. not a super new one, but with the central touch center of shit and it never got very dim.. it was always just this distracting light in the middle of the car. I literally would not be able to drive that car, my attention would be drawn to the light because I like dark. But then it also reflects off the windshield and shit and just nope.
Depends how well the voice controls work. I have been so frustrated with AI assistants' inability to understand simple instructions while I'm driving that it has become a serious distraction at times. I have never found myself yelling at knobs.
What cooks my god damn goose isn't the stupid screen I'm going to break one day. It's that they run buses for other systems through the radio so you can't replace it with what you want.
Yep, infotainment and HVAC should have different control systems entirely. If your radio dies it should not mean the death of your car completely. And I consider not having access to your government mandated cameras and defrosters a dead vehicle.
I had a 1988 Pontiac 6000. I took out the radio/tape unit and replaced it with a CD player. My goddam cruise control was disabled after that. They've been running other systems through the radio forever.
I take trips to Tallinn. Beautiful city. I use the car share apps there for convenience. Pick up a car and park wherever. I get to try out many different cars, if only for a while. I hate touch screens. One even was set with brightness to zero and I was unable to change it.
Lived in Eesti for several years back in the 90’s mainly in Nõmme and Lasnamäe. Beautiful country, amazing people. Hotel Viru had its own cool vibe back then, and Vanalinn in the winter is breathtaking. If I could apply for citizenship, I do it in heartbeat.
Yep. Usually I'm bluffing when I say "I'll die before I buy [a smart TV/a phone with a selfie cam hole punch/a computer running Windows/a console without a disc tray]," but there are real alternatives to buying these death traps. I could stand to lose weight anyway.
Yup. You can move the levers to one extreme and blindly gauge where it's supposed to be. Also: each of these things provide additional feedback (fan direction, speed, etc) so you don't even need to memorize detents or positions for stuff.
I will say that the temp lever, over time, gets very sticky and hard to move. Other than that: it's good design.
Having to call a damned tow-truck just to get a flat tire fixed is not a winning move if you're trying to sell how much your car benefits the environment.
First they switched to the mini-spares. Then they got rid of them altogether.
If you're lucky, there are little filler canisters and a cigarette lighter-powered air compressor to let you get slowly to a tire shop. Sometimes, not even that. If there's a nail or a blowout, tow-truck city. Just hope it's not out in the middle of nowhere in the dark or in bad weather.
Many new cars have "run-flats," which can be used even if they get a puncture/go flat.
However, they are more expensive, they don't function under certain kinds of flats (e.g., sidewall damage), they have limited range, and limited speed.
The tiny "donut" spares on some cars are also not intended for high speeds, but I'd much prefer that to a punctured run-flat. (You should probably place the donut on the rear of your car is front wheel drive, though.)
(You should probably place the donut on the rear of your car is front wheel drive, though.)
I read somewhere that you should always replace a back wheel with a donut spare, even if that means swapping a punctured front wheel with an original back wheel.
The donut spares are so flimsy that they can't be trusted to reliably handle the side loads a front wheel experiences when your car is turning.
That's one for safety in case you can't get help, but one should drive slower than 60kmph and seek help immediately when using T rated tyre(such as the donut spare). The control sucks when your front tyre is a donut spare, and braking also sucks, so driving slow is the only way to do it.
Yeah it turns out no one uses them or keeps em pumped up or applies that rubber stuff to em to keep em in good shape so the manufacturers replaced em with “24 hr roadside assistance”.
Spare tires have come in handy many times in my life! And im only 30. Fuck 24 hour roadside assistance i can put a spare on faster than they can get out to me
No doubt they have been and are handy to many, but with increasing amount of people not knowing how to change their tires and the tire being empty and gone to shit anyway, I guess I get not having as a default.
You mean if you drive hands free as opposed to having a tablet being held by your car so you can use your hands on the wheel? You can mount an iPad in your car. Lol.
Decent enough sized screen for Android auto to show me the map. My 2018 Nissan leaf is probably the smallest I'd go on this, but I wouldn't even double it
For the love of GOD could we let me upgrade the unit, or force android auto to use my powerful-enough-for-this-purpose phone handle rendering the video feed? My pixel can handle an external monitor at 1440p no problem, I'd love to give the shitty PC in my car a break from scrolling maps at 3fps
Physical buttons for everything HVAC, can honestly take or leave the volume and tuner knobs as long as they're put on the steering wheel
I’m totally onboard with this. Unless I’m mistaken in my country the law still forbids looking into a screen and away from the road, which is now needed to drive many cars!
Honda is one automaker that has separate climate controls, and it is a great balance with things that are nice on a screen like navigation. Heck, even though the music is through the touchscreen it still has a volume knob to quickly adjust or turn off no matter what the screen is showing.
I have a small (4-5") screen that has my clock, media information, which displays my backup camera feed if I'm in reverse, which I think is a modest improvement over the all-analog option, and a huge step up from the deathtrap touchscreen configuration. In my mind, the touchscreen is the point where it starts to drop off quickly, as it stands I don't think I'd buy a car with a touchscreen that doesn't lock it out while moving.
The existence of a touchscreen isn't a problem, just having common controls moved to it. The touchscreen is useful for interacting with active phone apps, e.g. maps. A total motion lockout might be excessive.
In my mind, the issue is that cars are incentivizing drivers to use high attention controls like touchscreens while driving. Actions that need to happen while driving, whether they're directly vehicle operation, or something like air conditioning or media volume, should be simple low-attention controls, ideally with tactile feedback. Keep it simple for your brain, keep focus on the road.
I have volume buttons, skip, jump backwards, and a numpad on my dash that interact with phone apps via Bluetooth. Maybe there's a physical (or voice) control that can be added to the dash or wheel to interact with map/navigation apps. Using the touchscreen is dangerous, and a car shouldn't provide a reason to do so. I'd rather solve the problem another way.
But if a touchscreen is required to update the clock, or do Bluetooth pairing, that's fine. There's no reason to need to do those while driving.
Unless you have specifically read up about the labor rights of Luddites you really dont know what you are talking about when you throw the word Luddite around (I know I didn't)
“[T]he Luddites did indeed understand the advantages which mechanization would bring,” Raymond Boudon, a sociologist at Paris-Sorbonne University, wrote in his Analysis of Ideology, citing the work of influential historian Lewis Coser. But “their machine-wrecking was an attempt to show the owners of the new textile mills that they were a force to be reckoned with, that they had a ‘nuisance value’. By acting in this way, their main objective was to gain concessions from the employers.”
The Luddites weren’t technophobes, then. They were labor strategists.
“This strategic interpretation of the Luddite movement is confirmed by the fact that the workers often destroyed only those machines which were turning out faulty goods,” Boudon wrote. “It was still true, of course, that a worker who went on strike could easily be replaced by somebody from the army of unemployed people willing to be strike-breakers, at a time when nascent trade-unionism was harshly suppressed. Since machine-breaking brought the factory to a halt, it was not only a functional substitute for striking, it was also much more effective.”
Except the Luddites didn’t hate machines either—they were gifted artisans resisting a capitalist takeover of the production process that would irreparably harm their communities, weaken their collective bargaining power, and reduce skilled workers to replaceable drones as mechanized as the machines themselves. Their struggle has been tragically warped into a caricature when it is more relevant than ever.
AI has uses when it's not being rammed down peoples throats or used to plagiarize content (personal assistant/home automation type stuff is the first that comes to mind - I'd like to eventually set up a locally-hosted LLM based alternative to Alexa to control my house so I'm not relying on an internet connection for everything).
Cloud is an essential part of a robust backup strategy, and makes it easier for the average person to create a web presence.
Tesla, being an EV company, is still an important interim solution to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ICE vehicles until (hopefully) better public transit infra is built so people don't need to use cars as much. Not to mention it was the kick-starter for other vehicle companies to make EVs.
Ads and paywalls: People gotta eat. You want to consume content that someone produces as their job? Pay them. If you won't someone else will, thus advertisements.
AI can write boilerplate code and test cases with a failure rate so low that it saves a significant amount of time. It's also good summarizing text, like a 1 month old back and forth support ticket. Probably other uses too, but those are the ones I use a lot.
Cloud is a huge accelerator for any company that doesn't want or can't afford to hire dedicated experts. Plus for workloads with big peaks and valleys it is actually much cheaper.
Screens show navigation, provide entertainment and allow changing complex setting much more easily than other UIs. (turning volume down is not a complex setting)
Teslas have incredible performance per dollar (in a straight line) and are very fun to drive daily. Also their software and charging network are great. And are cheap to maintain (and to buy used).
Ads allow content to be consumed without monetary exchange while still paying the workers creating that content in money instead of exposure.
same for paywalls, journalism is very important for society and good journalists deserve a good paycheck. Paywalls allow to have well paid journalists without billionaires sponsoring (manipulating) and allowing people who don't like ads to still have access to their work.
Get out of here with your nuance, don't you realize you're on the Internet?!
In all seriousness, thanks. I think what a lot of people tend to forget is none of these things are inherently bad. They're just often misused and/or overused, typically due to the insatiable capitalist profit motive.
I hate how they don't give you a choice in the matter.. Just give me basic controls, then sell a bespoke android tablet that mounts in the car. I thought car companies love to push extras?
Nah push it as the "hi-tech" package or some such nonsense, "way better than our base model with the old world knobs." Comes just like in the pic, but have both models.
Then you can sell it for more money to the dumb dumbs and let the people who know what is good in life have that sweet knob action.
same but that also just brings up another rant about modern cars.
mine has surround view cameras -so you can see a birds eye view when parking. it's really nice. but then why do I have to suction cup a dash cam right next to the built in camera and run a USB cable around my car? please just let us plug in a USB storage device and use the built in cameras as a dash cam.
On the other hand I can see why allowing arbitrary USB devices to be plugged into a safety-critical system wouldn't be a good idea, particularly one that doesn't get easy security patches.
You're not wrong, but in my case and presumably others there already are USB ports and relevant drivers for both playback of media files, and funny enough for applying security patches or other updates.
In practice I think the concern becomes most USB storage devices are not intended to be constantly written to, while vibrating from the car, and it would definitely destroy data and cause support complaints. But it's still annoying all the hardware and most of the software I want is there and wouldn't take that much more to do what i want.. but instead if they ever do decide to let us use the built in cameras as a dashcam, I expect it will require replacing my entire car with a new model
My 2019 Kia seems to give the best of both worlds. I've got a small I think 10" display for reversing camera and Android Auto/Apple Carplay/radio and physical buttons and knobs for climate controls, volume, etc. the display is just big enough to be useful for maps, and Kia's UI for the screen on the display is really nice with almost entirely white on black so it's not distracting nor too bright at night and it really blends in when you aren't looking at it while being there and ready for you when you are
My 2014 GTI has a touchscreen but everything on the screen can be controlled with knobs and buttons, and all it does is music and navigation. Everything else is knobs.
Like your phone carrier, maps application developer, Facebook, and any other app with location data, isn't actively trying to sell that info to as many paying customers as possible...
My major problems with this design trend, in my own (biased) experience:
Center console entertainment UI is usually the slowest thing ever made, making it an even bigger distraction than needed. I could develop muscle memory for blindly pushing the right virtual buttons, but the slowness makes this impossible. It's usually wildly under-specced, but what's stranger is that there's never an upgrade option you can buy from the manufacturer.
Can't use the panel blindly, creating a big honkin' distraction within reach of the driver. Speed (see above), iffy capacitive touch with no haptic feedback, as well as multiplexing the UI through deep menus, are the chief culprits here. If there were standard controls that were always on screen in the same place, with a suitably responsive UI, this wouldn't be as big a problem.
For systems that are fully-integrated, it's all or nothing. If the panel/CPU dies, you lose your stereo, navigation, and climate controls all at the same time. My car, fortunately, has the A/C physical controls. This creates a distinct point of failure which is nice - I'm pretty sure I will still have A/C if the panel craps out.
It's dirt cheap to manufacture and I think we all know it. We're already paying historically high prices for cars, and cheaping-out on the bits we touch the most is just an extra kick to the junk at this point. To the manufacturers: we have remarkably better experiences on our freaking phones every day, so nobody but your grandma is impressed with the weak-sauce, crippled, bogus UX you bolt into your expensive vehicles. You're not making cars cooler, you're just making car ownership worse. Do better.
Volkswagen in the 70s and 80s had three horizontal control levers for the heating on the center of the middle panel which you could push with one speedy gesture to the very right, and then the front window would get max heat and max air flow to defrost/to demoist very fast.
Was so intuitive and fast you didn't think about it and never had to take your eyes from the road for. That was peak design in my eyes.
I'm really thankful that Audi rolled back whatever they were doing and gave me knobs and switched to deal with.
Like in fucking planes and space shuttles !
And fingers crossed all this common sense gets enshrined in law soonish.
Leave me a phone sized screen for CarPlay and everything else can go back. I agree with the giant touch screen only stuff being nonsense, but CarPlay is life changing to my driving experience.
I don't have first-hand experience, but from what I understand the way they make money off of those tablet screens they put in cars is by licensing proprietary software that other companies want you to have no choice but to use. That's why models with no screens are disappearing from the major car makers
The crazy thing for me is that apart from physical buttons, if car manufacturers actually just released models of 20-30 years ago as new launches, complete exterior and interior, they’d so well!
Edit - with just Bluetooth added but I’m cool with using a cassette adaptor of some sort. Also assuming the engines would be up to today’s emission standards. I mean just the shape and looks.
The old classic well-designed cars just had better taste. I agree with you, I've been saying the same thing for years! Design some of these hybrids or electric cars with the same good classic taste - they'd be great!
Unfortunately the trend of today (not just with cars but with many objects) is poor taste.
When I was a kid I loved my dad's 1987 Chrysler 5th Avenue. It was silver and had a plush red leather interior with high pile carpet. It was a poor man's personal luxury car but it still felt like you were riding in style.
If you replaced the 318 V8 and three speed automatic with something more economical, I would absolutely drive something like that.
Yeah i just think i cheapped out although it was not cheap. I went for fast solution and bought it in a local store as i expected them all to be decent. Should have bought online
I bought a Bluetooth adapter (not sure if that's what what you call it) for $45 at Best Buy. It plugs into your audiojack. The one I bought comes with a cigarette lighter jack to charge it. Works great
I don't want to drive a smart phone or have it drive me. Give me a car with a pre iPhone dash and Bluetooth and I am happy. I am hoping there will be a market for old people cars with real controls when the vehicles we drive now are no longer maintainable.
Backup cameras are required by law since I think it was 2015? But the trend of gigantic screen with no physical controls seems to be in a "will they/won't they" kinda situation right now with some manufacturers flirting with the idea, some trying it then reverting, etc.
My current vehicle is mid 2000s, much older than 2015 and standard equipment includes a backup camera that engages in reverse on its perfectly usable 4:3 standard definition screen.
The climate controls are buttons with led indicators and rotary encoders that control a display so while it isn't as distracting as a touch screen it can't be operated fully haptically while eyes are on the road either. It makes sense though as the rear climate controls can be adjusted independently with a wireless remote and in that application it is almost impossible to do things with simple sliders and selector knobs. I am not an absolutist on these things but I appreciate designers putting some thought into the usability of controls instead of going with the cheapest/flashiest solution.
Phonebat. It's not a phone shaped like a bat it's a bat shaped like a phone. Looks like somebody threw their phone, but then it keeps going and you're like "must be a phonebat"
I'm putting a tablet in my car because I want a giant screen for navigation and engine management software. Tweaking fuel maps, reading data from various sensors like oil and intake temp, calculating MPG, etc.
FWIW I'm not replacing my stereo and A/C controls; I need my physical buttons. I'm simply ripping out the outdated factory navigation to replace it with something modern, with more functionality that will get regular updates. Best of both worlds.
(And yes I'm aware that Android Auto is a thing but again I don't want to replace the stereo with a screen so I'm taking this route instead.)
Infiniti has the best center stack of all cars, and that's a hill I am willing to die on. Screens for navigation, radio, and car settings, with physical buttons along the sides for common HVAC, etc controls.
I haven't driven an Infiniti in about 20 years, but I like the fact they stuck with physical controls. I rented a new Peugeot that was 100% touch screen for everything including changing from park to drive. I almost got in a wreck because I had to reverse out of the way of a distracted driver pulling out of a parking spot and the touch screen wouldn't let me go from drive to reverse, i had to click park first. Anyways, I have a whole laundry list of modern smart features that make me feel like I'm fighting my vehicle instead of driving it. I'm not a fan of lane assist and auto off at traffic lights.
My partners car has a touch screen, but knobs dials and buttons for all the climate features.
The touch screen is just the infotainment stuff.
That's about as far as I want it to go. I don't need a large format display in my vehicle. I don't want my speed, turn signal indicator, and climate controls on a massive display that takes up 1/3rd of the dash. Their car has a 8" or so, infotainment display.... Great for Android auto/Apple carplay, with navigation so I can get my directions without having to meddle with my phone, or a clunky phone mount wobbling around.
But that's where I draw the line. Just give me the fancy infotainment screen, leave everything else the way it is.
I recently had the brief joy of driving a small car without power steering. I never realized how much nicer the feedback is. You'd think that it would be a nightmare to park but the size of the car meant that it was still easier on the whole.
Touch screens with a hundred options will become useful when we start traveling between star systems and need to react to things in minutes or even hours at time.
But when you're driving a vehicle that can run into things within milli seconds if you take your eyes off the road .... we're still going to need tactile buttons.
Funny enough, when I purchased my car, I went with the last model that didn't have the computer screen in it. The last of the actual BMW car cars. No iDrive or screen. I fuckin love that car.
The worst part about it it that these screens are most of the time worse than a 100 dollar ipad, and unresponsive and janky as hell. The cameras are so cheap that they are also used as fpv cameras. Some of the very cheap ones sometimes still had the green and red lined that you see on parking cameras. But since it's in a car, it makes it 10k more expensive. The worst fucking car entertainment system i have ever used was when a friend of my dad bought a Maserati and asked me how it works. I couldn't figure it out, for the first time ever, i had to look at the manual. And even then, i have no idea who was responsible for that shitty ass ui, it was absolutely disgusting and made by the only guy who knows how it works.
Maybe if we didn't put those devices where high end ones that do thousands of times more than these cost $3000-$5000 into our devices that start around $25000 the latter wouldn't be so expensive? This is entirely a choice by the manufacturer, not something forced onto you by the computing device.
Everyone insists to have HVAC controls as physical buttons. How often do you mess with them?
I set up my previous car to 20C when I bought it and it was at 20C when I sold it. Same with the current one, which has touch screen control. It heats the cabin in winter and cools it down in summer. If it's very cold or very hot, it automatically blasts on max.
I don't know. Maybe you live in a place with low teperature variations. When I get into my car on a hot summer day, I like to turn the temperature down bellow regular comfort temperature to cool down quicker. When I'm stumbling into the car after shoveling snow and scraping ice from the windshield, I like to turn it a bit higher. On long drives, I sometimes get warm after spending several hours in the leather seat, so I turn the temperature down. My girlfriend likes the temperature a bit higher, so when she uses the car, it's turned up.
It's a comfort thing, and it's definitely something I change a lot with my mechanical dials.
I agree it might be a temperature variance thing. I will frequently use the heat in the morning going to work because it's cold and then be using the AC on my way home because it's hot out.
I don't have a separate heat or AC settings (I did in my '98 car). Any car modern enough to have Touchscreen HVAC controls (and many before that) will just have a temperature setting and will turn the heating or the AC (or heat with the AC) automatically to reach the setting.
I think many people have a car like the one on the right and assume that you need to tweak the HVAC controls on the touchscreen every 20 minutes because you choose a power setting or something. Cars have had thermostats for ages. You set a temperature, leave the power on auto and it does its thing. My new car even has automatic seat warmers, they just turn on depending on how cold is it in the cabin.
Exactly. I have "manual" HVAC controls in my vehicles right now, but I did have a car with an automatic one. I had that set for 21C 365 days a year, and it handled everything, including switching to defrost in cold weather. I did not touch the HVAC controls in the 3 or 4 years I owned that car. The manual controls need to get adjusted several times per trip.
I would agree that modern cars temperature controls work well. My issue is just the screen for controlling it in some of them. I don't mind messing around with the controls in my old car, but it's very convenient to just set a temperature and go.
When the car has been sitting in the sun it's 60C inside. When I get inside, the AC blasts and max power without me touching anything until it's comfy inside. It does that in my 2021 car and it did it in my 2016 car before that. Previously I had a 98 polo with manual controls.
Yes, but I enjoy a lower temperature when I'm feeling warm. ~19 feels good for cooling down after activities in warm weather. And when I'm very cold coming into the car from a blizzard, I might crank it up to 25. My ideal extrenal temperature is dependant on several conditions, it's not statically 20.
When I realize the car or truck ahead of me is emitting something I don't want to breathe (either because I see it coming out the tailpipe, or because I start to smell it), I want to switch to recirculation RIGHT NOW, not after I navigate through a maze of menus that require me to take my attention away from driving.
Also, I want temperature regulation based on how hot or cold I feel, not what some thermometer says (and often have different opinions about where the air should be blowing depending on how I feel).
Everything should have physical buttons because touchscreens don't have haptic feedback and therefore demand more attention, which should be focused on the road. Physical buttons can be controlled via muscle memory much more quickly.
For HVAC, not all automatic systems are created equal and some people just prefer to adjust temps and fans manually.
Dreading the day my car dies. I want more volume on my music? Turn a knob. Need to turn it off and focus? Slap that same knob. Weather got nice out and I want to let the air in? Spin another knob. Never have to take my eyes off the road.
Though my only experience with modern cars and their touchscreens has been 2-5 interactions to do any of the above. All on a touch screen so you have to look away from the road for it usually.
Just FYI: Both volume and turning music off can be done from the steering wheel in any car manufactured in the last 10 years. In some others (not many, tho) you can map the HVAC on the steering wheel too.
I’ll have to figure that out when the time comes. Being able to map things and customize how the controls on your wheel would be nice. From my limited experience though, that’s not a feature I’ve seen.
I’m not against newer tech, just the fact it’s often so locked down and buggy.
Mine's mostly set on 22. When I feel cold I bump that up to 24, 26, maybe even 28. When I've done at the gym (multiple times per week) I want cooling down so I turn it down to 16 or 14.
Not everyone has that auto-climate feature, leaving us to manually fuss with the settings. Also, the windscreen defroster is not a "always running" kind of feature as it can fog the glass once it gets too cold; it is usually blended in with the rest of the A/C control scheme making life tough while moving.
All the time! My girlfriend is lizard and I'm made out of magma. So if it's just me the temperature is colder, if it's just her the temperature is warmer, and if it's both of us the temperature is somewhere in-between.
They have the perfect solution for you. When you get in, the car sets your temperature, when she gets in, hers. It can recognize you based on your keyfob or phone.
When you both are in, whoever is in the passamger seat adjusts their temperature on the screen (most cars nowadays have two or three zone climate control).
I don't want my car connecting to my phone, and I don't want my climate control system to be that complicated unless they're going to release the information to troubleshoot it. Which they won't.
I would rather just move knobs or levers because they're cheaper and easier to repair.
I have never once have had trouble with the climate system in a car (got my first one in 2004, a 98 VW Polo), so 20 years of ownership total. It's definitely not the criteria I would use to chose a vehicle, but you are of course free to use whatever criteria you want to select yours.
Using my phone as a key is gloriously convenient, one less thing to carry and care about.
And if knobs were cheaper, rest assured every manufacturer would use them.
Thanks for your answer, I see we value very different things in cars.
car manufacturers should never make anything that relies on a phone to work unless they make the source available so that it can be ported to future devices.
I just got a Corsa D from 2006 and am so happy the interior is still original. I think it looks great, actual buttons for anything I would need and a tiny 3.5mm jack to hook my bluetooth receiver up to for Spotify. It's perfect IMO.
I've got a MK8 Golf and boy are the interior ergonomics of that thing annoying. Capacitive EVERYTHING. Steering wheel controls. Climate controls. Overhead lights!! It still has a normal blinker stalk though. But I knew what I was getting into when I bought it....I mainly wanted one of the last manual hatchbacks before they die out completely. Good thing it is super fun to drive so I don't really pay attention to the annoying lack of buttons.
then use a phone mount like a sane person. i cant drive without gps either but there are so many reasons these fuckass tablets are an inferior option, most especially that they would force me to use google maps
I prefer voice controls to either, but don't have a strong preference between physical or digital because I end up looking either way. Subscriptions on the other hand can fuck right off.
I think the looking I do with manual controls is a quick glimpse to put my hand on the control. After that, I can adjust while keeping my eyes on the road.
I find with digital that I stare at it during the entire adjustment period.
Subscriptions do need to die though. Especially car subscriptions.
I understand why people want minimalist design. I too like this. This is why my 2000 Audi TT has a door flap to cover up the radio when you don't want to see the buttons.
The biggest argument in favor of "tradition" seems to be the presence of physical buttons. So maybe you'd actually prefer a mixture of the traditional and the modern, a screen with physical buttons below it, allowing you to operate the console using your tactile sense alone, without giving up the GPS map and the additional cameras.
Hopefully you don't do much driving in the dark, the backlight on our new work truck's console display glows so brightly even with the display "off" that it ruins your night vision.
Modern would be fine if even half a moment of thought went into non-typical situations, but it's always some stupid oversight like this. Or the 5000k LED dome lights with a visible PWM frequency. Literally painful.
I prefer to drive with old incandescent dash lights dimmed to nearly nothing, yes I live in a very dark area with no lighting and many road hazards. On a moonless night, the area lit by the headlights is literally all you can see. We run extra lightbars, turning lights etc.
More light outside the truck, not inside. That's my rant
Hah you got it, I used to be a "Chevy guy" when it came to domestic trucks but this was the truck that finally made me say enough, it's riddled with embarrassing faults and bad design decisions in every system. The Ford truck we also have is an example of new tech that works well and the Chevy just can't compare.
From what I've seen of my in-laws' Ford vehicles they're generally pretty good, but I honestly prefer what I've seen from the Korean and Japanese manufacturers. They seem to really have the attention to detail down and be far less about spectacle or catering to a type of person I'm not
Yes because you stare for long periods of time on the phone without looking at where you are going. I didn't do that with my car's display. Two very different things.
It is funny how car lovers pretend that cars aren't just some blip in history that has existed for barely a human lifetime as a form of transportation for the masses.
Having a touchscreen to operate your car with is a safety hazard compared to having buttons and knobs.
My Mazda had a nice combination of touch screen which disabled itself when the vehicle was in motion and you could then use the rotary control instead. Was really nice and intuitive with entirely separate AC, heated seats etc controls.
I had a rental Mazda and I have to say, that rotary control is the worst combination of tactile and touch interface I have seen to date. Maybe that gets better after using it for 6 months, but I can more or less memorize touch interface control positions in that same timeframe and without the distraction of figuring out which element the rotary dial highlight moved to this time.
I would rather have had full touch than that monstrosity.
I enjoy it on my Mazda, find it super easy to use and safer than a touch screen. To each their own.
I have a Mazda like this. I absolutely hate it.
I have a small built-in touchscreen on the top of the dashboard which is visible in my peripheral vision while driving. But it turns off touch controls while the car is moving. And the physical controls are in the center console behind my manual stick, on the passenger's side. So I have to blindly feel around for my knobs and buttons while driving, or take my eyes completely off the road to look down at my center console.
It would be safer if I could just tap the screen quick while keeping my eyes facing the road, versus trying to search for knobs down next to my passenger's thigh.
I also hate that this newer model removed the mute button from my steering wheel. I used to be able to immediately mute my radio by pressing that button on my 2010 Mazda. But in my new 2017 Mazda, I need to find the tiny volume knob by my passenger's thigh and slap that knob. I still have volume buttons on my steering wheel, but I can't immediately mute by holding the down volume button. So I need to go searching for that knob, which is more time I'm not looking at the road.
My Mazda has the same controls and I've never really felt like they're hard to find. The button layout makes a lot of sense and the large center wheel is easy to find so you can use it as a reference point to find the other buttons easily (I pretty much just use the home and music buttons and that volume knob).
Even just the bright light from it is a hazard.
I turned down my dash panel for the “plus lights” night mode (my car is a 2012 Honda civic, so night mode is literally whenever I turn on the headlights) because it was so blindingly bright I couldn’t stand it.
I was in car with a friend with a Prius.. not a super new one, but with the central touch center of shit and it never got very dim.. it was always just this distracting light in the middle of the car. I literally would not be able to drive that car, my attention would be drawn to the light because I like dark. But then it also reflects off the windshield and shit and just nope.
Depends how well the voice controls work. I have been so frustrated with AI assistants' inability to understand simple instructions while I'm driving that it has become a serious distraction at times. I have never found myself yelling at knobs.
When I'm driving, all the people I yell at are knobs
What cooks my god damn goose isn't the stupid screen I'm going to break one day. It's that they run buses for other systems through the radio so you can't replace it with what you want.
Yep, infotainment and HVAC should have different control systems entirely. If your radio dies it should not mean the death of your car completely. And I consider not having access to your government mandated cameras and defrosters a dead vehicle.
I had a 1988 Pontiac 6000. I took out the radio/tape unit and replaced it with a CD player. My goddam cruise control was disabled after that. They've been running other systems through the radio forever.
I take trips to Tallinn. Beautiful city. I use the car share apps there for convenience. Pick up a car and park wherever. I get to try out many different cars, if only for a while. I hate touch screens. One even was set with brightness to zero and I was unable to change it.
Dials and knobs for everything please.
Lived in Eesti for several years back in the 90’s mainly in Nõmme and Lasnamäe. Beautiful country, amazing people. Hotel Viru had its own cool vibe back then, and Vanalinn in the winter is breathtaking. If I could apply for citizenship, I do it in heartbeat.
Why are you going to break it one day?
Embrace tradition
That one we can accept modern ebikes.
Yep. Usually I'm bluffing when I say "I'll die before I buy [a smart TV/a phone with a selfie cam hole punch/a computer running Windows/a console without a disc tray]," but there are real alternatives to buying these death traps. I could stand to lose weight anyway.
I would, if there were any bike lanes in my city.
There are in mine once you're in the city, but there's a river and a freeway between there and here.
I miss biking to work.
..... I'M JUST SAYING.
That seems so GM
Admitely the better solution than the more modern featureless knob you have to look where it currently was.
That or a knob where you feel the position.
For our younger audience: this is from when the show Cheers was popular, that's why there's a "Norm" setting.
Pretty sure this was the exact control panel my mom's 80s Ford Econoline van had.
Yup. You can move the levers to one extreme and blindly gauge where it's supposed to be. Also: each of these things provide additional feedback (fan direction, speed, etc) so you don't even need to memorize detents or positions for stuff.
I will say that the temp lever, over time, gets very sticky and hard to move. Other than that: it's good design.
Can we add 'cars with spare tires' to the list?
Having to call a damned tow-truck just to get a flat tire fixed is not a winning move if you're trying to sell how much your car benefits the environment.
Wait, new cars don't have spare tires? Wtf has the world come to?
First they switched to the mini-spares. Then they got rid of them altogether.
If you're lucky, there are little filler canisters and a cigarette lighter-powered air compressor to let you get slowly to a tire shop. Sometimes, not even that. If there's a nail or a blowout, tow-truck city. Just hope it's not out in the middle of nowhere in the dark or in bad weather.
And keep in mind that the Fix-a-Flat kind of spray will make your tire unrepairable.
I'm not sure that's strictly true, but it definitely makes the inside of your tire (and rim) a goddamn mess
I could see that if they ran run-flats. If not, they could fuck off with that bullshit.
Many new cars have "run-flats," which can be used even if they get a puncture/go flat.
However, they are more expensive, they don't function under certain kinds of flats (e.g., sidewall damage), they have limited range, and limited speed.
The tiny "donut" spares on some cars are also not intended for high speeds, but I'd much prefer that to a punctured run-flat. (You should probably place the donut on the rear of your car is front wheel drive, though.)
I read somewhere that you should always replace a back wheel with a donut spare, even if that means swapping a punctured front wheel with an original back wheel. The donut spares are so flimsy that they can't be trusted to reliably handle the side loads a front wheel experiences when your car is turning.
That's one for safety in case you can't get help, but one should drive slower than 60kmph and seek help immediately when using T rated tyre(such as the donut spare). The control sucks when your front tyre is a donut spare, and braking also sucks, so driving slow is the only way to do it.
I thought that was a legal safety requirement in the US.
Do you know in the US, the car maker can make a car use brake lamp as a turn signal? The standard is weird.
I did - I'm from the US and have been confused by this before.
Also I saw Technology Connections' rant video about this! As always, in case you're not familiar, I highly recommend his channel.
Yeah it turns out no one uses them or keeps em pumped up or applies that rubber stuff to em to keep em in good shape so the manufacturers replaced em with “24 hr roadside assistance”.
Spare tires have come in handy many times in my life! And im only 30. Fuck 24 hour roadside assistance i can put a spare on faster than they can get out to me
No doubt they have been and are handy to many, but with increasing amount of people not knowing how to change their tires and the tire being empty and gone to shit anyway, I guess I get not having as a default.
Yeah it sucks
I feel like the saved weight could be a net benefit for the environment
I very much prefer the extra cargo space. I have never had a flat tire. I go on vacations/road trips every year, multiple times.
I can press any button I like on the console without looking, while knowing what button is.
I will never prefer anything else.
My Mitzu has hella steering wheel controls and I loooooove it
The climate control things are off-wheel but I just have the dial set to automatically make it 70°F all the time and never touch it.
If you're pulled over for using an iPad while you're driving you'll get a ticket. But if you build the iPad into the car it's somehow okay.
Nah, see, when you turn on the car's iPad, it shows a pop-up telling you not to use it while driving, so it's totally different.
You mean if you drive hands free as opposed to having a tablet being held by your car so you can use your hands on the wheel? You can mount an iPad in your car. Lol.
I want 3 things in a car navmod:
Decent enough sized screen for Android auto to show me the map. My 2018 Nissan leaf is probably the smallest I'd go on this, but I wouldn't even double it
For the love of GOD could we let me upgrade the unit, or force android auto to use my powerful-enough-for-this-purpose phone handle rendering the video feed? My pixel can handle an external monitor at 1440p no problem, I'd love to give the shitty PC in my car a break from scrolling maps at 3fps
Physical buttons for everything HVAC, can honestly take or leave the volume and tuner knobs as long as they're put on the steering wheel
This 100% I hope other brands will follow with Škoda's new smart dials (or even go further)
I’m totally onboard with this. Unless I’m mistaken in my country the law still forbids looking into a screen and away from the road, which is now needed to drive many cars!
There's a middle ground. Give me a decent-sized [touch]screen for Android Auto with physical HVAC & media controls.
Honda is one automaker that has separate climate controls, and it is a great balance with things that are nice on a screen like navigation. Heck, even though the music is through the touchscreen it still has a volume knob to quickly adjust or turn off no matter what the screen is showing.
I have a small (4-5") screen that has my clock, media information, which displays my backup camera feed if I'm in reverse, which I think is a modest improvement over the all-analog option, and a huge step up from the deathtrap touchscreen configuration. In my mind, the touchscreen is the point where it starts to drop off quickly, as it stands I don't think I'd buy a car with a touchscreen that doesn't lock it out while moving.
The existence of a touchscreen isn't a problem, just having common controls moved to it. The touchscreen is useful for interacting with active phone apps, e.g. maps. A total motion lockout might be excessive.
In my mind, the issue is that cars are incentivizing drivers to use high attention controls like touchscreens while driving. Actions that need to happen while driving, whether they're directly vehicle operation, or something like air conditioning or media volume, should be simple low-attention controls, ideally with tactile feedback. Keep it simple for your brain, keep focus on the road.
I have volume buttons, skip, jump backwards, and a numpad on my dash that interact with phone apps via Bluetooth. Maybe there's a physical (or voice) control that can be added to the dash or wheel to interact with map/navigation apps. Using the touchscreen is dangerous, and a car shouldn't provide a reason to do so. I'd rather solve the problem another way.
But if a touchscreen is required to update the clock, or do Bluetooth pairing, that's fine. There's no reason to need to do those while driving.
Being able to feel controls instead of having to look at them while driving is key, but some of you take this to Luddite levels.
Dear Lemmy and the fediverse as a whole.
Unless you have specifically read up about the labor rights of Luddites you really dont know what you are talking about when you throw the word Luddite around (I know I didn't)
https://www.vice.com/en/article/luddites-definition-wrong-labor-technophobe/
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/06/the-luddites-were-right
Welcome to lemmy. AI bad. Cloud bad. Screens bad. Tesla terrible. Ad-based monetization the literal devil. Paywalls, the devil's brother.
Do any of those things have redeeming qualities?
AI has uses when it's not being rammed down peoples throats or used to plagiarize content (personal assistant/home automation type stuff is the first that comes to mind - I'd like to eventually set up a locally-hosted LLM based alternative to Alexa to control my house so I'm not relying on an internet connection for everything).
Cloud is an essential part of a robust backup strategy, and makes it easier for the average person to create a web presence.
Tesla, being an EV company, is still an important interim solution to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ICE vehicles until (hopefully) better public transit infra is built so people don't need to use cars as much. Not to mention it was the kick-starter for other vehicle companies to make EVs.
Ads and paywalls: People gotta eat. You want to consume content that someone produces as their job? Pay them. If you won't someone else will, thus advertisements.
Absolutely.
Get out of here with your nuance, don't you realize you're on the Internet?!
In all seriousness, thanks. I think what a lot of people tend to forget is none of these things are inherently bad. They're just often misused and/or overused, typically due to the insatiable capitalist profit motive.
The main issue with these is their proponents have a lack of nuance.
I hate how they don't give you a choice in the matter.. Just give me basic controls, then sell a bespoke android tablet that mounts in the car. I thought car companies love to push extras?
But if it just mounts in the car they can't tell you that you will need a new car because your built-in tablet doesn't get updates anymore.
Except they could be pushing a new tablet every few years. Like you need this tablet to unlock full self driving
Why would you do that if you can instead sell people a whole new car?
Nah push it as the "hi-tech" package or some such nonsense, "way better than our base model with the old world knobs." Comes just like in the pic, but have both models.
Then you can sell it for more money to the dumb dumbs and let the people who know what is good in life have that sweet knob action.
No no no, they only push "extras" that are already included in the car so they can charge more for doing nothing. This requires doing something.
I'd like to keep the Reverse Cam alongside the knobs personally.
There's an easy way to make everything sound dirty.
Just add a place name to any noun. Wheelbarrow isn't much, but an Arkansas wheelbarrow? Sounds filthy.
St. Louis bagel...
Yeah, it works.
St. Louis everything bagel. With a schmear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auchtermuchty
I was surprised to find out that it wasn't something you came up with by random keystrokes.
I had to check and see who they were.
I had heard the '500 Miles' song before, but I always thought it was a musical gag from 'The Simpsons,' like 'Baby On Board' or 'Dr. Zaius.'
same but that also just brings up another rant about modern cars. mine has surround view cameras -so you can see a birds eye view when parking. it's really nice. but then why do I have to suction cup a dash cam right next to the built in camera and run a USB cable around my car? please just let us plug in a USB storage device and use the built in cameras as a dash cam.
On the other hand I can see why allowing arbitrary USB devices to be plugged into a safety-critical system wouldn't be a good idea, particularly one that doesn't get easy security patches.
You're not wrong, but in my case and presumably others there already are USB ports and relevant drivers for both playback of media files, and funny enough for applying security patches or other updates.
In practice I think the concern becomes most USB storage devices are not intended to be constantly written to, while vibrating from the car, and it would definitely destroy data and cause support complaints. But it's still annoying all the hardware and most of the software I want is there and wouldn't take that much more to do what i want.. but instead if they ever do decide to let us use the built in cameras as a dashcam, I expect it will require replacing my entire car with a new model
USB video class is far from arbitrary
My 2019 Kia seems to give the best of both worlds. I've got a small I think 10" display for reversing camera and Android Auto/Apple Carplay/radio and physical buttons and knobs for climate controls, volume, etc. the display is just big enough to be useful for maps, and Kia's UI for the screen on the display is really nice with almost entirely white on black so it's not distracting nor too bright at night and it really blends in when you aren't looking at it while being there and ready for you when you are
My 2014 GTI has a touchscreen but everything on the screen can be controlled with knobs and buttons, and all it does is music and navigation. Everything else is knobs.
No backup camera, though.
Reject smart cars because they're collecting your data and it will be used to increase your insurance rates.
Like your phone carrier, maps application developer, Facebook, and any other app with location data, isn't actively trying to sell that info to as many paying customers as possible...
Companies just use black boxes anyway lol
My major problems with this design trend, in my own (biased) experience:
Volkswagen in the 70s and 80s had three horizontal control levers for the heating on the center of the middle panel which you could push with one speedy gesture to the very right, and then the front window would get max heat and max air flow to defrost/to demoist very fast.
Was so intuitive and fast you didn't think about it and never had to take your eyes from the road for. That was peak design in my eyes.
You might die on a hill if you attempt to control a car using a touchscreen.
Well if you're so smart, how are they going to track your location otherwise?
Have you seen the quality of code that gets shipped lately? I'm fairly sure your AC does need an OTA patch.
I'm really thankful that Audi rolled back whatever they were doing and gave me knobs and switched to deal with. Like in fucking planes and space shuttles !
And fingers crossed all this common sense gets enshrined in law soonish.
Leave me a phone sized screen for CarPlay and everything else can go back. I agree with the giant touch screen only stuff being nonsense, but CarPlay is life changing to my driving experience.
I don't have first-hand experience, but from what I understand the way they make money off of those tablet screens they put in cars is by licensing proprietary software that other companies want you to have no choice but to use. That's why models with no screens are disappearing from the major car makers
The crazy thing for me is that apart from physical buttons, if car manufacturers actually just released models of 20-30 years ago as new launches, complete exterior and interior, they’d so well!
Edit - with just Bluetooth added but I’m cool with using a cassette adaptor of some sort. Also assuming the engines would be up to today’s emission standards. I mean just the shape and looks.
Yup, just give me fuel efficiency upgrades and I'm happy. I don't need anything fancy, I'm even happy to have roll windows.
1989 Honda acty pickup 🙏🙏
The old classic well-designed cars just had better taste. I agree with you, I've been saying the same thing for years! Design some of these hybrids or electric cars with the same good classic taste - they'd be great! Unfortunately the trend of today (not just with cars but with many objects) is poor taste.
When I was a kid I loved my dad's 1987 Chrysler 5th Avenue. It was silver and had a plush red leather interior with high pile carpet. It was a poor man's personal luxury car but it still felt like you were riding in style.
If you replaced the 318 V8 and three speed automatic with something more economical, I would absolutely drive something like that.
This is my daily drive. I do wish it had Bluetooth tough. I did get an FM Bluetooth transmitter, but it didn't work that well.
I have a radio transmitter and it worked so much better than i ever expected. My friend had one like 15 years ago that was absolutely crap
Maybe i should try a few different models
yeah definitely give it a go again and make sure to take the time to pick a decent reviewed one.
A bad bluetooth fm transmitter is a headache and a fiddly waste of time, a good one on the other hand works essentially just as good as an aux cord.
I wonder if they have regulated requirements in the EU, making them worse..
Try again, I had an akai and it don't work that well either. Now I have an osio 4240 and I am happy with it.
Did you try adjusting the station it broadcast to? I thought the FM transmitter was crap until I messed around with the different stations.
Yeah i just think i cheapped out although it was not cheap. I went for fast solution and bought it in a local store as i expected them all to be decent. Should have bought online
I bought a Bluetooth adapter (not sure if that's what what you call it) for $45 at Best Buy. It plugs into your audiojack. The one I bought comes with a cigarette lighter jack to charge it. Works great
No audia jack either here. Only input option is CD!
That's odd. Check the manual. Mine is at the bottom of the storage/arm rest between the front seats so it's not obvious.
Mine must have been a economy version because it does not even have an armrest! All the storage options between the front seats are just storage dents
If only they were capable of offering phone stands. No, I don’t need your 4 foot, 500 gigalumen screen, just give me a place to put mine.
All I want or need is Bluetooth
Ah, the old "How hard do you want it, how hot do you want it and where do you want it?" climate controls.
There were and are the best.
Still have them as paddles and buttons on my 2023 Honda. I don't even need to look down and they work with gloves.
Heating and ac controls on the flatscreen eliminated a bunch of other carmakers from my poasible choices.
Our family car radio ig? The screen looks like that due to how hot is it outside (I reside in a desert country)
I don't want to drive a smart phone or have it drive me. Give me a car with a pre iPhone dash and Bluetooth and I am happy. I am hoping there will be a market for old people cars with real controls when the vehicles we drive now are no longer maintainable.
Backup cameras are required by law since I think it was 2015? But the trend of gigantic screen with no physical controls seems to be in a "will they/won't they" kinda situation right now with some manufacturers flirting with the idea, some trying it then reverting, etc.
My current vehicle is mid 2000s, much older than 2015 and standard equipment includes a backup camera that engages in reverse on its perfectly usable 4:3 standard definition screen.
The climate controls are buttons with led indicators and rotary encoders that control a display so while it isn't as distracting as a touch screen it can't be operated fully haptically while eyes are on the road either. It makes sense though as the rear climate controls can be adjusted independently with a wireless remote and in that application it is almost impossible to do things with simple sliders and selector knobs. I am not an absolutist on these things but I appreciate designers putting some thought into the usability of controls instead of going with the cheapest/flashiest solution.
Wish they'd have the option to just have an AUX input only.. Not everyone wants or needs a dumb radio
No, we need a SMART radio. /s
In the US you legally have to put a radio on the car for emergency broadcast.
safety should cost extra.
Is that huge touchscreen real?? looks it up
It is! Ugh, I hate it!
And if it breaks, good luck doing anything in your car such as changing temperature, fan speed, audio settings etc 🙃
Even crazier is when the central screen is also your speedometer and gear switch.
It's crazy how much control is shoved into menus on the touchscreen.
I barely like using my phonebat times, why the fuck would I want a tablet to control my car?
Look at Bruce Wayne over here, tired of using his batphone.
Phonebat. It's not a phone shaped like a bat it's a bat shaped like a phone. Looks like somebody threw their phone, but then it keeps going and you're like "must be a phonebat"
Instructions unclear: phone is absolutely shattered.
But seriously, bats already have echo location, so they're basically already phones.
¿Por qué no dos dos?
I'm putting a tablet in my car because I want a giant screen for navigation and engine management software. Tweaking fuel maps, reading data from various sensors like oil and intake temp, calculating MPG, etc.
FWIW I'm not replacing my stereo and A/C controls; I need my physical buttons. I'm simply ripping out the outdated factory navigation to replace it with something modern, with more functionality that will get regular updates. Best of both worlds.
(And yes I'm aware that Android Auto is a thing but again I don't want to replace the stereo with a screen so I'm taking this route instead.)
Infiniti has the best center stack of all cars, and that's a hill I am willing to die on. Screens for navigation, radio, and car settings, with physical buttons along the sides for common HVAC, etc controls.
I haven't driven an Infiniti in about 20 years, but I like the fact they stuck with physical controls. I rented a new Peugeot that was 100% touch screen for everything including changing from park to drive. I almost got in a wreck because I had to reverse out of the way of a distracted driver pulling out of a parking spot and the touch screen wouldn't let me go from drive to reverse, i had to click park first. Anyways, I have a whole laundry list of modern smart features that make me feel like I'm fighting my vehicle instead of driving it. I'm not a fan of lane assist and auto off at traffic lights.
Yup yup yup. I'll die before I buy a car with a touchscreen. I'll get my damn motorcycle license first.
My partners car has a touch screen, but knobs dials and buttons for all the climate features.
The touch screen is just the infotainment stuff.
That's about as far as I want it to go. I don't need a large format display in my vehicle. I don't want my speed, turn signal indicator, and climate controls on a massive display that takes up 1/3rd of the dash. Their car has a 8" or so, infotainment display.... Great for Android auto/Apple carplay, with navigation so I can get my directions without having to meddle with my phone, or a clunky phone mount wobbling around.
But that's where I draw the line. Just give me the fancy infotainment screen, leave everything else the way it is.
There is an in-between.
I recently had the brief joy of driving a small car without power steering. I never realized how much nicer the feedback is. You'd think that it would be a nightmare to park but the size of the car meant that it was still easier on the whole.
It's fine when the car is moving, not so great at a stand-still.
Dry steering is bad for your tires anyways
Why not have both
Agreed
Touch screens with a hundred options will become useful when we start traveling between star systems and need to react to things in minutes or even hours at time.
But when you're driving a vehicle that can run into things within milli seconds if you take your eyes off the road .... we're still going to need tactile buttons.
And my axe.
And my Bumper Jack!
Funny enough, when I purchased my car, I went with the last model that didn't have the computer screen in it. The last of the actual BMW car cars. No iDrive or screen. I fuckin love that car.
Is this what the new subscribe-to-drive cars look like inside? Just a straight up tablet where the music and heat controls are supposed to be?
Maybe if we didn't put computers and cameras in our cars they wouldn't be so expensive
The worst part about it it that these screens are most of the time worse than a 100 dollar ipad, and unresponsive and janky as hell. The cameras are so cheap that they are also used as fpv cameras. Some of the very cheap ones sometimes still had the green and red lined that you see on parking cameras. But since it's in a car, it makes it 10k more expensive. The worst fucking car entertainment system i have ever used was when a friend of my dad bought a Maserati and asked me how it works. I couldn't figure it out, for the first time ever, i had to look at the manual. And even then, i have no idea who was responsible for that shitty ass ui, it was absolutely disgusting and made by the only guy who knows how it works.
backup cameras were made mandatory in 2018 in the US.
Maybe if we didn't put those devices where high end ones that do thousands of times more than these cost $3000-$5000 into our devices that start around $25000 the latter wouldn't be so expensive? This is entirely a choice by the manufacturer, not something forced onto you by the computing device.
Everyone insists to have HVAC controls as physical buttons. How often do you mess with them?
I set up my previous car to 20C when I bought it and it was at 20C when I sold it. Same with the current one, which has touch screen control. It heats the cabin in winter and cools it down in summer. If it's very cold or very hot, it automatically blasts on max.
What am I missing?
I don't know. Maybe you live in a place with low teperature variations. When I get into my car on a hot summer day, I like to turn the temperature down bellow regular comfort temperature to cool down quicker. When I'm stumbling into the car after shoveling snow and scraping ice from the windshield, I like to turn it a bit higher. On long drives, I sometimes get warm after spending several hours in the leather seat, so I turn the temperature down. My girlfriend likes the temperature a bit higher, so when she uses the car, it's turned up.
It's a comfort thing, and it's definitely something I change a lot with my mechanical dials.
I agree it might be a temperature variance thing. I will frequently use the heat in the morning going to work because it's cold and then be using the AC on my way home because it's hot out.
I don't have a separate heat or AC settings (I did in my '98 car). Any car modern enough to have Touchscreen HVAC controls (and many before that) will just have a temperature setting and will turn the heating or the AC (or heat with the AC) automatically to reach the setting.
I think many people have a car like the one on the right and assume that you need to tweak the HVAC controls on the touchscreen every 20 minutes because you choose a power setting or something. Cars have had thermostats for ages. You set a temperature, leave the power on auto and it does its thing. My new car even has automatic seat warmers, they just turn on depending on how cold is it in the cabin.
Exactly. I have "manual" HVAC controls in my vehicles right now, but I did have a car with an automatic one. I had that set for 21C 365 days a year, and it handled everything, including switching to defrost in cold weather. I did not touch the HVAC controls in the 3 or 4 years I owned that car. The manual controls need to get adjusted several times per trip.
I would agree that modern cars temperature controls work well. My issue is just the screen for controlling it in some of them. I don't mind messing around with the controls in my old car, but it's very convenient to just set a temperature and go.
When the car has been sitting in the sun it's 60C inside. When I get inside, the AC blasts and max power without me touching anything until it's comfy inside. It does that in my 2021 car and it did it in my 2016 car before that. Previously I had a 98 polo with manual controls.
Yes, but I enjoy a lower temperature when I'm feeling warm. ~19 feels good for cooling down after activities in warm weather. And when I'm very cold coming into the car from a blizzard, I might crank it up to 25. My ideal extrenal temperature is dependant on several conditions, it's not statically 20.
When I realize the car or truck ahead of me is emitting something I don't want to breathe (either because I see it coming out the tailpipe, or because I start to smell it), I want to switch to recirculation RIGHT NOW, not after I navigate through a maze of menus that require me to take my attention away from driving.
Also, I want temperature regulation based on how hot or cold I feel, not what some thermometer says (and often have different opinions about where the air should be blowing depending on how I feel).
Ok, thanks for the answer!
Everything should have physical buttons because touchscreens don't have haptic feedback and therefore demand more attention, which should be focused on the road. Physical buttons can be controlled via muscle memory much more quickly.
For HVAC, not all automatic systems are created equal and some people just prefer to adjust temps and fans manually.
Directing hot or cold air around the cabin and on to the windows when you come in from the rain and everything fogs up.
Thanks for the answer, but this is also done automatically in my car, even the "defog" function turns on if the humidity is too high...
Nice! Sounds like a sweet ride!
Dreading the day my car dies. I want more volume on my music? Turn a knob. Need to turn it off and focus? Slap that same knob. Weather got nice out and I want to let the air in? Spin another knob. Never have to take my eyes off the road.
Though my only experience with modern cars and their touchscreens has been 2-5 interactions to do any of the above. All on a touch screen so you have to look away from the road for it usually.
Just FYI: Both volume and turning music off can be done from the steering wheel in any car manufactured in the last 10 years. In some others (not many, tho) you can map the HVAC on the steering wheel too.
I’ll have to figure that out when the time comes. Being able to map things and customize how the controls on your wheel would be nice. From my limited experience though, that’s not a feature I’ve seen.
I’m not against newer tech, just the fact it’s often so locked down and buggy.
Good point and thanks for the response too!
Mine's mostly set on 22. When I feel cold I bump that up to 24, 26, maybe even 28. When I've done at the gym (multiple times per week) I want cooling down so I turn it down to 16 or 14.
Not everyone has that auto-climate feature, leaving us to manually fuss with the settings. Also, the windscreen defroster is not a "always running" kind of feature as it can fog the glass once it gets too cold; it is usually blended in with the rest of the A/C control scheme making life tough while moving.
Not everyone has Auto-climate, true... but (as far as I know) every single car that comes with a giant touchscreen does indeed have Auto-climate.
All the time! My girlfriend is lizard and I'm made out of magma. So if it's just me the temperature is colder, if it's just her the temperature is warmer, and if it's both of us the temperature is somewhere in-between.
They have the perfect solution for you. When you get in, the car sets your temperature, when she gets in, hers. It can recognize you based on your keyfob or phone.
When you both are in, whoever is in the passamger seat adjusts their temperature on the screen (most cars nowadays have two or three zone climate control).
I don't want my car connecting to my phone, and I don't want my climate control system to be that complicated unless they're going to release the information to troubleshoot it. Which they won't.
I would rather just move knobs or levers because they're cheaper and easier to repair.
I have never once have had trouble with the climate system in a car (got my first one in 2004, a 98 VW Polo), so 20 years of ownership total. It's definitely not the criteria I would use to chose a vehicle, but you are of course free to use whatever criteria you want to select yours.
Using my phone as a key is gloriously convenient, one less thing to carry and care about.
And if knobs were cheaper, rest assured every manufacturer would use them.
Thanks for your answer, I see we value very different things in cars.
car manufacturers should never make anything that relies on a phone to work unless they make the source available so that it can be ported to future devices.
It uses bluetooth LE, it's pretty standard tech.
welcome to my world
I recently bought a new car and I'm so glad that even though it's very modern it doesn't have a screen.
Honda Accord...probably a 94-96. Best interface ever
I just got a Corsa D from 2006 and am so happy the interior is still original. I think it looks great, actual buttons for anything I would need and a tiny 3.5mm jack to hook my bluetooth receiver up to for Spotify. It's perfect IMO.
Is that a cassette deck? Lucky.
Now just need a ⅛" jack to cassette adapter.
Jamming out, you hit a bump. The CD player perched on your passenger seat just skips horribly and can't read it anymore. 🤌
I've got a MK8 Golf and boy are the interior ergonomics of that thing annoying. Capacitive EVERYTHING. Steering wheel controls. Climate controls. Overhead lights!! It still has a normal blinker stalk though. But I knew what I was getting into when I bought it....I mainly wanted one of the last manual hatchbacks before they die out completely. Good thing it is super fun to drive so I don't really pay attention to the annoying lack of buttons.
Several friends can barely drive without a GPS. They get anxious.
then use a phone mount like a sane person. i cant drive without gps either but there are so many reasons these fuckass tablets are an inferior option, most especially that they would force me to use google maps
I prefer voice controls to either, but don't have a strong preference between physical or digital because I end up looking either way. Subscriptions on the other hand can fuck right off.
I think the looking I do with manual controls is a quick glimpse to put my hand on the control. After that, I can adjust while keeping my eyes on the road.
I find with digital that I stare at it during the entire adjustment period.
Subscriptions do need to die though. Especially car subscriptions.
My 2015 Mazda 3 has both and I love it.
I understand why people want minimalist design. I too like this. This is why my 2000 Audi TT has a door flap to cover up the radio when you don't want to see the buttons.
Old man screams at clouds. 👴✊️☁️
Bellows. Loudly and aggressively.
I'll take it modern. Thanks.
The biggest argument in favor of "tradition" seems to be the presence of physical buttons. So maybe you'd actually prefer a mixture of the traditional and the modern, a screen with physical buttons below it, allowing you to operate the console using your tactile sense alone, without giving up the GPS map and the additional cameras.
i don't have a problem with this
Nope. I don't want the physical buttons. All I need are signal stalks. When I drive I don't go playing around with buttons.
We live in a time where we can control our car by voice. I set the temperature of my car before I get in it. I don't see the need for buttons.
What if you want to change the station?
Hopefully you don't do much driving in the dark, the backlight on our new work truck's console display glows so brightly even with the display "off" that it ruins your night vision.
Modern would be fine if even half a moment of thought went into non-typical situations, but it's always some stupid oversight like this. Or the 5000k LED dome lights with a visible PWM frequency. Literally painful.
I prefer to drive with old incandescent dash lights dimmed to nearly nothing, yes I live in a very dark area with no lighting and many road hazards. On a moonless night, the area lit by the headlights is literally all you can see. We run extra lightbars, turning lights etc.
More light outside the truck, not inside. That's my rant
That sounds like the kind of bonkers oversights I saw on my last Chevy, so it's not by chance a Chevy work truck is it?
Hah you got it, I used to be a "Chevy guy" when it came to domestic trucks but this was the truck that finally made me say enough, it's riddled with embarrassing faults and bad design decisions in every system. The Ford truck we also have is an example of new tech that works well and the Chevy just can't compare.
From what I've seen of my in-laws' Ford vehicles they're generally pretty good, but I honestly prefer what I've seen from the Korean and Japanese manufacturers. They seem to really have the attention to detail down and be far less about spectacle or catering to a type of person I'm not
I do drive in the dark. My carv switches to dark mode and dims the display. I've never noticed it being too bright.
It's not about traditional vs. modern but what the better solution for the task is. You know why phone usage while driving is not allowed?
Yes because you stare for long periods of time on the phone without looking at where you are going. I didn't do that with my car's display. Two very different things.
No, because you look away from the street.
It is funny how car lovers pretend that cars aren't just some blip in history that has existed for barely a human lifetime as a form of transportation for the masses.
I don't think anyone says cars have existed forever. Strange take.
Interesting take.
Can I ask how long something must exist before we can love and appreciate it?
I still miss my old school flip phone, but mobile phones haven't been a thing for half as long as cars so I guess I can't be a technology lover?
You're weird.
Change is scary lmao
Dont lean into getting old too much, you cant go back.
Not all change is good
Yeah but yelling at clouds is a prime old person activity.