Comment by JackCh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JackCh | Hacker News Reader

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I'll never buy a car that doesn't allow me to turn on the air conditioning without taking my eyes off the road. In other words, physical buttons and dials that are always in the same place. Something I can feel with my fingers and always rely on being there.

Touchscreen controls sure are flashy, but as far as I'm concerned when employed in a multi-ton piece of machinery traveling at 60+mph they're borderline homicidal. I know I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

I'm open to voice controls. I don't like speaking to machines, but having machines speak to me is something I appreciate (for instance I always have my GPS talk to me, I never look at the screen) and I could see myself coming around on talking to machines. But a big old glorified ipad stuck in the dash? No way.

The climate controls aren’t ideal on the Model 3, but “Auto” does the job 90% of the time. As a complete system the Tesla UI is everything that BMW and Mercedes has tried to be for the last decade with its stupid wheels and touch pads and other gimmicks. Audi/VW is probably best in class in terms of a streamlined and feature complete set of cockpit controls but it’s jus so damn buggy. Doubly so in the US where you have to go to a dealer just to update the software.

I much preferred the fully manual controls on the late 90s early 2000 BMWs without nav to ANYTHING they have put out since. Mercedes is even worse with multiple different input gimmicks, all of which are hard to use. It’s like every year they make it worse. Somehow.

Tesla can improve with voice commands and better mapping of steering wheel controls but everyone else really just needs to scrap their entire UI and start over because their current software is just 15 years of monkey patches from the first navigation control models in the early 2000s.

Aren't there physical controls for simple things like A/C on the steering wheel, and the tablet is just for more involved workflows? That was the impression I got.

If the controls for everything that I need are physical, then I don't need the digital controls.

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