Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

Own a TM3, so bear with my bias.

I find the whole haptic feedback issue a bit silly. First off I went from a Chevrolet Volt to a TM3. So lets start off with buttons.

Steering Wheel TM3, two omni direction buttons. Two stalks. Volt, 5 buttons to do the same purpose as the two on the Telsa, then four more buttons for extra functions on front, three lever like buttons on back of wheel.

Center Stack TM3 - touch screen, only the quick actions menu leads to one level sub mensu Volt - touch screen with four dedicated buttons and knob below. Menus and be many layers deep, some are four or five deep. HVAC below has thirteen buttons and two knobs.

The come all the controls on doors and seats. Some cars put some items in different places meaning for each car you need to adapt. However as I will state below, you never really need to use the majority of them so it does not matter.

Most cars are like the Chevrolet Volt, there are between thirty to fifty buttons. Now tell me how that is worse than a touch screen. Lets double down on this, how many buttons do you actually use during the course of a drive. Try this, put a sticker on each before a drive and remove those you use. How many can you reach for any not take your eyes off the road. Any radio or screen will do that regardless.

The kicker is, you don't need to interact with the UI of the Tesla or the super majority of most buttons in any car these days because for the most part settings are set and forget. HVAC systems are set to maintain a temperature, radio stations or music is usually only volume tweaked plus many other items are automatic like headlamps and even wipers.

I was accustomed to my TM3 before I got home the day I picked it up. I can get accustomed to nearly any car in minutes as the most used controls are always where you expect them, from turn signals to horns to volume control over the radio. I will say this, the navigation on voice is superb in the TM3.

Are there flaws with the Tesla UI, sure. Namely you still must use your phone to change play lists. I know of no other brand with this limitation. I do think the horizontal display of the TM3 is superior to the vertical display for both information pickup and icon spacing. I agree the top icons can get hard to see when map features underlap and that needs to be tweaked to fade those map images

Same can be said for keys on a keyboard you rarely use but why not have it there for that one time you need it? I for one, don’t want to be going through menus just to adjust my steering wheel - especially when I already started driving (which surprisingly happens often that someone else adjusted the steering wheel and I don’t notice until I’m already driving).

As far as comparing with the Volt, the Model 3 and Volt are in two different leagues. The volt is a mass market EV that could’ve been had (ironically, they discontinued it ;) for well under $30k. Model 3 starts at 40k and is competing with BMWs, Audi’s and Mercedes with much better ergonomics due to increased R&D spending over something like a Chevy.

Steering wheel is the perfect example.

First, the car knows who you are and adjusts the seats, mirror, and steering wheel for you when you get in. The concept is to eliminate controls which have no more need to exist. If someone else was just driving and you switch with the car still on, Tesla keeps a list of driver profiles!

You tap once to drop down the list of driver profiles, and then tap on your name. Boom. Seat, mirrors, and steering wheel are immediately setup.

This is so much better than the silly “1” and “2” buttons on the door on my wife’s Mercedes, which you have to hold down to make everything move, and for gods sake they don’t even work until you start the car! My wife is tiny, I can’t get in the seat without moving it first, so while standing outside the car, I stretch my foot in to reach the brake pedal and then reach around to press the Start button, so that I can then press... and hold... the “2” while the seat moves into position. Mind numbingly stupid.

To give another example, all the headlight switches that cars have, like that big dial left of the steering wheel on most cars where you can select from 3 or 4 headlight modes. Totally gone from the Model 3. Headlights and daytime running lights are full auto. Even high beams are full auto, although the left stalk will activate them manually if you want.

Are you seriously suggesting that "look-tap-read your name-tap" is quicker, safer, or more convenient than "press one button, which always works the same way and is not going to move, or change in any way, just because Elon needed more screen room for fart jokes"? Honestly, this stretches any belief.

Granted, I can see that Mercedes implementation is stupid -- of course you want it to work before you managed to squeeze in and start it, but that's a Mercedes problem, not an advantage of the touchscreen (which, of course, you also can only reach once you got inside). FWIW, on my 2011 car this is not a problem, button is in the door and works whether the engine is on or not.

I thought it was interesting the case study was on the S and not the 3, which I agree is better suited to the UI due to the landscape screen.

I completely agree about the excess buttons that are never used. Climate temperature I basically never change.

Climate On/Off I do wish was a little easier, but even better would be a Climate ‘Eco’ switch which persisted across drives, which would avoid resistance heating or A/C as much as possible. Then I could totally ignore all the climate settings altogether.

All in all I am very rarely reaching for the touchscreen during a drive. A massive array of buttons would not make my drive any safer at all. When I do have to switch on defog I do have to glance at it, but the same was true for my last car with buttons because even after 13 years I would never find it in a field of climate control buttons by groping around without looking.

Most of the complaints don’t make sense to me. I don’t think I’ve ever manually activated the rear-view camera? Placing a phone call is actually pretty great with large touch targets for recently dialed numbers, and there’s always voice controls.

And of course missing the forest for the trees. The interior design of the TM3 envisions a future where there isn’t even a steering wheel and the rest of the car design doesn’t change one bit.

It’s the perfect expression of Musk’s overpowering optimism and leaning further into the future than most people even dare to dream.

Overconfidence in the current AutoPilot capability leads to some accidents, and even fatalities. But the UI itself is actually stunning and highly usable. In particular the maps and GPS are leaps and bounds better than I imagined could be possible in a car.

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