Why Tesla's dashboard touch screens suck | Hacker News Reader

Why Tesla's dashboard touch screens suck

fastcompany.com

20 pointsviburnum23 comments

Little offtopic, but I disagree that Tesla's touch screen makes it look "futuristic". In fact lack of more traditional displays, knobs, etc. makes the car interior seem very empty, giving you impression of riding something that was built by an amateur in his garage. I mean, if I was building a prototype of my own car I would probably just have bought an iPad and have glued it to a dashboard.

If you've dealt with electro-mechanical switches and displays you know

electro-mechanical switches and displays => expensive

touch screen => cheap

Both from a manufacturing standpoint and a design stand point.

So you are right it's not futuristic it's chintzy.

No need to do expensive industrial design, tooling to build switches, simpler loom, simpler to assemble etc.

It’s a cost cutting exercise (with other advantages) which has become trend.

For me cars are like tools, they should be tactile.

>if I was building a prototype of my own car I would probably just have bought an iPad and have glued it to a dashboard.

My prototype car would have Cherry MX Blues, for the tactile and audible feedback.

I own a 2010-2014 Lexus RX-350 with a tactile feedback "mouse" / "joystick" for the UX that was later replaced by Toyota / Lexus in newer models and I will never understand why. The cursor when it moved over a button will feedback to the mouse to make it more difficult / needing a nudge to navigate away from the button but still feels very natural. I am not sure why this type of UX was completely abandon but after driving older and more recent cars this was the clear winner for the task of navigating an interface while also operating a huge SUV through traffic.

Personally, I hated the Lexus mouse. Compared to the prior generation (which used a touchscreen) it was slow and awkward to use.

The newer touchpad style they're using is almost as bad.

The touch screen was basically tap-tap done.

I know touch screens get some hate here, but CarPlay with a touch screen is about the best I've seen so far.

I drive a Tesla. Not having haptic feedback has not been a problem for me. It took just a few minutes to become familiar with the UI and, after a few days, I found it easier and more intuitive than anything else I had ever driven. In comparison, I recently tried a friend's prestigious German car. This car had dozens of controls on the steering wheel, steering column, dashboard, etc. After a few hours, I still found everything confusing.

Would I be daft to suggest that what you're engaging in is post-purchase rationalization?

Dozens of buttons still have an inherent advantage: as tactile buttons they can be activated without using your eyes.

I agree that most German luxury cars get completely over-ambitious, but that's not to say that nobody's succeeded at making something that's less distracting than Tesla's touch screen.

Out of the cars I've driven with modern infotainment systems, Mazda might have the most intuitive one out there. The touch screen is completely disabled while driving, with a simple four direction, press down, rotating knob to control everything along with a back button and logically placed shortcut keys.

That layout also includes a physical volume knob and physical climate controls in the standard, logical dual dial layout.

Most importantly, the gear selector is a completely normal front-to-back push the button lever with physical tactile feedback, none of this rocker/button pushing nonsense.

Picture here:

https://www.mazdausa.com/siteassets/vehicles/2019/mazda3-sed...

Nah I would say it's usually just being more used to using touch screens. Same as the explanation people used to use for blackberrys vs iphone. Yes testing one handed without looking was fine but it's just as easy when you figure out the screen no matter how unintuitive it sounds.

The major difference being that you don't use your phone while driving (do you?)

I really don't think you can operate an iPhone without looking at it unless you're using accessibility features or a really basic function like the flashlight.

I think there is room for improvement

#1 - why do you have to take your hands off the wheel?

#2 - when you DO take your hands off the wheel, the targets should be well positioned (high) and easy to hit (large). Now they are neither. Multiple taps are terrible (eg raise suspension for a driveway)

#3 - listen - to ui experts, to customers - there are enormous forum threads devoted ui complaints (v9 vs v8, crappy usb ui, etc)

I think Steve Jobs ran into most of this sort of stuff with the original scrollwheel iPod and managed to pull off a good UI for the time by "sending it back to the kitchen". I think some of these UI decisions should be sent back.

Good thing is things can be improved in a software update (apart from the nonexistent model 3 dashboard).

I will say, most people with a tesla don't want to give up their car.

For me a huge amount of driving depends on muscle memory and tactile feedback. I’m pretty much Tesla’s target audience but that’s a deal killer for me.

> Stretching your arm all the way across the dashboard to fiddle with a vent may not be ideal from a Fitts-ian standpoint, but you can accomplish it without ever taking your eyes off the road. The Tesla’s touch screen, though, makes no-look operation impossible—which raises the stakes for any non-ideal button positioning.

Does it actually? It seems to me whether it's a physical button or not, a glance is usually enough to hone in on it. If you're going for completely blind groping for a knob type action I guess I understand, but I don't do that.

A fixed button on a fixed screen should be almost as easy to fix in muscle memory as a physical button or switch.

Small codicil: I much prefer physical buttons and dislike the tendency for physical interfaces to disappear.

Yeah, this is not the consensus among actual owners who voted with their money.

Yeah, but given that Tesla still needs to massively grow the number of actual owners, the consensus of current owners doesn't matter as much as what potential buyers are thinking.

As a someone in their exact target demographic, the giant screen is one of the major features I've been stuck on. Articles like these only support the feelings I've had about their touchscreens.

What about the not-owners who voted the other way with their money?

I don't think current owners are the whole market Tesla is trying to reach.

I would suggest looking at the ui subforums here:

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/

Just because the UI isn't very driver-centric doesn't mean the car isn't awesome.

When you're not fiddling with the UI, you can accelerate faster than many porsches or vettes. Or if you're in bumper to bumper traffic, you can let the car drive.

I'm voting with my money by never buying a car that uses a cheap touchscreen to control essential stuff that should have dedicated buttons.

Talk is cheap. The same applies when validating any product and people tell you they will "buy" it. But when you ask them to pay, they are nowhere to be found.

Using your same analogy, this also means that I have chosen not to vote by not buying any of the luxury German of Japanese sedans. I've had both as daily drivers previously and I do not foresee myself going back. In fact, my wife and I were willing to take two depreciation hits to trade-in our relatively new MBenz sedan and SUV vehicles to go all Tesla.

Also, 99% of the functionality needed can already be controlled on the steering wheel buttons if you are so keen with that. Pretty much everything else is automatic. You are also not being forced to buy these cars, so why the vitriol?

> Talk is cheap. The same applies when validating any product and people tell you they will "buy" it. But when you ask them to pay, they are nowhere to be found.

I think the talk is less cheap when a person is saying that they WON'T buy something though. I'd contend that people are more likely to NOT buy something they say they won't buy than to buy something they say they will buy.

> Using your same analogy, this also means that I have chosen not to vote by not buying any of the luxury German of Japanese sedans.

I could have bought a Tesla but decided not to. There were many reasons but that screen was one of them.

> You are also not being forced to buy these cars, so why the vitriol?

Vitriol? All I said was I'm unhappy about the trend, wouldn't buy a car with it, and expressed that, in the likely vain hope that someone managing these companies is listening, because it's limiting my choice for future cars. Same as you're expressing your love for the design.

Also all the phoning-home is something I won't be a part of.

When my current car reaches EOL, I think I'll have trouble finding a newish car because of these horrible user-hostile trends.

Can someone who owns a Tesla talk about nighttime operation?

LCD displays this large and bright can mess with low light adaptation. Unlike OLED technology, LCD’s just can’t make really dark blacks and glow.

Implementation is really nice, actually. The display automatically switches to a white on black mode and the brightness is automatically regulated.

You can override either display setting (day/night and brightness) manually, if desired.

Given that it's an LCD, the performance is quite surprising. The blacks are very black. Just take a look at the set of controls at the bottom, is near impossible to see where the controls end and black bezel begins.

I have 0 brightness or visibility issue with the screen. It has not even been a thought that has crossed my mind.

I also regularly battle with brightness settings and night time shift on my iPhone and Watch. (Granted that is a more difficult task for Apple).

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