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Comment by haberman | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious, have you used Android Auto? You get in the car and it already knows where you want to go because it has access to your calendar. It has all of your contacts and your music. As a user these are the things that matter to me, not a car company trying to serve me a "branded interface."

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For music and navigation, touchscreens are OK, as these are things you don't suddenly need to adjust if something happens. But for instance the defrost function on the AC can be something that you need to immediately control while driving 60 mph, e.g. if you enter a tunnel with moist microclimate (we have one of those nearby, it fogs up your windscreen in ~10sec at some conditions). Such things need to have physical buttons with logical placement.

Volvo is perhaps the ultimate example in good UI for the AC: the buttons are shaped like a human, and you press the part of your body where you want air:

http://www.carkhabri.com/Gallery/volvo/volvo-xc60/interior/l...

> the AC: the buttons are shaped like a human, and you press the part of your body where you want air

I was driving a friend's newer car down the freeway once, and had to call him to find out how to turn on the godam defroster. There were so many knobs, switches, and dials that influence this, all labelled with icons so I had no idea what they did. Turns out that you had to push two buttons, toggle a toggle, and turn two knobs. Madness.

My car has a selector that you move to "defrost". Then it defrosts, like magic.

I want to speak to the car with my hands on the steering wheel and tell it to defrost the windows like I'm talking to an Alexa device. I can't wait for this day to come...

An automatic co-pilot would be nice indeed. It should also hand me drinks and snacks and keep me awake with conversation.

ATM it's still a co-pilot job to translate navigation system information into actionable directions in foreign cities..

I mean this could the be itch at the base of a startup, right?

Would be really interesting, especially with cars like Tesla that do OTA updates and can improve your "co-pilot" all the time.

Why wouldn't you want it to defrost automatically without a spyware microphone and neural network and a ton of problems with accents and background noise?

I think Volvo's electric car is going to be doing this with some sort of deeper Android Auto integration

> Volvo is perhaps the ultimate example in good UI for the AC: the buttons are shaped like a human, and you press the part of your body where you want air:

It's nice, but it still a major issue: you need to look at it while pressing it to know state.

If, instead, it's three stacked buttons top to bottom, you don't have to do that.

My car (and many older cars) simple has two knobs. One for temperature, one for location. If you entered a tunnel, you just crank the right hand knob all the way over to defrost. Better than buttons.

Oh I agree, not every action is suited to a on/off toggle, that's why there are so many mechanical interfaces.

In a car, the aim should be for logical use without eyes leaving the road much.

I absolutely agree! I just wanted to point out that a knob can be even more intuitive than buttons.

But it does not. None of my trips are in calendar. None of my music is in Google Play or any stock music player. And the last thing I need in my car is phone interface.

You are not the target audience for this feature, but that audience exists and it's gigantic.

Is Audi's target market also a complete subset of that target audience, or is it at least significantly overlapping with that target audience?

Luxury car makers seem to keep putting more and more not-directly-related-to-the-act-of-driving features in cars every new model, so that leads me towards, "Yes."

As touchscreen interfaces and android auto integration creeps almost in EVERY car market, I can't be not target audience.

You seen to care deeply about your privacy, so no you aren't the target audience.

> And the last thing I need in my car is phone interface.

Not the target audience for the phone integration features...

Let me guess. Motorcycle rider? (_Fellow_ motorcycle rider...)

many large touring motorcycles have built in navigation and music, Harley and Honda even support Apple car play now. Harley had good voice control as well. Indian has a large panel on their bikes with navigation and split screen.

It all comes down to being a responsible rider/driver

No, just random guy on KIA RIO. I use my car primarily on weekends, using public transport on work days.

Newish bike rider. Do you have a phone mount? Do you listen to music or have any sorta HUD?

I do not use a phone mount. It's that _last_ thing I want when I'm riding.

I _used_ to wear a smart watch (all of the first 3 iterations of the Pebble) because I thought it would be useful to know who's calling when I can feel my phone buzzing in my pocket while riding so I can decide whether to pull over and answer it or not. Turns out the answer is alway "no". Either I'm jus commuting and I can choose to call back (or not) when I get to my destination, or I'm on the road and I don't care that I won't get to it for several hours or more.

I'm pretty good at navigating - so I don't want/miss the gps/mapping thing. On trips I'd _much_ rather just turn down roads I've never been on that look like they're headed kinda the right way, and see where I end up. If I need to, I'll check in on the phone when I fuel up every 2-3 hours - but it's pretty rare for me to end up somewhere with no idea of which direction and at least a rough guess of how far away the place I'm headed to is.

I do sometimes listen to music - using in ear headphones that fit under my helmet. I'll _occasionally_ use that for turn-by-turn navigation to if I'm trying to get somewhere in town I've never been before in a place I'm not familiar enough to dead-reckon myself close enough that I can get to a place where I'll get by on remembered landmarks and street names.

> You get in the car and it already knows where you want to go because it has access to your calendar.

We're revealing too much to google and God knows who else.

"Give me convenience or give me death"

Sometimes I wonder what the endgame is. When all things (and people) have had as many iPads as can possibly fit shoved into every opening, and I need only mutter a desire for an Amazon drone[0] to appear to satiate it... what will I actually /do/?

[0] Which may or may not be a person...

Apple CarPlay has the same integration but all the data can be kept private on your device

>You get in the car and it already knows where you want to go because it has access to your calendar.

Do I need a book a time slot in my calendar for going to the hardware store?

Reminds me of this old dilbert https://dilbert.com/strip/1996-04-26

I can say the same for Apple CarPlay. Having tactile controls is nice but completely removing the touch screen is not a good thing. If there's one thing that most car manufacturers aren't great at, it's with their car infotainment system UX UI and functionality.

The only reason GM’s is best is because they’ve finally acquiesced and admitted that Apple and Google do it better and their UX reflects that

As mentioned, Apple CarPlay works just fine on Mazdas without touchscreen so I'm not sure why do you think these two are exclusive. There are even pictures of CarPlay running on new Mazda 2019 in the article you're commenting on.

My thinking was that if you have CarPlay you will still have to look at the screen regardless of whether or not you have tactile controls.

I missed reading this part of the article:

"The head-up display that top trims of the Mazda 3 get is now projected onto the windshield. The amount of time it takes the eyes to focus on the head-up display is greatly reduced because it’s now focused on a point 7.5 feet ahead of the driver."

>If there's one thing that most car manufacturers aren't great at, it's with their car infotainment system UX UI and functionality

Funny thing. I have a newer car with a touch screen interface. I also had an older Civic which someone recently destroyed. So with the insurance money, I bought an early 2000's Accord. The previous owner had installed a new Bluetooth radio. No touch screen. Lots of buttons.

At least for entertainment, it's way better than any touch screen interface I've used.

It has buttons for FM presets - the thing I missed most with the touchscreen interfaces. And no, I don't want to scroll like crazy to get to the right preset using a knob or steering wheel. I know what station I want to go to, and it's so much better if I simply have to press a button without looking. Random access FTW.

Every Bluetooth interface I've seen in touchscreen cars has this flaw: Say I was listening to a podcast or some music. I decide I don't want to listen to it so I hit pause (there is no "stop" icon). I also have Waze running, and its volume is too low (very often the case that Waze's volume and the podcast's differ too much, so you can't use both simultaneously). I increase the volume so I can listen to Waze, and the music/podcast resumes playing! Why? Why on Earth would anyone want this feature where adjusting the volume means "Play"?

My 3rd party Bluetooth radio doesn't do stupid things like that.

And then the time to connect to Bluetooth. It takes too long in every touchscreen entertainment system. With the 3rd party radio, it's blazingly fast.

Lots of other cool things about the 3rd party tactile Bluetooth/radio. I rarely drive my newer 2015 car. It has nothing going for it over my old Accord (well, except possibly safety - but that touchscreen is making things unsafe...)

That's great when I'm going somewhere for work. It's not so good when I've not put the "appointment" in my calendar. If the voice interface were 100% perfect it would be OK, but it's not (especially with weird road names).

The key issue for me is, if I'm driving, I have to look at a touch-screen to hit the right button. With physical controls, I can use muscle memory and keep my eyes on the road.

That's the optimum best-case.

On the contrary I recently plugged my phone into the USB port of a hired Peugeot 207. All I wanted to do was charge it. But every few seconds the phone and in-car functions were interrupted by native pop-ups stating "No Android Auto compatible apps found". Constantly for the whole journey when I was trying to use my phone for navigation.

> On the contrary I recently plugged my phone into the USB port of a hired Peugeot 207.

This can be privacy-violating, as if any kind of syncing happens, a whole bunch of your personal data is now in the car:

* https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/01/30/car-ren... * https://www.privacy4cars.com/home/default.aspx

If you rent cars somewhat regularly, than a USB car charger may be a worth considering:

* https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-usb-car-charger/

Yeah, I have used Android Auto. It worked fairly well for me. It was very pleasant to have some apps accessible on the screen of my car. But it didn't integrate with all the buttons in my car. Also the connection wasn't always working that well.

I stopped using it after a while. I don't mind listening to the radio. And although Android Car has a nice modern user interface, the default user interface in my car works just as fine. I want to look at it as little as possible.

> not a car company trying to serve me a "branded interface."

Branded interface was not the right wording here. I was looking for a word that describes a car company building a good and fitting experience that suits the car you are driving.

"You get in the car and it already knows where you want to go because it has access to your calendar."

Less than 1% of my car trips would have ever been in a calendar...

Android Auto works just fine on Mazdas without touchscreen :)

Indeed, using Android Auto daily i'm happy I have basically nearly nothing to do in VWs UX.

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