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> First off with regards to the touch screen in the Tesla. In the vast majority of drives I never ever touch it. Not once. Why not? Well I have my temperature preference set, I usually play the music that is coming off my phone, and well, what else do I need to adjust in my car? I can do music volume, do next or previous song, and pause music, from the left steering wheel button. Wipers and headlamps are automatic. Navigation is voice controlled and works.

I promise that if you never need to adjust a UI consisting of buttons and knobs that it will do nothing just as well as a touchscreen. UI should be made for people who adjust their settings, though.

> Plus there are so many buttons. Buttons for functions you truly may never use!

They won't bite.

I promise you both work just fine it designed properly and placed properly.

Example, 2017 Chevrolet Volt. Center stack UI was nice to look at it but many options required multi level drill downs to change. HVAC controls were at the bottom of the center stack. Forty plus buttons between steering wheel and center console and this does not count all functions on stalks. Z4 I had had three stalks and forty plus buttons with heated seats at bottom of center stack and under.

Touch screens like anything else in the car that a user interact with can be bad or good.I found Apple Car Play when used on the Volt to be obnoxious and far more requiring me to take my eyes off the road.

I keep emphasizing one thing that people keep ignoring. You rarely if ever have to use the touchscreen at all. Almost every setting is set and forget. You catch glimpses of the navigation and such from normal eye movement. let alone, lets get real silly here, the TM3 can drive itself in traffic just fine if I wanted to get stupid and take my eyes off the road.

Well since you bring up heated seats, the TM3 does not turn on the heated seats automatically based on temperature / butt-in-seat and changing it requires 3 touchscreen taps, two of them high-precision taps, where as the Volt has simple tactile controls. Though I will say the Volt has some of the worst climate control UI I've ever seen.

Similarly the defrost is not automatic and the button requires a precision tap.

There are a couple of reasons you might need to actually use the controls in a car with some regularity.

I just tap the seat icon on the bottom row of the display. One tap to a persistent top-level button.

> UI should be made for people who adjust their settings, though.

I would rephrase to "UI should be made for users who interface with them", and I could not agree more with your response.

I don't have automatic lights. So lights on/dip around corners etc. Indicators every drive. Regularly switch airflow. Turn on reflow when allergy season. Turn knob for hotter/colder air. Emergency blinkers if traffic looks to be stopping suddenly. Wipers/speedcc, screenwash etc all manual. Heated read window in the cold etc.

That's before we get onto the whole music thing, where I concede my cassette tape player is less fancy than your phone integrated whatever - but hey I can do volume without needing to look at anything. Similarly picking one of my 6 preset radio stations is trivial by touch with a glance for orientation.

Now, as you say Tesla has automated away a lot of the above. Some of that is a legitimate improvement, and truly effortless voice control seems like a proper upgrade. Touch screens? I suspect I'd only be convinced by trying, my prior is that they're terrible idea for the same reason typing on my touch screen is practically impossble without looking in a way that wasn't true back in the Nokia 3210 days. I could write whole texts without needing to look because I knew by feel what I was touching.

Much of the stuff you mentioned is either automated or has physical controls in a Tesla. Also, by law, emergency blinkers need to be a physical button.

I do think that there's a lot of stuff wrong with touch screen for everything, but right now, I think Tesla has the best balance and also adds the most value. For example, the Audis that have everything touch screen, still have 3 buttons for driver seat memory. In the Model 3, you store this in a 'profile', which stores much more information, like ventilation preferences and you can store many of them.

If it's something you're reasonably expected to do while driving (so with the car in motion) then you should be able to do it without ever having to take your eyes off the road. Physical buttons let you do that. Between the ones on the steering wheel to control 99% of multimedia, the ones behind the wheel for lights&stuff, and the ones on the center console to control car functions like A/C and whatnot, you mostly hit that target.

Touchscreens force you to take your eyes off the road. You can't fumble around and guess if you pressed the right thing or some random function. This means they are only appropriate for things that would normally be done while the car is not moving. Before someone mentions "but GPS", you should NOT be typing in GPS addresses while driving unless you're using voice. Touchscreen or not you still have to look at that screen for a pretty long time.

And I will also mention the obvious: with everything bundled on the touchscreen God forbid that one single part breaks (due to design choice [0] or simple accident). It renders a good part of the car unusable.

So yeah, I'm good with having a big cool touchscreen but this doesn't mean the basic functions have to be moved there.

[0] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...

Do you often get into new and different cars and drive them? Your last paragraph is an odd argument. The buttons in my car stay in the same place and don't change with context. If I want to turn the radio down I reach over and rotate the knob to the left, muscle memory and tactile response. That knob will never do anything except the radio volume. Far safer because I don't even need to glance at it.

Edit. Your top paragraph about user settings, that applies to any car that maintains a user profile, that's not a benefit of touch screens.

Okay, so how does any of this conflict with what I stated. Most vehicles with screens, touch or not, usually have audio controls copied to the steering wheel. How many buttons it takes is dependent on brand and even model. Plus you will take your focus off driving while reaching, muscle memory or not. Let alone a good driver is always looking around which includes glances left and right so as long as the task you are trying to do, buttons or touch screen, is simple you are fine.

I did not declare that settings were the property of touch screens, I simply stated that the vast majority of settings that exist are never modified. This goes for cars with buttons too.

The discussion is that touch screens are bad. My point is for those touch screens which are not placed correctly or have a bad UI, then yes they can be bad. There are some atrocious implementations out there however the Tesla is certainly not one of them.

> You will take your focus off driving while reaching, muscle memory or not.

The whole point of muscle memory is that it doesn't require you to focus on it. By the same logic, you would take your focus off driving whenever you have to breathe.

Well I got the impression you thought cars had too many buttons and that was confusing. I think because the buttons in my car don't move, I always know what they do when I touch them, so it's not really confusing. As another user pointed out muscle memory means I DON'T need to take my focus off driving.

I just don't think there's the same level of muscle memory when it comes to a contextual touch screen. One method of turning on the wipers in a tesla involves pressing an on-screen button, which brings up a modal display, which you slide according to the speed of wiping, all while presumably it's raining outside, a time you should be focusing on the road!

>One method of turning on the wipers in a tesla involves pressing an on-screen button

That's just one method. There's also a dedicated physical button right on one of the stalks at the steering wheel. Why spread such information without pointing out there is a physical button?

And you're wrong about having to slide something on the screen to change the speed. That's not how it works. Why are you sharing opinions on things you are ignorant about?

Well I did say one method, I'm allowed to criticise that method even if there's another one, they included it so they've got to assume people will use it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rr_XzzJ6gc it's not precisely a slide, but it's buttons placed in a sequence with a sliding animation.

How many cars have you driven? The whole point here is to design the UI thoughtfully. Yes, there are cars with confusing buttons and knobs, but a touch screen is worse, not better. There is no way to develop muscle memory for pushing spots on a touch screen especially when there might be a modal dialog or if a software update has “improved” the layout of functions.

Physical buttons and knobs and switches that don’t move can be learned by muscle memory alone, and even the ones you need to look down for, that takes an order of magnitude less time and concentration to deal with a physical switch over a digital icon.

There are plenty of features that are fine to be behind a touchscreen, but there are some that just need to be physical buttons. If they are on the steering wheel that counts! But I have never seen HVAC or defrost controls on the steering wheel. And most of what I see these days are soft switches and buttons that require looking at a screen to interpret, which is again, worse.

Your opinion doesn't trump 70+ years of Human Factors, guy. Touch screens are dangerous to yourself and other drivers because they don't provide tactile feedback or physical presence.

30ish buttons, 3 toggles, 2 twisty ends, 7 window toggles, and 5 knobs

The knobs are great - one for temperature, one for fan speed, one for outlet (crank to the right to defrost), a fourth for volume, and the fifth scrolls through a list which is less important but still better than buttons.

The toggles with twisty ends are great too. Intuitive control of lights, wipers, and cruise control, and standardized over almost every manufacturer. Window toggles, also great, I assume Tesla has them to raise and lower windows.

Buttons have a bit of a breakdown. 15 of them are for the stereo, and mostly rarely used. Each of the knobs has a button in the middle, they're very handy (turn AC/Recirculate/etc on and off). And the mirror adjust is the remaining buttons, sure it could be on a screen with the rarity with which I use it - but I prefer physical buttons.

So overall, you could cut out 15ish buttons on the media console and replace with a touch screen, and I would be quite happy. But if you took my knobs for adjusting temperature, volume, etc I would be quite unhappy. This means that most modern non-entry-level cars make me unhappy.

You don't listen to music at the same volume in all situations.

I often set a volume level that feels right just before parking my car after getting home at the same time everybody else does. The same volume feels incredible loud when getting back to the car early in the morning.

The same goes with climate control. I can get to my car after a long run in that case I'll likely need a colder temperature than what I need after coming back to the cinema.

I find myself adjusting volume and climate often in different situations. I have an old car and use mecanical switches. Going to a touchscreen to me would be a step backwards.

> In most modern cars there is so much automatic that you really never use the majority of controls you are presented with.

Then why the huge rant about buttons and knobs if I rarely need to actually touch them?

This Tesla argument is completely irrelevant. One company's managing to design a good touchscreen interface doesn't mean any other touchscreen is well-designed.

Rich people who can afford Teslas may have a safe driving experience in isolation but the vast majority (who can't afford a Tesla) are stuck with a poorly designed touch interface, making road conditions less safe for everyone (even Tesla drivers with their perfect touch interfaces), through no fault of their own.

Bring back the knobs.

Rather, let's bring the good touchscreen interface to all cars.

No. Just no.

You can't use a touchscreen without looking at it constantly. Full stop.

Of course you can. It's not like the buttons will be moving around.

No! I don't want everything automatic!

What happens when the wiper sensor malfunctions - now you're scrambling to find the manual controls to shut the damn thing off (if you even can!) Maybe it wipes faster or slower than you prefer. Same thing goes for headlamps.

For every "automatic" system you add to a vehicle, that is just one more thing that can malfunction and I find car repairs to be the most gigantic waste of time and money.

Look, we've proved out the whole "button" concept, and it just works. It's super easy and cheap to replace when it breaks. My car is not a toy, it is a utility. I want the features from the expensive "toy" cars to stay the hell away from my vehicle.

While not directly related to buttons, recently my father ran into a deer, causing moderate damage to the front right bumper of his 2017 Suburban. It cost $5000 to repair due to all the sensors and technology. It would have been $1000 or less in a 1997 Suburban.

But when one of those sensors saves him from having a crash, or even saves his life, that $4k difference isn't worth even thinking about. Even a minor crash involving another car can cost well over $4k, after you consider how much your insurance rates are going to increase.

The vast majority of increasing complexity I see in vehicles in the last decade has nothing to do with life saving sensors, and more to do with gimmicky features.

But I agree, with driving being so hazardous to health I would certainly be willing to pay more for a vehicle that has a significantly improved accident survivability.

> While not directly related to buttons, recently my father ran into a deer

So, uh, he ran into a deer even with the sensors.

We could give the benefit of the doubt and say maybe the sensors slammed the brakes when the deer was on the road and did so before he could ever react but I doubt it.

The climate control is through the touchscreen?

Yes

Then it's just the mismatch between the schedules of the UI team and the Autopilot team.

That is one horrible thing.

You can control AC though the touch screen, which is mostly convenient for the passenger. The driver can also control the AC with a scroll wheel on the steering wheel.

but like many cars with automatic climate control you set it and forget it.

plus in some cars HVAC controls are low on the center stack, six of one....

You can control climate through steering wheel controls as well. I can and do control most things - music, temperature, calls, headlights, cruise control - with either voice or using steering wheel controls. Tesla UX is pretty amazing. Compared to that when I’m in my 328i from 2011 it feels outdated.