Renault's driver UX is a disaster waiting to happen | Hacker News Reader

Renault's driver UX is a disaster waiting to happen

grumpy.website

401 pointsdmitriid322 comments

Yeah, I've rented latest-model Renault and Peugeot cars in Europe and I cannot believe this stuff. It's probably same in new North American vehicles, but I haven't driven those.

This Peugeot 308 was trying to kill me with its "lane assist" in a construction zone, forcefully steering the car towards the concrete barrier because the painted lines on the road were tapering towards the concrete barrier (due to the construction). I finally found out how to turn that off _after_ nearly being killed.

Make my car less like a desktop computer, please.

My favorite is _waiting for the car to boot up_ so I can turn on the air conditioning in the sweltering heat :)

There's also the joy of fumbling through terribly-designed touch screen menus so you can turn off the radio that for some reason auto-tuned to some nearby station. Since my FM transmitter wasn't broadcasting audio I guess the car just decides it needs to get something pumping through the speakers ASAP.

The other hilarious thing is the cruise control pretty much slamming on the brakes because someone merged into my lane 300m+ ahead (not even slightly at risk of driving into them because they are about the same speed as me). I guess the system that detects an obstruction ahead cannot tell that it's moving at the same speed as me. Not surprising, but regardless, can I please be the driver of the vehicle?

Oh yeah and how about those software-driven dash gauges that feel like they have a full second of latency? The ability to customize the UI skin is something I want for WinAmp, not my car's tachometer and speedometer.

Teslas also do that, but I don't know about other lane assist systems.

The cruise control on our Subaru seems to behave like you’d expect here. If someone cuts in front of you going roughly the same speed, it backs off a bit to open up some space, but doesn’t slam on the brakes because someone is close.

On the Toyota Prius (2016-) you can have the lane departure warning on, while turning off the steering assist.

The steering assist was one of the first things I turned off on it, otherwise it might activate literally every time I drive home. There's also construction all over the place, so... yeah.

I pity someone stepping into one of these cars for the first time with this feature enabled.

Lane(Lane assist does fell like it's trying to kill you! There are times where I don't want to be in the middle of the lane, like when passing a truck on a windy day

What do you mean? Lane assist software is so good&safe, that Boeing put it in one of it's planes!

This can be disabled in Ford’a S-MAX as well. (Unsurprising because these systems all we provided by Bosch and co.). I turned it off when it almost ran into the car next to me at the toll booth because of the lines on the roads before the toll booth that nobody follows.

That's not very encouraging for their "fully self driving" hopes and dreams.

Google's Chaffeur would be the only car I would let self drive in the near future, for two reasons:

1. It would only drive at speeds where a head on would not hurt passengers.

2. In case of any certainty loss it would pull over.

Unfortunately, it got the axe (in favour of partnerships). Fully self driving sports car, without a bazillion miles of proper learning data (where the ai was continuously in charge at speeds similar to the discussed ones) sounds way outside my comfort limits.

>Fully self driving sports car, without a bazillion miles of proper learning data (where the ai was continuously in charge at speeds similar to the discussed ones) sounds way outside my comfort limits.

I feel the same.

If Tesla gets their way, they could be on the roads posing a risk to us more cautious types regardless.

Talk of corruption aside, if Boeing can't get it right with a gazillion dollars and no bad roads or unpredictable traffic, I don't trust Tesla to be able to do it safely.

I'm not sure how much the UI is indeed at play here, rather than the User's state. The keyword here is 'rental'. This seems to just amplify grumpiness.

Picking a rented car, I normally don't spend much effort trying to figure out all features. Just basics - adjust the seat, the mirrors, reset the trip, rarely link up the phone. Touch-n-go.

It always gets irritating later, as I would try to figure some needed feature while already on the go. Climate, radio, what's that beeping, which side is the fuel port (while already pulling to the pump), the curiously long-lasting parfum on the seat-belt from the previous renter at times triggering unexpected memories...

I guess, it's just a mild form of self-inflicted road rage. RTFM would be an easy answer, but we all know how that works out.

> which side is the fuel port

Note that most cars have a little arrow on the dashboard next to the fuel gauge showing which side the fuel tank is on.

Not most cars I've seen so far, but most filling stations also have hoses long enough to reach around the car, so unless you drive a battleship or a tank, it doesn't really matter.

There's a station near me that just opened. Pay at pump, pumps only on one side. 'Surely' I thought, as I pulled up, 'the hoses will reach the other side'.

They didn't. So I got out to move my hatchback car closer and angled so they would reach. I unhooked the pump and put it in my car.

But first it asked me to pay my bill of £0.

> Not most cars I've seen so far

Do you have an example? Every rental car I have tried in the past decade had this. At least 10–15 different models from a variety of different manufacturers.

You just didn’t see the indicator (it’s an icon somewhere on the fuel gauge, typically in its center).

I was driving for ten years unaware of this, before somebody told me. It’s easy to miss that the icon telling you “this is fuel gauge” also shows you which side to fill the tank from.

You're really ignoring the main point that the tech in these machines makes them more difficult to use and less intuitive.

I'm wondering how many cars you drove that did not have any screens. Having grown up during a time when the most sophisticated display was the LCD for the radio station, I can assure you car interfaces are getting worse.

Japanese cars used to be my favorite because they had consistent manual interfaces across models. Perhaps Renault and Peugeot have always had bad design but the digitization of the interfaces and the software that's now controlling some aspects of the actual driving makes them more dangerous.

And I wonder if the car manufacturers are even listening (to us).

In some ways the current state of car interior design reminds the 1990s and 2000s of computers and mobile phones. Everything was so ugly and unusable that when proper industrial design finally came into the industry, the guy responsible for it got knighthood and worldwide recognition of a genius.

(To be fair a few companies did try to make their devices look well-designed and luxury, such as Sony, but then Sony never understood software. Industrial design without software is nothing.)

Whereas all it takes for any electronics or car manufacturer is to have someone C-level with a good taste to approve or disapprove designs. Which got me thinking, maybe at this point the humanity needs to come up with some measure of good taste similar to IQ...

The real problem is… who are "us" in this sentence?

For a fairly intuitive UI, check out the Tesla, particularly in its latest incarnations. In my estimation it is at least as usable as most tablets, and very discoverable.

However, look online and you will discover a litany of people who decry the lack of physical buttons to control everything.

Car UI is hard, not just because it is hard, but because there are many different groups of "us", and we have all grown used to different forms of car UI, BMW vs Ford for example.

> litany of people who decry the lack of physical buttons to control everything

So how about you as a car manufacturer make these people happy but with an even better design than they expected?

Car usability is not subjective, it can easily be measured. For example, how often do drivers adjust the audio volume while driving? If they are doing it less often it means the volume function is less usable (the driver feels it would be unsafe to try and use the function). And so on.

I'm convinced that Tesla UI is only good because they're not afraid to continuously iterate on the design.

The best way to improve a complex human interaction task like a vehicle is with experimentation and incremental improvements—and the touch screen allows the pace of that feedback loop to be an order of magnitude faster than a physical interface.

All they need is a few more buttons for the most common tasks on the steering wheel and the Model 3 design would be greatly improved.

> Tesla UI is only good because they're not afraid to continuously iterate on the design

I'm not sure this is a good thing. Poorly designed physical things will stick for a long time and might damage the reputation of your company. Tesla's reputation is not great precisely for that reason. I remember people were saying that Tesla would be "the Apple for cars" before their first cars left the factory. Nobody says that anymore.

> The best way to improve a complex human interaction task like a vehicle is with experimentation and incremental improvements.

You have to be careful to differentiate between improvements vs. change. You need to know when to stop (or at least slow down the rate of change) otherwise it's just a random walk.

> Industrial design without software is nothing.

It saved Apple (iMac)

iMac and OS X in a bundle is what saved Apple (along with the iPod of course)

I spent an entire summer bumbling around the UK in a little rented Fiat 500, with the family all crammed in and complaining because we'd rented one that came without AC.

At least, according to the rental company that was the case. On the last day as we were driving it back to drop off, I discovered that you could press the temperature dial inwards to turn on AC.

There was a significant number of choice words from the folks in the back seat. But aside from that the rest of the drive was pleasantly cool.

Reminds me of trying to figure out how to make the power seats go down in a rental car at 3am. Seat was up so far my head was pressed against the headliner. To control the seat there were three switches under the seat on the left. That was easy enough to find though not obvious. But flipping each switch up and down and the seat would move some direction. Except up and down.

Found one page in the back of the owners manual that showed 'one' of the switches in addition to up and down moved right and left.

I estimate that I've rented 15 different vehicles in the last 24 months, if I cant figure out how to use the infotainment system within five minutes of getting in the car its an instant fail. Similarly, if I cant figure out the wipers, cruise control within 30 seconds of wanting them, or if the car takes evasive action against my wishes, its also an instant fail. I also shouldn't need to look to anywhere but the gas gauge to figure out what side to fuel it, if I do, also a fail.

We've been building cars for 100 years or more - you don't get to make a car that operates in a fundamentally different manner.

If anyone was curious, the best infotainment system was FCA's uConnect, with the Ford and GM systems tying for second, the worst by far was the one on the Volvo I rented, it took me 10 min to figure out the radio, even longer to turn the AC on.

I drove these various rentals for tens of thousands of kilometers, not just short weekend trips :)

That reinforces the article's point. Having a car as a rental allows you to see its UI foibles without the blinders that inevitably come down when people are forced to adapt to some problem over a long period of time. And like the OP says, the UI of most modern cars is horrendously bad. For example, my personal car is a 2019 Subaru Legacy. I rather like it. But there's no way to make it start with the stereo off. If the car is on, the stereo is on. The only way to turn the audio off is to twist the volume knob all the way down to zero before you turn off the car.

When I first had the car, I found this to be totally ridiculous. Whoever heard of a car that automatically turns on the radio when it starts? But, after having had the car for a month, the problem is already fading, as I've developed a habit of turning the volume down before I turn off the car. At this rate, six months from now, like you, I'll be defending this anti-feature. (Hey, you're going to turn the radio on anyway when you drive, so why not have the car do it for you on startup?)

I agree that the key word is rental, but my conclusion is exactly the opposite of yours. The fact that this is an unfamiliar rental is what is allowing the OP to see the issues with the car's UX clearly. If the car were his daily driver, he'd have adapted to it, and he wouldn't notice himself getting distracted.

[1]: https://www.subaruxvforum.com/forum/interior-audio-hvac/1460...

I must say, I'm a little confused re the radio- hasn't that been the default UX for car audio for as long as cars have had radios? Even old AM only radios would come on when the ignition was turned on, and would retain the volume & station from the last time the car was used. I don't think I have ever driven a vehicle that defaulted the radio off when starting, they all retain the setting that was last used.

If the radio was on, then it would come on the next time the car was started. If the radio was off, it would remain off until you turned it on. In the Subaru, the radio comes on regardless of its state when the car was shut off.

In every other car I've owned, if I press the volume knob to turn off the radio, the radio stays off. The next time I start the car, I have to press the volume knob again to turn the radio back on. In the Subaru, the radio turns on and starts playing when I start the car, even if I specifically pressed the volume knob to turn it off before turning off the car last time.

I encourage you to go try this in your (presumably non-Subaru) car. Start the car. Turn on the radio. Turn off the radio. Shut off the car. Start the car again. Is the radio playing audio or not?

Oh wow, so it is always on... what would possess someone to think that was in any way a useful feature? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the volume defaults to 50%, which if the FM station is playing an advert with the gain maxed would be loud enough to be painful.

This might be a safety feature that needs to be turned off.

Same "feature" with the radio in my Peugeot. How can anyone design something like that?

> But there's no way to make it start with the stereo off. If the car is on, the stereo is on. The only way to turn the audio off is to twist the volume knob all the way down to zero before you turn off the car.

I have a 2016 Hyundai Tucson with a similar, but slightly different feature.

Turning the volume all the way down before switching off the engine does not effect the startup volume. When the engine starts, the radio comes back on at a preset, but reasonable, volume.

However, if I turn the entire screen off, by pushing the volume knob in until it clicks, before stopping the engine, then on start-up the radio will be off, but so will the entire screen, which also controls navigation, bluetooth connectivity and the reversing camera.

My first action after starting my car is 90% of the time to turn the volume down on the radio.

However, I must say that's really the only niggle I have with the Tucson. Everything else I'm pretty pleased with. While it does have a touch screen, I hardly use it, as everything can be controlled with tactile knobs and buttons. The touchscreen is used most when stationary and inputting a new destination address for navigation.

My Subaru has the same behavior, minus the backup camera remaining off. In reverse, the screen turns on and displays the image from the backup camera. It turns off again once you switch into drive. It's certainly a solution to the problem I described, but it's obviously not ideal for all the reasons you've enumerated. Turning off Bluetooth, navigation, and (in my case) Android Auto is certainly a drastic way of dealing with this radio behavior.

By outsourcing to the lowest bidder and then putting the thumbscrews on to push the price down even more. Everything in these cheap mass market cars is made as cheaply (and thus half-assedly) as humanly possible.

I mean, the real issue is that it starts at some preset volume that's almost invariably too high. if turned on at something more reasonable I'd get less annoyed by it

Does the Subaru have any beeping misfeatures other than the radio thing? Our Civic FK/FH is quite considerate about beeping, it only beeps twice like a bell if you don't have your seatbelt on and then shows a red pictogram on the dashboard, unlike Toyotas and Peugeot which are very annoying, or VW which beeps like a bomb is about to go off for virtually any dashboard notification deemed important by the manufacturer, like when your windscreen wiping fluid is low.

The Subaru beeps insistently if you don't have your seatbelt on. Other than that, it only beeps if you have the adaptive cruise control system enabled and you start to drift out of your lane.

Oh, I feel for you, radio behavior is such a long standing feature that has been ingrained in minds of more than one generation of drivers. Strange choice from Subaru. I looked it up, it seems that the problem was also present on Outbacks, fixed in update for 2018 model.

As for the freshness of a renter's UX observations, personally, I'd find it less reliable due to different objective vs. a future owner. I would dismiss a lot of seeming inefficiencies of design just due to my unfamiliarity with vendor 'concept' and would kludge it for the short duration of the rental.

On the other hand, if shopping for a new car, test-driving one, my mindset would be a lot more critical.

I remember, at one time having to pull over the highway just to figure out, where was the headlights switch on the fine Dodge Charger. Used to Japanese cars, I would not expect it to be off the steering wheel stalks, but as a knob near the door. Turns out, it's another 'concept'.

Another example is the hand-brake pedal (!). Makes sense in a way. That one entered my memory bank via a nice Toyota Prius, at 4 in the morning, starting my the way to the airport from the darkness of parking lot. Previous share driver left it engaged, manifested itself with a dash warning and very squeeeeky and slow drive.... Luckily, there was a user manual in the car.

After seeing your comment, I dug into my Subaru Legacy's menus and found the option to force-check for a software update. Alas, there was none to be had. I think the next step is to e-mail the dealership and get them to lobby Subaru of America to port the fix to my model.

Lane assists and emergency braking assists are going to be mandatory safety features in the EU from 2022. I sure hope they are not required to be always on, because my experience with Opel's collision detection has been that it's more likely to cause accidents than avert them. Like you described, suddenly losing power at highway speeds is really confusing, especially when you're driving an Ampera with the regen braking in the more aggressive mode. It will lose speed fast, and the first time it happens, you will spend several seconds figuring out that the cruise control has been turned off because the system got confused by a truck in the other lane, somehow.

> I sure hope they are not required to be always on, because my experience with Opel's collision detection has been that it's more likely to cause accidents than avert them.

A couple of years ago I rented some Toyota which had collision warning. I got on the exit from the highway, it was a big round swing with high, thin marker poles by the sides. The car suddenly started to emit a maddening high-pitch beeping tone that scared the shit out of me. I hit the brakes to slow down to snail speed (fortunately, there was nobody behind me) and then I figured out on the display that it was collision warning. The next thing I did is to read the user manual and disabled the shit.

> Lane assists and emergency braking assists are going to be mandatory safety features in the EU from 2022.

WTF?! We should make a website collecting all stories of almost-accidents due to these features.

And for the sake of it, make a website collecting all the lives saved thanks to it (I'm thinking of the Netherlands schoolboy who'd had been crushed by the truck without it)

When those features are mandatory their performance will be just another thing talked about in car magazines or when talking with friends about the experience with your car. A particularly good or bad implementation might significantly impact sales, so I expect lots of improvements in teh coming years.

Most drivers are probably not as competent as you. Think of women who text while driving. The car stopping by itself instead of running a child over is going to save lives.

I see plenty of men texting too.

Let's not bring gender into this, but idiots who text while driving deserve to have their asses handed to them for dangerous driving.

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN, and cut the flamebait and slurs right out?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Conversely, I recently did some driving in a recent Volvo with all the assist features and was pleasantly surprised to find it quite unobtrusive and actually helpful. There's hope!

> Lane assists and emergency braking assists are going to be mandatory safety features in the EU from 2022.

I can see the use of emergency braking, but not lane assist. As someone with a 2003 Golf, I have never found it difficult to stay in my lane.

What is the "logic" behind mandating this? What problem are they trying to solve?

When you have adaptive cruise-control which keeps constant distance with the vehicle in front of you by adjusting speed, you start to pay less attention to the road in general. You basically can't hit the car in front of you, so you subconsciously start to care less. So there are small curves of the road that fall under your consciousness' "radar" and lane assist actually helps in those cases.

But boy, how afraid I am when it triggers in the construction zones!

The reason for lane departure assist ( that’s the one that will be mandatory, not lane keeping on CC) is something else: inadvertent drifting off the lane when tired and driving without CC/autopilot/whatever (when you arguably shouldn’t be driving bad should have stopped, but sometimes you can’t, or don’t evaluate your tiredness correctly).

>Lane assists and emergency braking assists are going to be mandatory safety features in the EU from 2022.

I am never, ever, buying a brand-new car.

The C3 Aircross we have rented last year was okay besides the 1.2L 85 HP engine being absolute crap. Economic yes, but with the acceleration pedal bottomed the car was struggling to overtake a truck or climb a hill. I don't have this problem with my Suzuki which has a weaker 65 HP engine.

A 1.2L is meant for city driving rather than country driving, and it's just fine for that. There are much better engines available for the C3 aircross, so you just didn't get one that was appropriate I'm afraid.

For some reason rental companies always seem to try to give you underpowered cars no matter where, I'm not sure why since they do have better ones which are also more expensive so they're not losing money renting them.

Not the case with VW or Seat 1L or 1.2L TSI engines at 115 and 110 HP. They have six speed gearboxes and supercharged 3 or 4 piston engines on entry level Polo, Golf and Leon models. With two people in the vehicle it climbs well, it runs okay on the highway although with high fuel consumption, it overtakes okay and runs economically in the city. The 1.5 TSI runs faster and burns even less fuel on the highway but it's considerably more expensive.

Agreed. I'm driving a 1.2L TSI Polo, although with 90 HP. It's a fine, well-rounded, affordable car that feels snappy enough. Plus, I think the UX is quite alright - it uses a touch screen, but primary functions are covered by physical buttons and controls.

I'm also hearing nothing but good things about Ford's 1.0L EcoBoost engines. So it's certainly not a question of volume/size alone.

I have a 1l ecoboost and it is quite snappy when you get up to speed. There just isn't enough volume to get off the line quickly but with 4 people cramped up they still work pretty well even at autobahn speeds (at least if you have the 125hp model). Quite fuel efficient as well if you stay below 120kph.

Well there are also 110 and 130 HP versions of the C3 Aircross' 1.2L gasoline engine but the parent was talking about the 85 HP version.

Admittedly I should have said that "85 HP" was for city driving rather than "1.2L".

Minor nit; turbocharged, not supercharged.

It's both, actually. The TSI engine is named after its main novel feature: Twincharged Stratified Injection. The supercharger is connected to the crank via a clutch and gets disconnected at high RPM.

TSI standards for turbocharged stratified injection, not twin.

Neither the 1.0 EA211 or the 1.2 EA111 are twin-charged. The 2005 1.4 EA111 was however twin-charged and was replaced in 2012 with the newer 1.4 EA211 turbocharged engine. This has now become the 1.5 EA211.

If, like a desktop computer, it was mostly consistent across the board, it wouldn't be so bad.

I have to learn how to use three operating systems to be able to use very nearly all computers in the world. Car UIs can be wildly inconsistent even for the same brand.

"cruise control", "can I please be the driver of the vehicle?"

Aren't these 2 things mutually exclusive? If you want to drive, turn off the cruise control? Or is this an always on 'feature'?

Cruise control is not autopilot. Cruise control is just "please maintain the current speed with no further throttle input from me, until I do decide to provide throttle or braking input".

The driver is still absolutely in control of the vehicle with cruise control enabled.

So you would say that braking to maintain distance to the car in front isnt part of cruise control? Because that's what we are talking about.

I don't think cruise control has to include active braking, if the feature is included, and from what the GP is suggesting, is activated with the cruise control, isnt it part of cruise control.

braking to maintain distance to the car in front isnt part of cruise control?

Yes, that isn't part of regular cruise control. It's called "cruising", not "driving in traffic". These systems have been around since the 60s, far longer than automotive sensors have existed.

The part where the car actually responds to the movement of cars around them is a new thing (only available for ten years or so), and is called adaptive cruise control.

To me adaptive cruise control is cruise control.

As I said cruise control doesn't have to have active braking because as you point out cruise control predates active braking. To me its analogous to a graphics card in a computer, a computer doesn't have to contain a graphics card, after all the computer predates the graphics card. Nevertheless you wouldn't argue that a graphics card in a computer isnt part of the computer.

On long trips in the motorway (doing constant 120 km/h), cruise control is a bless for your right foot and leg.

I want to drive 120 until I tell the car not to any more. If I have to set the thing every two minutes, it's not that huge of an improvement over having to keep my foot at an awkward angle, unless I'm driving far enough for that to cause real pain.

[x] More expensive, [x] less usable, they sure hit all the right check boxes.

And this, right here, is the reason why people buy expensive german cars.

I hate Peugeots with a passion (only rented them). Even the smallest of their cars sound like a tractor. Build quality is hilarious, huge gaps between panels both in- and outside. Huge deadzone on the steering wheel and pedals, and no feel for the road. The clutch pedal is nice and roomy but the gas pedal is a slippery and the size of a penny.

They are probably cheap and are all driven by seniors who wouldn't notice the difference with a proper car anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TnGjq9mWSI > very accurate.

Have you driven one of their current model lineup? It seems to me that they really improved things recently (and judging from what I see on the roads, especially the new 3008 seems to really resonate with buyers).

I drove a new rental Peugeot (207 or something?) last year, wasn't actually bad at all. The interior no longer feels like they got the plastic from biscuit packets, at least.

Most of my experiences described are actually based of the 2008 I drove last year (that one I drove for 2 weeks)...

I do not mean to sound pedantic, but a lot of shitty products "resonate with buyers". Squeaky laptops with stamp-sized trackpads come to mind. I think the resonating is mainly related to price. Like those laptops, Peugeots are probably good value for many. That does not however negate, that they are also shitty cars...

(For reference, my own car is a 2010 Honda Jazz (Honda Fitt in the US), so I'm not comparing a Peugeot to a luxury Mercedes sedan or something...it's just that the Honda seems to be a car people actually though about before they started building it)

Haha, yes the 2008 is really bad. Looks ok from the outside, but that is about it.

The 3008 is not cheap, I think people buy it for the expressive style and the great comfort. So "resonate" is not meant as "resonate because of low price". Also, the new 508 and the upcoming 208 seem to be amazing cars. Give them a chance in a year :)

I had a Peugeot 205 and have now a 206 since 2004, they are amazing cars. They are non non-sense cars, easy and inexpensive to maintain, you can actually do a lot of mechanic yourself.

Talking about the play in the steering wheel, I have none but once scared myself driving the Ford of a friend because of this issue.

I recently overheard someone talking about how the lane assist in their new car tried to stop them from safely passing a cyclist. It tried to force them to stay in the lane.

As a cyclist it made me wonder how many of the close-passes I experience, where drivers just full on don't change course and blast past me with inches to spare, are actually due to the car not wanting the driver to move out of the lane.

The lane assist in my car (Skoda/VAG) has that behaviour, but only if you're not indicating.

That'll be what it is. In my experience as a cyclist it's unusual for drivers to indicate to overtake a cyclist even when do do move fully over into the other lane.

> It tried to force them to stay in the lane.

I think this is because the driver was being a bit lazy and didn't bother turning on the signal. If you indicate intent, then the system won't think you're messing up.

But a lot of folks simply half-change lanes when passing cyclists and then go back.

As a motorcyclist the half-change is annoying since (a) you're blocking both lanes, and (b) if they did a full lane change I could zip past since I can fit quite comfortably next to the bicyclist.

Am I misunderstanding something here? You want a car driver to pull into the outer lane so that you can undertake him between the cycle and car? I'm a biker and that sounds suicidal to me. The drivers next move would be to move back into the inner lane, right into you.

I've got no problem with your complaint about them half-changing and blocking both lanes, it's the concept of nipping between them, knowing full-well their next move will be back in.

Yes, I can see that. It depends on the circumstances if I consider it: if there's a bit of a caravan/peloton/group of bicyclists, then it's more useful. If it's just a lone pedaler then the car will move back and zip forward since it will not have an unobstructed lane, so there's not point in trying to get a head.

I thought this too. As a cyclist I'd be absolutely terrified if a motorcyclist did this and I've never experienced such a maneuver. Bikers are generally the best behaved around cyclists.

> I think this is because the driver was being a bit lazy and didn't bother turning on the signal. If you indicate intent, then the system won't think you're messing up.

(UK) My instructor taught me to judge each situation. An indicator might cause more confusion. There is definitely no rule in the Highway Code that states you must always indicate. A system which relies on such an assumption is defective.

> (UK) My instructor taught me to judge each situation. An indicator might cause more confusion.

If you're intending to cross a lane marking you should signal. Under what circumstances would this not be true?

> Rule 103: Signals warn and inform other road users, including pedestrians (see ‘Signals to other road users), of your intended actions. You should always: use them to advise other road users before changing course or direction, stopping or moving off

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/general-rules-t...

Isn't going into another lane, even partially, a change in course or direction?

You only partiality quoted 103. Quoted fully, it shows it's not at odds with my instructor's advice. Especially points 1 and 2

However I do stand corrected as code does say that you must always indicate if you are changing course or direction.

"Signals warn and inform other road users, including pedestrians (see ‘Signals to other road users), of your intended actions. You should always

- give clear signals in plenty of time, having checked it is not misleading to signal at that time

- use them to advise other road users before changing course or direction, stopping or moving off

- cancel them after use

- make sure your signals will not confuse others. If, for instance, you want to stop after a side road, do not signal until you are passing the road. If you signal earlier it may give the impression that you intend to turn into the road. Your brake lights will warn traffic behind you that you are slowing down

- use an arm signal to emphasise or reinforce your signal if necessary. Remember that signalling does not give you priority."

Never been in such a car, but just reading this drives me mad. How can things go that wrong in pretty much every regard?

Sorry for this ranty attitude right now but how do so many things that we technically figured out perfectly get shittier and shittier? We fortunately slowly come to realize how important automated testing, integration tests etc. are to make software development better and faster in the long run, but do we in turn just stop thinking about if what we're currently doing actually makes sense? Take a step back for a second?

I don't want to be the crazy guy shouting more regulation every time something goes wrong, but I really wonder if we're in need for some up to date rules about what makes a car safe for traffic and what doesn't that specifically has UX in mind. Entirely ban touch screens or buttons with no tactile feedback from cars for example. Today you have dash gauges that lag behind by a second. If the trend continues, by tomorrow we have software driven AI cloud based brakes that are delayed by a second or two.

How about social decay? Would Renault's management in the sixties have accepted this level of incompetence?

I suspect it's a case of the "designers" being addicted to the "new and fresh" paradigm and not caring about anything but trying to redesign everything they can.

I'm not a fan of regulation either, but I have a feeling that if the operation of the steering wheel or pedals weren't standardised, we'd have even crazier car UIs with their own self-consistent-but-globally-inconsistent designs. ("Turn the steering wheel clockwise to make a left turn --- because you're changing the view in the windscreen, not the content behind it!")

The regulation that required the shift quadrant to be in the PRNDL order many decades ago seems almost quaint in comparison:

https://jalopnik.com/why-prndl-5870701

(...and as the mentions about the horrible Jeep shifter in the other comments here allude to, maybe that regulation has laxed over the years.)

Maybe a case of making your mark as a designer by hunting for seemingly low hanging fruits. So every newly hired designer will try to get some of his ideas squeezed into a new model. Instead of a conservative approach less "revolutionary" approach. At least that's my theory for why UX of almost anything nowadays seems to decline with every iteration.

It's all about layers of management where such things aren't possibly taken into account. The mechanical gauges don't have delay by their nature, so everyone expects the software ones also to not have any. But when the work is signed off, no one explicitly has power or resources to stop the production because of that.

I recently rented a new VW Polo. Its collision avoidance system beeped at me constantly with false positives in situations when I couldn’t even figure out what on Earth triggered it. Like on a wide and deserted road in the middle of nowhere. And when once I missed that a car in front of us suddenly slowed down to make a turn and nearly hit it, it was my passenger who yelled at me to swerve. The CAS didn’t even notice the one situation it was designed for. It took just a day of driving to learn to ignore that sound. It is utter crap.

My regular driver is a Tesla. Say what you will about it, but the CAS in it is freaking reliable, to the point that when I hear the warning I reflexively brake, before assessing the situation - which is the point, saving milliseconds. It has false positives too, but rarely and in situations where I can immediately see why (like going zig-zag between parallel parked cars on both sides of a narrow road).

These assists will become mandatory in EU, in a complete legislative disconnect from the reality of state of the art of European manufacturers.

No recent car UX I've seen has been worse than the Hyundai Ioniq. The button to toggle reverse is right next to the cup holder / center storage, and placed & designed such that it's easy to accidentally hit it as you put your drink down[1].

I took a sip of my drink while waiting on a red light. When it turned green I unexpectedly backwards and just narrowly avoided crashing into the car behind me by slamming the brakes. Turns out I'd switched it from "Drive" to "Reverse" accidentally.

Toggling that button requires about the same amount of force you'd expect from a button that turns on the radio in any other car.

1. http://www.cleanmpg.com/community/index.php?media/31669/full...

That’s a shame because a lot of elements were copied from the Prius / Lexus CT200h for the IONIQ (I own the latter) and I was starting to think of switching up for the newer IONIQ hybrid power train since the CT200h has had a decade long technology stall. And the Prius is butt ugly.

What do you mean by decade long technology stall?

Well the CT200h is still on the same gen 3 Prius power train as when the model was originally launched and on the actual Prius they’re up to gen 5 where the fuel economy is about 50% better.

And luxury car but lack of plug-in hybrid option despite Prius having one ...

Don’t get me wrong it’s a lovely car way ahead of its time, everywhere in the cabin (especially the UX), but outdated under the hood.

Source: I design truck EVs.

Understood now (I own a CT too :-)). On the other hand it's cheaper than the Prius, which despite being ugly as heck is almost 10.000 euros more expensive than the CT (so here in Italy only taxi drivers buy it).

That is awful. I can't believe you can accidentally put your car in reverse by dropping something. They created an unacceptable problem by solving a non existing problem like most car UXs these days.

> button to toggle reverse

wtf!

Anything that alters the transmission should be big and require definite intent to move.

Shift buttons were around 60 years ago, but definitely in a more... tactile form: http://i.pinimg.com/736x/fa/3a/b3/fa3ab3fe7e72bd22fffcefe748...

Honda has a pushbutton shifter in the Accord, you have to push the button backwards to shift, which seems like it'd be a little harder to accidentally shift, but not impossible, like if you dropped a coin in the shifter button and tried to scoop it out.

https://youtu.be/Y8I94U46T2c?t=55

Wow that setup looks frightening to me. I wonder if drivers are able to put their car in park without even looking like you can do with a conventional automatic shifter. I honestly can't imaging having to look down every time I go to park my car. Plus, no way to tactically determine which gear you're in. I see no benefit and only downsides.

The owners manual says that you can't shift to park if the car is in motion.

And it will automatically switch to park if the car is stopped, the drivers door is opened and the driver's seatbelt is removed (also when the car is switched off), so in that regard, it may be safer than a traditional shifter, it'd be nearly impossible for a driver to run himself over with his own car.

If the driver really wants to keep the car in neutral after exiting the vehicle, you can press N, then press it again and hold for 2 seconds.

I don't have a car with a push button shifter like this, but the reverse button is so distinctive that I'd think it'd be pretty easy to orient your hand and get used to pushing the buttons without looking.

I'm not sure if this shifter is on all of the Accords, or just the Hybrid, but in the hybrid there are no other driver gears, there's no transmission at all, just some clutches to connect the engine directly to the wheels or to a generator, or both -- the engine uses a fixed gear ratio when connected to the wheels, if the car is outside a speed the engine can handle, then the electric motor drives the car.

"And it will automatically switch to park if the car is stopped, the drivers door is opened and the driver's seatbelt is removed"

What do you mean by removed? And isn't it a personal safety issue if the door unlocks everytime you stop?

What do you mean by removed

Sorry, bad choice of words -- "unfastened".

And isn't it a personal safety issue if the door unlocks everytime you stop?

I've never seen a car that unlocks the doors automatically when stopped, only when placed into park.

I'm not sure what personal safety issue you're referring to, but if you're talking about a carjacking, if someone opens your door at a stoplight and unbuckles your seatbelt (or forces you to do so), I don't see how it's any less safe for you if your car shifts into Park automatically -- less chance that it will run you over when you're pulled from the car.

I'm confused.

"And it will automatically switch to park if the car is stopped"

So it switches to park when you stop, and by extension unlocks the door and unfastens your seat belt.

Which doesn't match: "I've never seen a car that unlocks the doors automatically when stopped, only when placed into park"

But then we do still seem to be talking about the car shifting to park you stop. " I don't see how it's any less safe for you if your car shifts into Park automatically".

And a seatbelt unbuckling automatically whatever the situation seems like a massive anti-feature to me.

Edit:

I get it.

If (stopped && door_unlocked && seatbelt_unfastened) switch_to_park();

Not

If (stopped){ unlockdoor(); unfasten_seatbelt(); park();}

Language is hard :)

That's a surprise lapse in design testing by QC. Hyundai actually has very good interior ergonomics. As a car guy, probably one of the best in the business. They stick with common, predictable convention.

God, it seems like all of the recent times an auto manufacturer deviates from an accepted gearshift design it goes horribly. The Jeep gearshift that killed Anton Yelchin comes to mind, but honestly the one you posted seems even worse from a design standpoint. I completely fail to understand what the hell auto designers are doing with UX nowadays.

Having a look at the photo, the compartment in question was probably intended to house an ashtray (where it may make perfectly sense), but is now a nondescript storage space. (The actual cup holders are behind it, reasonably away from vital controls.) It's probably more at about repurposing this space appropriately – and they really should have closed the compartment rather than having it used as a spare cup holder. If true, it's more about bad second thoughts (what are we doing with this in markets where smoking is practically banned?) than about bad design. Probably marketing is to be blamed and not the design department.

Why is an observation hinting at the key to a problem downvoted? Aren't human factors issues to be learned from in order to avoid them?

(I really do think that this an issue that arises from adjusting a global product to local markets and is not related to the original design.)

What they intended to use it for isn't relevant. It's still dangerously bad design. Steering, breaking, accelerating and shifting gears in a car should require deliberate and unambiguous action from the driver.

Some of the UX for these differs in ICE vehicles, but I don't know of a single example in an ICE vehicle where just e.g. dropping your phone on the center console could shift into reverse.

This is the case in the Hyundai Ioniq, and seems to be a trend as EV designers dangerously reinvent standardized control surfaces to optimize for some combination of trendy design and cost cutting.

In my case I was fumbling around the center console for the cup holder while keeping my eyes on the road. In no sane car UX should doing that unintentionally shift the car into reverse.

In pretty much any other car doing the same and accidentally bumping into some button between the seats will at worst turn on the seat heating, or screw with the radio.

I do not contest that this is a highly dangerous arrangement. However, I do think that the original design was safe and that there was no open space at all nearby. If I were right, this is actually a dangerous situation created by UX in the sense UX is more related to marketing than the more traditional concepts of human factors and usability had been. "What may we do with this space in those markets? Surely you want some convenient space in the central console to drop your things! Why didn't they think of this in the first place?" (A human factors expert, on the other hand, would have told you that there had to be at least some sort of self-closing lid, just like car ashtrays used to have them for decades.)

It's categorically dangerous to have a easily pressed button shift gears in the car. I don't see how it's relevant that some designer can say "don't put something that can be used as a cupholder next to it".

The design creates a hazard that's categorically avoided in other vehicles, without any benefit other than saving a few dollars for the manufacturer. I can't imagine what else they're gaining over having a traditional gear stick there, it would take up the same amount of space.

I don't think that the buttons are for cost saving, rather, buttons are thought to be modern (even, if they are not, think of the starter buttons found in recent cars as well as in early ones) and levers and gears are not. (UX again, probably aiming at a fly-by-wire experience.)

P.S.: The entire central console arrangement is always a bit questionable in cars with a manual gear shift, even in the traditional layout. If a passenger wants to access some in the console, s/he inadvertently interferes with the driver's action. Certainly not a good thing… – At some point, you need to know, what you may do and what not in order to avoid dangerous situations, and there will be probably always off-limits zones by convention. But, of course, you should do everything possible in your design to avoid hazardous situations and mishandling, and to communicate usage as clearly as possible.

Is it just the perspective of the picture or are those buttons not even recessed but prominently sticking up?

Ironically, the buttons for the seat heaters look flush/recessed.

Especially in these modern cars that have no "lurch" when you put them in gear to give a subtle hint what happened, that's really horrible design. (Maybe they should lurch slightly --- I don't think it'd be all that difficult given the degree of automation they already have...)

There are large vehicles with pushbutton shifters but they're usually mounted on the dash where falling objects won't hit them, and furthermore have recessed buttons so even harder to push accidentally:

http://bustekhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Allison-Shif...

(As a bonus, a bright display shows what gear you're in, and for even more tactile feedback, the N button has an extra raised lip on the bezel.)

It's not the perspective, it's actually like that.

The drive mode "island" is a sort of "peak" where "N" is a regular button, and all of "D"/"P"/"R" lean away from the "peak" when pressed instead of going straight down. So the "R" button has a lip you press right next to that storage compartment.

That makes it easy to press by accident as you bump it with the edge of e.g. a can of soda you're putting into that compartment. If you had to press it straight down and it was surrounded by plastic you'd at least need something as small as the button (or smaller) to press it accidentally, but no such luck.

You still have to hold the brakes to switch anything with these buttons.

But they're definitely the thing that immediately stands out as dangerous. Could use a different type of controls, a safety cover or additional safety switch.

> You still have to hold the brakes to switch anything with these buttons.

Which is what one do when stopping at a triffic light, which is precisely the best time to pick/drop something in that compartment. Whoever designed those buttons should be fired and never allowed to work on cars again.

Touch screens in cars should be banned. The interaction affordances are abysmal compared to physical controls, and tactile feedback is obviously non-existent. Not to mention that as the author mentions, many UI targets are too small to touch accurately without diverting a significant amount of your attention from driving.

> The interaction affordances are abysmal compared to physical controls

I find scrolling a map is far more natural on a touch screen compared to physical controls.

Do you often need to scroll a map on your car's screen?

Yes. To see where I'm going to be going or find something. Do you not?

No? I just enter my destination and let it actually navigate

I often look around on the route to see if it's suitable, what I'm going to past, where I might stop, things like that. Just entering the destination and going without looking first is a recipe for being one of those idiots trying to drive down an unsuitable country lane, in my experience.

In years of using Waze for thousands of trips I've had that happen exactly zero times.

It also has functionality built in to find things like restaurants and gas stations near your active route.

How do you handle being rerouted? Also, how do you handle routes for 12 hour drives?

Wow, the world has all kinds of people. This attitude is bizarre to me. It seems similar to something I've heard before, "Why would I look in the rearview mirror? All that stuff is behind me so I don't care about it!"

No, it's really not at all the same. I'm using a tool for the job it was designed to do (and does very well). That doesn't mean I don't pay attention.

I'm just not arrogant enough to think I'm better.

a) "The tool" does afford the ability to scroll around and change zoom levels; that probably required some "design" to do that.

b) Is it "arrogant" to think that I understand my own goals and preferences better than a mapping app? Yikes.

I don't drive a car. Whenever I watch someone using navigation while driving, the map follows the route,so there is no need for that.

> the map follows the route,so there is no need for that

This is how you end up driving on an unsuitable route, by not looking ahead about where it’s going.

And sometimes you want to see what else is around you and not just program a destination.

The physical dial knob on BMW's is pretty awesome for this.

Sliding your fingers on glass/plastic has roughly just one primitive analog in the real-world: dragging paper on a flat surface. Scrolling a virtual map or zoomed-in digital photo is a rare application of that. Everything else that touch screens can do are very poor analogies of real-world things we can do with our hands and fingers, like press buttons and turn knobs.

I wonder if I've ever in my life, pressed my pointer finger onto any piece of paper (map or otherwise) which was sitting on a table in order to drag the paper around. Certainly to point, but never to drag.

And yet I very rarely need to do that while driving. If I really needed to I would just use my phone.

I disagree. Touch screens without accompanying physical controls, maybe, but I don’t think touch screens should be banned. I’m a quadriplegic and drive a heavily modified van. I accept that I belong to an extremely small demographic but without a touch screen I wouldn’t be able to control any secondary functions. I think the way my Chrysler Pacifica does it is nice- there’s an 8” touch screen but also physical controls for the HVAC and media.

How does driving as a quadriplegic work? What are tools and modifications that make it possible?

I am assuming you mean paraplegic? Don't know of many quadriplegic people who can (or would be allowed) to drive, but I know a couple of paraplegic people who do.

I was surprised at how little (and quick) the modifications were to a standard car to make them accessible. Really only the mounting of a grip knob on the wheel, and a side handle for the throttle/brake. There were other mods such as pull down strap handles for the boot lid etc., but by and large the biggest mods were those two in the cockpit.

> I’m a quadriplegic and drive a heavily modified van

> I am assuming you mean paraplegic?

This is the most contrary Hacker News I've seen yet.

Do you honestly think it's likely that someone is mistaken about whether they're paraplegic or quadriplegic?

A more charitable interpretation would be that parent is replying to grandparent alone, having found the comment on 'new', and is unaware of the great-grandparent comment that prompted it.

The "comments" page (not "new"; that's articles) has no reply buttons, presumably because replying without context is anti-conversation. I don't think it's charitable to assume other commenters would do that.

So there isn't! I occasionally look at that page, but have never gone so far as to actually try to respond to anybody that way, so I never noticed the lack of Reply button.

This is a thread about people being dumb, I suppose, so I am proud to have played my part.

Nope. Quadriplegic.

No, they mean quadriplegic.

Please read the comment they are replying to. OP states they are quadripelegic. The comment you seem offended by is a direct response to that.

Many quadraplegic people have limited use of their arms. Pretty much everything I know about quadraplegics I learned from the most excellent documentary, Murderball, which is about quadraplegic rugby, a full-contact sport played in wheelchairs. Athletes are assigned a number based on their degree of movement ability and your team can field a certain total, so strategically you can opt for a larger number of less-mobile players.

If you watch Murderball, which I'd recommend, make sure to watch the DVD extras, which includes an episode of Jackass starring some of the film's athletes.

It is confusing for those outside the community. A person who had full use of her legs but severely limited use of her arms and hands would not be considered "paraplegic". However, if she had no use of her legs, the same condition of her arms would classify her as "quad" rather than "para".

Yes, it would be nice if we were all inherently sensitive to this nuance. That isn't the case, so I appreciate that your comment actually attempted to inform rather than simply castigating like sibling comments.

Lowered floor with ramp conversion (lots of specialty manufacturers do this, mine is VMI), custom reduced effort (2:1 ratio) horizontal steering (like a bus, but 8 inch diameter), reduced effort gas/brake hand control (hand control is Menox, I think the reduced effort part is custom), Paravan Touch system for ignition/shifting/secondaries, tri-pin on all hand interfaces to hold my hands in place with special splints.

You can buy a van from the conversion companies pretty easy, my steering column was built by a specialty company in San Diego. All together it works very well for me.

edit: here's a picture of the setup, the steering wheel is elevated here but it normally sits right above my lap: https://imgur.com/a/qOSP5Dg

Could you get one at another angle? I can’t quite figure out how the 3 handles work.

Also, that plate looks like it’ll drive straight into your chest during some hard braking.

Edit: NVM, I get it now. I see that it’s mounted on the centre column and you basically shove your left hand into it.

I have a late model VW Tiguan and it has a great design with physical controls + large capacitive touch screen.

No critical driving functions are controlled by the touch screen.

I think this is a very usable approach.

I'd agree with you about the uConnect system, its the best, hands down out of all of the infotainment systems I've used.

On the other hand that rotary shifter on dodge/chryslers is an abomination, and to make it even more delightful to use is placed very close to the radio and A/C controls.

oh god, don't even get me started about that, they even have the same texture as the other controls

Voice controls are superior to touch controls in those circumstances.

The best implementation I've tried of a touchscreen-like interface was the Lexus Remote Touch, where you control a cursor on the screen with a physically-moving sliding x/y controller, with force feedback so that it physically "snaps" to buttons.

I don't mind touch screen for secondary functions, like GPS or media controls, which should not be operated (too much) while driving anyway. But making everything touch based is completely boneheaded and I don't plan on buying any car that increases my risk of death and injury this way.

Exactly. For entering target locations to a GPS while parked it's perfect. Just leave AC and car controls alone and give me a volume knob.

My beef with touchscreen controls is the lack of physical feedback, such that I need to glance at the screen to know if the intended thing happened.

I much prefer physical controls on the steering wheel for anything I want to do while driving - media related stuff, cruise control, speed limit, flappy-paddle gears, that kind of thing. In an ideal world, this is paired with a HUD, but I'll settle for a small display in the console in front of the steering wheel.

When using satnav though, a touchscreen is so much easier to input, and use to pan and zoom around a map than physical controls - but I only ever do this while stationary.

A halfway house might be prohibiting use of the touchscreen while driving, but how do you differentiate between passenger and driver?

At the least, I'd like haptic or/and audio feedback when making a touch though.

I fully agree. See http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi... for why touch screens are the worst possible interface device, and when used while driving, they are the most dangerous possible interface device.

Physical controls serve double purpose. When you are reaching for the button, you first touch it with your fingers without pressing. This allows you to target the right button without pressing it, and without focusing your eyes on it. Touch controls will trigger every time you touch it, so you can not find it by touch and then press it, thing just doesn't work like that. That steals your attention away from the road and into the screen.

Renault Megane owner here (the small Talisman), i want to address some of the criticism in this thread and the article.

> The steering wheel contains two dozen buttons

The buttons on the wheel are pretty well designed and usable. The left side is all about cruise control, one button for each action: faster, slower, ON, OFF. That's it, look at the picture to check it. All these buttons are close to your hand, have great feedback, and very simple to use. It's really nice to have them here. Right side is about phone handling and the (crappy) "Siri" or the car, I only use the button to answer the phone. Behind the wheel is the radio control, which is actually standard for a Renault car.

> The cruise control buttons being next to the handbrake button reminded me of the worst car I drove

The button in the middle of the car is only to choose between "Cruise control" or "speed limited". People rarely change it and I end up mainly using it after I moved it while cleaning the car. It's okay to place it here.

> Touch screens in cars should be banned.

I have to agree the UI on this car entertainment system is terrible and slow. Some controls such as the light power on the dashboard requires 3-4 presses, which can be difficult while driving. It's a shame they never addressed this problem, this UI can receive OTA updates.

All in all, this is a really nice driving experience. The main feature are available on buttons and really fast to reach. I've droven a lot of rental cars, and I remembered fumbling several minutes in the menus of a GM to change the steering wheel settings, which is WAY simpler on a Renault.

Have to agree. Moreover the cruise control reactions are petty fast.

Also switch radio station is possible with the wheel on the stick behind the steering wheel.

How does one discover that wheel.

Also: why the hell is it a wheel when there are no wheels for any other control on the steering wheel?

The manual or dealer? Most people aren't renting, I think it's fair to place function over discoverability in something you could spend years of your life operating.

If you need a manual to discover what is arguably the most commonly used function in the car, it’s a design failure.

Thanks to comments on HN and elsewhere I finally discovered the wheel. It’s horrible to say the least:

- literally nothing else in the entire car is operated via such a wheel.

- literally nothing else in the car feels like the wheel (what happens when the wheel “clicks” twice? Is it one operation (like everywhere else) or two?

- For some reason it pops up a modal window on the touch screen that shows the current song, takes a while to show the next song, and the moment it shows the next song it disappears. Why can’t it behave like next/previous buttons on the touch screen?

There’s no bottom to the abyss that is Renault design.

I just have to disagree. A car company can and should expect the users to read the manual. If you only use what's visible in the driver's seat, you'll never find the sump plug, service plan, tyre spec, engine bay...

The alternative is worse ergonomics for people who do read it to give better discoverability to those who won't.

No, a car company should expect users to read the manual for rarely used and undisciverable things. Controlling the radio is not the same as looking for the service plan. Controlling the A/C is definitely not the same as changing tyres twice a year.

Discoverability is an important part of UX, and if you can’t solve that for the most common tasks, what good is your design?

I’ve driven over forty car models over the past 8 years (I don’t own a car, so I’m always driving tentals, friends’ cars, car shares, carpools etc.). Renault is the only one that continuously confuses me with their choices (after two weeks and over 1000 km). It takes a special, oblivious kind of designer to achieve that.

Try Peugeot as well:)

Agreed, the UI is far from perfect. I would like to have buttons for lots of stuff or at least shortcuts in the dashboard.

The stick including the wheel is most likely a stock version as it is used in nearly all Renault cars for the last 10 years. I have one in my 10 year old Megane and nearly the same in the 2 year old Scenic.

The popup might be there to be able to switch Radio Stations/Titles etc. when you have something else in full screen mode (like navigation).

I would like to know what is the OS of this thing. Android? Tizen? I have this "Arkamys 3D Sound Demo" in my Bose-Scenic. But it is only a Demo. How to activate this permanently?

> It's okay to place it here.

Not if you can activate it accidentally by resting your arm.

What other controls can you accidentally activate in such a manner? The closest I can think is the e-brake pedals on the floor but even then you have to draw your foot pretty far back.

You don't. To activate it, you have to click on the "ON" button on the wheel.

If you go from "cruise control" to another mode (off, or "speed limit"), it disables it.

Ok so accidentally activating speed limit mode will disable cruise control and you'll immediately start decelerating? That doesn't sound good.

Yes, that seems to be by far the biggest issue with it: it's a flip switch so you can easily toggle it by resting your arm on the center console, which would be especially likely when cruising on the freeway.

The “on” button on the wheel does not work if the button behind the parking break isn’t pressed.

And you can easily turn the cruise control off entirely by just resting your elbow on that button.

> Behind the wheel is the radio control, which is actually standard for a Renault car.

I’ve yet to find radio control on the steering wheel. The inly controls behind yhe wheel are colume up/down and mode (IIRC), whatever mode means.

No way to cycle through radio stations or change tracks.

I have radio control on the steering wheel on my Citroën C4.

They feel like they have been thoughtfully designed, they work well and they seem easy enough to use (the thing they lack is a "next track" button, which is only on the central console) but for some reason I almost never use them and usually use the buttons on the console instead.

> I’ve yet to find radio control on the steering wheel. The inly controls behind yhe wheel are colume up/down and mode (IIRC), whatever mode means.

On some cars there's some sort of wheel in that stalk (sometimes embedded in the stalk itself so can be easy to miss as it's hidden behind the steering wheel).

Also if the volume up / down is on the radio stalk, maybe the track up / down and stations change is the arrow buttons on the handsfree controls? Or does that always just scroll through the contacts list?

I assume the mode is to switch between inputs e.g. radio / bluetooth / USB / ...

There's actually a little wheel at the back of the volume thingie where you can "scroll" to the next and previous track, etc.

I'm Renaut Laguna 3rd gen (Talisman's dad) owner.

I never had any problem with the switch next to the handbrake. Maybe Talisman have it different, but I never had a thought that it could be accidentally switched. Even if I slouched so low. Talisman has to have wrongly placed arm rest or something. Also one probably should not slouch too low on cruise control, because there may be immediate need to take control.

I love how central dashboard is made in Laguna, because climate control is the thing I use the most and it's so simple: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plik:Renault_Laguna_2008_Dashb... Just an up/down switch to change temperature and constantly visible temperature setting.

No one is mentioning the most negative aspect of touch screens: Constancy. Arguably more important than feedback. When you are used a physical button, you can bet with quantum mechanical accuracy that the gluons are holding the quarks pretty well together and that button ain't going anywhere. A touch screen is configurable and hence I cannot be 100% sure that button is still there.

You can count on it. Just like you can count on typing with a keyboard vs speaking to Siri. Yes, a particular job can be done both ways, but the former guarantees user interaction and feedback.

Also, no one mentions that touch screens are introduced in cars as a cost-saving measure. Automotive grade buttons and encoders are expensive - check ALPS catalog. That's the main reason behind this fog of UI/UX bullshit that people are debating about.

Fuck the modern life. As I age, I am getting more and more grumpy. Can someone explain why electric cars have to look like a fucking spaceship!? Why can't they just be regular cars with electric drivetrain? Why do men's stuff have to look like it came out of tron and women's design look like a decorative art piece in Cinderalla's castle? Design is a hot mess. I want to see a world with a design dictator - someone like Dieter Rams who approves every design. Joking.

> Fuck the modern life. As I age, I am getting more and more grumpy. Can someone explain why electric cars have to look like a fucking spaceship!? Why can't they just be regular cars with electric drivetrain?

That's probably the result of trying to appeal to early adopters. For all the progress that's been made in shifting how people view electric cars, making them appear a bit more futuristic through design is apparently still an advantage for the marketers. We're still early enough in the transition that you can feel like you're buying "the future" today. That said, the shift towards using touchscreens for everything is really an industry-wide trend, and not specific to electric cars. They appear futuristic (which appeals to consumers), and they're cheaper than physical buttons.

If it makes you feel any better, time will probably erase that first consideration. It's the Tomorrowland problem[0]; eventually the future catches up to your design, and what once appeared futuristic becomes dated. It's the second one that's a sticking point for a future shift back towards physical buttons.

0. https://boardwalktimes.net/the-future-that-never-was-the-tom...

https://bollingermotors.com/

I found something interesting. Electric truck that looks like it is from the 70's. Bravo.

> Why can't they just be regular cars with electric drivetrain

Have a look at the Renault Zoe. It's actually very hard to distinguish from a regular gasoline-powered Renault Clio.

The current generation of Mazda have a very pleasant interface. Controls on the steering wheel are split by function. Left side is audio/comms, right side is cruise and driver MFD controls. Automation overrides (lane departure/awd) controls are on a panel left of the steering wheel only the driver can access. AC/Temp controls are physical, below the touch screen. Their is a jog/cmd dial just behind the shifter that controls the center touchscreen. The entire system can be operated from that dial. The system locks out certain center dash functionality when the car is moving. The colors of all displays are the same, including a heroic effort to match the brightness between the digital and analog displays. The only control oddity to me is the location of sports mode in relation the the parking brake switch. Both are next to the shifter which makes sense, but enabling/disabling sport mode is hard to do by touch. There is voice recognition for the av/nav but I have found it useless.

I agree. My only other complaint is the display latency/responsiveness... I don't understand why so many car manufacturers refuse to make their infotainment systems perform well.

Please watch this video on what’s probably the worst car ever designed: https://youtu.be/Y16ObVRvgOE

I’ve watched it probably two dozen times and crack up every time.

That is spectacular.

Thanks, I hate it.

Unbelievable.

"There are more times than I can count on my right elbow when I deactivated it by accident. On a highway. Doing 120 kmh. Prime time to crane your head awkwardly down and slightly back while awkwardly bending your right hand to try and re-activate it."

United 777 jets have buttons on the top surface of the armrest right where you put your elbow down.

One of those buttons is the flight attendant call button:

https://mk0runwaygirl0t0gjwt.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/upload... [1]

I have inadvertently hit this several times.

[1] https://runwaygirlnetwork.com/2017/03/09/review-uniteds-dome...

The cruise control buttons being next to the handbrake button reminded me of the worst car I drove, I don’t remember the model, but the brand was Mercedes:

The handbrake button was located on the windshield wipers handle, at the top of the handle itself. I had the misfortune to hit that button going 75 miles/hour while trying to find how to do something else (I can’t recall what).

Thankfully the car detected I was going fast and quickly disengaged the parking brake.

What a stupid idea to put such a dangerous button in such a weird place ...

edit: as gambiting commented, the button I am referring to is the P button, it is located on a stalk on the right hand side of the wheel, which is dedicated to shifting P N D R.

It is not on the windshield wipers stalk. The windshield wiper stalk on this car is located on the left hand side of the wheel, above another stalk for the turn signals.

Driving this Mercedes was utterly confusing.

That was never the case in any Mercedes ever - in some automatic models the "P" mode switch is at the top of the stalk(you use the entire stalk to move between R N D modes), correct. But pressing the button while moving does absolutely nothing - you get a beep telling you that you can't do this right now. The actual handbrake button is usually below the lights switch next to the steering wheel on the door side.

> the "P" mode switch is at the top of the stalk, correct

You are correct, I am referring to the Parking button, not the handbrake, my bad. However...

> But pressing the button while moving does absolutely nothing

This isn't true. In my case it definitely beeped, but also, jerked the car.

"But pressing the button while moving does absolutely nothing - you get a beep telling you that you can't do this right now."

Not quite ...

We owned a 2013 Mercedes E320 4matic (wagon) (US version) and although these did not happen often, you could:

1) Hit park while idling and lurch to a park even though you were driving >0 MPH.

2) If you were creeping along into a difficult parking space and you opened the door at, say, 1-2 MPH to look down at the divider line or something, the car would insta-lock into Park. I assume it is a safety measure or something as the door was, indeed, open, but I really don't want the major driving mode of the car auto-selected for me ... also it's quite a KER-CHUNK to throw it into park at 1 MPH ...

I knew someone who told me his wife stopped at their mailbox to pick up mail and neglected to put their Mercedes in park when she opened the door. The car, while idling ran over (some part of) her! I'm not sure how hurt she was, but I've met her and she seems just fine now.

He claims that because of this incident (and I suspect others like it) in new Mercedes opening a door automatically puts the car in park.

Yes, and it's an incredibly hated feature by the owners of the G class who actually use those cars off road - you're in the middle of a difficult manouvre and need to open the door to look at clearance - bam, car goes into park.

"edit: as gambiting commented, the button I am referring to is the P button, it is located on a stalk on the right hand side of the wheel, which is dedicated to shifting P N D R.

It is not on the windshield wipers stalk. The windshield wiper stalk on this car is located on the left hand side of the wheel, above another stalk for the turn signals.

Driving this Mercedes was utterly confusing. "

I completely agree. As I mention further down, we had a E350 4matic wagon for several years and even after 3+ years of driving it regularly, if I pulled into a parking spot and needed to:

- Shift into park - Turn off radio - Turn off ignition

They are all identical button presses. I would often do them in a weird order or hit park and wonder why the radio was still on ... or worse, would need to quickly mute radio while driving and reach up to press P on the stalk since that's my muscle memory (I never actually did that).

I am neither a dummy nor am I uncoordinated - it's really striking how having a bunch of "stop actions" all be identical tactile actions jumbles up.

The primary drive interface for the automobile should be a different physical interface than the radio or the cruise control or the map screen. You should shift into gears/modes - not button press or gesture or voice into them.

The funny thing is, anyone who read Don Norman [1] could have told you this after 2 seconds' thought a decade ago.

Why then, do multibillion dollar companies continue to produce such boneheaded designs in 2019?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things

It is even more baffling when we consider that his discussion of speed-adjusting cruise control (and how it works just well enough to lull drivers into a false sense of security, then bam sudden acceleration on the off-ramp, etc) came from his consulting with the car companies about this problem in the first place.

They probably produce these designs because they sell better. I explicitly ordered a full screen dashboard on my skoda kodiaq (similar to vw/audio digital dash) because I like it better that analog dials.

Companies produce things that sell, so probably better to ask why consumers buy these things...

I drive 2017 Renault Talisman, which is basically the same as 2019 model (there was no facelift in the meantime).

I really don't understand where some of the complaints from the article come from. The "another stick" to control audio is pretty nice. I find especially volume control pretty natural. Contrary to article it does allow switching tracks/radio stations. I don't mind the steering wheel controls. I don't use cruise control that much, so left side is mostly unused, but I often use right side). I drove 2004 Mazda 6 before this car, where I had volume control on the steering wheel and I do not find Renault's layout interior.

The R-Link infotainment system is far from perfect. Menus are quite confusing to me. I don't find it slow though, but I guess the main point is that I do not use it much. I sometimes change something in the settings (usually when stopped), but more often I just start Android Auto and use that. I don't remember if the setup visible in photo in the article is the default, but there is a hidden option in Android Auto which allows it to take much more of the screen space than shown by author. It's kinda like square display then? I find using touchscreen then tolerable (but I do not advise to do it while driving). My son selects own music without problems though. One thing missing from the article is that the main infotainment system and Android Auto can be controlled via the knob/wheel controller visible in the photos. It supports rotating, 4 wheel directional action and press. The operations I perform the most while driving (that is controlling music via Spotify) are really quite comfortable when using this controller. Note that, unlike some other cars, there are two physical dials for setting climate control temperature. These I do use and can't imagine having to use touch screen for that (that eliminated for example Peugeot 308 when we were shopping for car)

But how I (180cm height) or my wife (163cm height) accidentally press the cruise control/speed limit button? I have no idea. I have automatic gearbox, but quite often (when stopped and, obviously, when changing gears) I drive with one hand on the stick and elbow resting on the the elbow-rest and I can't imagine how that switch could be pressed. Maybe if someone is really short and the seat is in very forward position? Certainly not in position as shown in photo. Also never heard such complaint from other Talisman owners.

> Contrary to article it does allow switching tracks/radio stations.

I think I've pressed every single button on the wheel and all the sticks. Still haven't found a way. If you need to read the user's manual to figure out such a simple task, it's a failure of design.

For example, I would think that the right thumb stick would do that. Because it literally does nothing. But no.

In the end thanks to HN and elsewhere I found the wheel. And of course it's just as abysmal as the rest of the design: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20354178

> ne thing missing from the article is that the main infotainment system and Android Auto can be controlled via the knob/wheel controller visible in the photos.

Yeah, no. It's much worse than glancing at the screen and reaching to touch it. Because you have to constantly look at the screen while manipulating the knob. Because at any point in time you don't know where the current selection is and what actions will be triggered by activating the knob.

Unless, of course, you set it once (on the "change track" button) and never move it.

> But how I (180cm height) or my wife (163cm height) accidentally press the cruise control/speed limit button? I have no idea.

Having it done three times already, I also have no idea, but I did (I'm 178cm). Possible reasons:

- While parked I had to reach to the passenger seat from the driver's door (the button is extremely easy to deactivate)

- Fumbling with my water bottle when trying to put it into the compartment under the hand rest

- Leaning over to the right and putting my elbow down for something (probably reaching for something or scratching my leg)

However, "I can't imagine how" cannot be a justification for this design decision. The reasoning is simple: when you are already driving, how do you turn cruise control on?

VW seems to have a nice balance between touch and buttons. All of the wheel buttons are useful and in a good spot. Physical buttons for climate also in a good spot. Touchscreen in the newer models is large and tap zones are pretty forgiving - although you shouldn't even need them while driving.

Volkswagen really knows how to design cars that are 100% intuitive. Big, easy to find buttons in a spot where you can easily reach them. Hyundai, in my opinion, is similarily easy to operate.

Funny how technology keeps making cars in particular worse. I'll probably be sticking with 90s models for a very long time. My 99 JGC 4.7L has basically everything I want or need with an FM transmitter and phone mount added.

I tried going back to an old car, but 45mpg hybrid Kia Niro, push button to start, Android Auto, backup camera, blind spot warning, blue tooth, and adaptive cruise control, etc, never again will I drive an old car.

You can get mid 2000s car with many of those features and without the bloat.

Can you find a mid-2000s car that gets 50mpg?

How much does a mid-2000s Prius with a new battery cost?

Meaybe some lightweight fiat/renault/citröen would do.

That is like a $90 head unit from Amazon, my friend, except for adaptive cruise control and a pushbutton, though that is not difficult or expensive to add either.

I also would like to add the emergency break assist. I have already had that save me from one accident, I suspect this is very hard to add aftermarket. Plus a $90 head unit will be utter crap.

You would be surprised at the level of quality, but a $30 head unit, still not bad.

But, yes, you have me on the emergency brake assist.

And the Niro has a pretty responsive touchscreen interface, but also has hard buttons and knobs for all the essential features (volume control, climate control, etc). Very well designed car at a very reasonable price, just wish they offered AWD.

The problem is it could really help, but they target the absolute lowest denominator and make horrible UX decisions.

For example, I'd love a steering wheel full of high-contrast color buttons for every essential feature, similar to F1 / race vehicles. You don't even need to take your eyes off the road once you memorize the layout - far safer than assorted touchscreens and dials, as well as being quicker to use. But good luck selling that to the average consumer!

In general I agree with your sentiment. Software can definitely be used to improve vehicles (ABS anyone?) but it has done be done completely correctly. In light of the recent Boeing fiasco (and other automotive software debacles) it's apparent that companies won't take it seriously until hundreds of lives are lost or they get fined into oblivion.

I'm unfortunately in the market for a new car, and I'm having to look into work vehicles like small cargo vans to avoid all this nonsense.

Touchscreens, radars, special Android apps, automatic climate control, buttons on the steering wheel...

Enough already, I just want a fucking car!

Airbags and antilock brakes save lives. A/C is useful in summer. Radio is nice. The rest is garbage.

The radars can save lives by detecting an imminent collision and sounding an alarm ("pay attention!") or automatically breaking.

The buttons on the steering wheel are also a safety feature, since it lets you keep your eyes on the road.

Just bought a ‘99 BMW and I couldn’t be happier. All the important stuff (airbags, ABS, etc), comfort (a/c, heated seats, power windows/top), and beautifully simple controls. Nothing else.

Old car EV conversion is ready for your money

I would do it in a heartbeat but for lack of a way to charge it.

I heard some countries are lacking a good enough electrical grid to do that .. sad.

The right set of buttons on the steering wheel are a life saver. Quite literally. How often do you take the hands off the steering wheel to adjust the radio? Be honest. Even if you're not looking at the radio, your attention is focussed on finding and manipulating the controls by touch. The control over the car is diminished because you don't have both hands on the wheel (important for quick reactions, less so for driving straight). The same goes for cruise control that can be controlled entirely with the thumb and hands on the wheel.

Maybe a set of useful buttons should be mandated on the steering wheel?

I admit that in the first couple months it might be more dangerous, but once I get used to the controls, I don't need to think about it and can just go on muscle memory.

Yes it means that one hand is momentarily off the wheel but I drive a stick shift so that's gonna happen anyway.

In any case I'm not completely against steering wheel buttons per se, just that all the cars I've seen have entirely too many of them.

I feel all these gizmos are more distracting than anything else, and take away from focusing on the road. But maybe it's just grumpy old man mode slowly setting in.

My Ford Fiesta feels like they really half-assed the QA on the steering wheel UX. There are some << and >> buttons on the steering wheel, which work fine for FM radio, but I exclusively use Sirius in the car and instead of going to the previous/next channels like you'd expect, << and >> just go straight to channel 184, and you have to use the center dash buttons to adjust the channel.

Is "184" the only channel that has been saved as a preset? Typically those buttons cycle among preset channels.

Oh my god, I've had this car for six years, and you're entirely correct. Thank you so much.

Still awkward UX since the steering wheel buttons have exactly the same icons as the dash buttons yet do different things, but their functionality is described correctly if you read the entire vehicle manual.

Haha you're welcome. Also you should upvote that comment. b^)

>How often do you take the hands off the steering wheel to adjust the radio?

Far less often than taking a hand off to operate the gear lever or handbrake.

I have an old car that came with a crappy radio, so I bought a cheap Pioneer one, that kind that looks like a brick. One big knob for volume, for everything else it has raised buttons that are easy to find by touch and hard to press by accident. I rarely have to take my eyes off the road to use it.

IMHO, all car radios should be like that.

I own a Renault Duster and I was convinced the UX is crappy by design to make me switch to a higher "tier" of a car (duster is about 12K USD for a new one)

- Audio system has a huge knob that changes radio stations, but buttons for volume ️

- The "Turn off ECO" button that gets me higher RPM for overtaking is behind the cups on the cupholder. I cannot use it if I have a drink. Its quite dangerous when I want to overtake but dont have enough power and cannot get it

- The magical buttons to control audio / phonecalls behing the wheel is a shitshow. There are some buttons I cannot see, but I have never pressed the correct one

- Rearview mirror adjustement is under the parking break handle

- Cruise control is such a shitshow that I never use it

"- The steering wheel contains two dozen buttons"

Actually, one dozen. I also have a Renault, but older, so the configuration is different, but I use regularly three of the cruise control buttons, and three or four of the audio control buttons, and I don't have the phone connection which I would use too if I had it. I can imagine many people using most of that dozen buttons on a very regular basis.

And if you don't use them, you don't have to.

I have a Hyundai i30 (Elantra GT in the US, I believe) with a similar set of buttons on the steering wheel. The only button I don't use is the one to activate voice recognition for Android Auto or Car Play (I use neither).

This is why I love old cars. And especially the "moderately expensive" cars of their era, like the Bertone-designed Alfa Romeo GTV from the early 1970s. A well kept specimen just feels so nice to drive and it is so easy to drive as well because there's nothing that needs fiddling with and nothing that is trying to meddle with your driving.

I wish they'd make simpler cars. With physical knobs that have proper tactile feedback.

(I'd wish for normally aspirated engines as well since they are nicer to drive, but turbos are the price we have to pay for 270-300hp 1.8 liter engines. sigh)

there's nothing that needs fiddling with

On an old Alfa, everything needs fiddling with (including the things you can't adjust like the position of the pedals and other controls).

Oh yes.

Plus you need to be built like a monkey. When the pedals are the right distance you can't reach the steering wheel. And when the steering wheel is close enough, your knees are pointing up at either side of the steering column.

Glorious. Just glorious :)

> I wish they'd make simpler cars. With physical knobs that have proper tactile feedback.

They do, they're just entry level, basic everything, fancy nothing. You get from A to B and that's pretty much it. Some may lack even a radio or a/c.

Modern entry level cars are still modern cars and they are very different from 50 year old cars.

If you can afford them, some of the Lotus models are definitely in that spirit.

I currently operate a current mod Renault Twingo (a 3.5m long micro car). While the (rear) engine is really powerless, I like the total ease on how stuff is operated. Essentially there is nothing in it, you can totally concentrate on the road. Nothing blinks or beeps, no touch screen, there are almost no knobs to operate. It is pure zen.

I'd take that over a Tesla any day.

Once you learn where the buttons are you can control them without taking your eyes off the road. That looks like most cards other than a Tesla.

Except for the functions in the touchscreen, where it appears they’ve taken Tesla’s approach but done a shittier job of it

Yeah... Not the best, but I'm sure that head unit will be working in 10 years. Tesla? Don't think so.

It's also a €27,900 car, vs a €58,000 Tesla.

I used to drive a Renault, the functions on the central screen are mostly for the entertainment and communications and there's another stick with buttons to control these without the need to interact with the touchscreen.

It's not perfect but pretending that you need to interact with the touchscreen to drive the car is ridiculous.

The buttons may seem confusing at first glance but this is not a website but a car that you literally get trained to ride and stick with it for more than few seconds so in no time all these buttons become second nature.

The website domain is "grumpy" so I guess the OP prides himself/herself of being grumpy but I don't think that everyone has to be grumpy.

Please tell me how you control the A/C without touching the screen. For example, for increasing/decreasing fan speed.

And how you switch radio stations (I still haven’t figured that) out.

Or how you get to a second/third/fourth screen because Renault couldn’t figure out how to show all useful info on one screen.

Or, since Bluetooth is finicky, how to initiate phone connection.

All the things I had to do while driving, multiple times.

You control the AC from the knobs just below the touch screen, you switch the stations by rotating the button on the stick behind the steering wheel and you adjust the volume from the same stick. You change the audio source from the same stick, switch songs from the same stick using the same buttons.

The phone connection is better taken care before start driving if you’re doing it for the first time but after that it instantly connects when you get inside the car with your phone.

Except that Renault has actually very good controls, with separate physical wheels and buttons, for controlling the heater / ariflow, which is essential for driving.

Nothing that is important during driving should be controlled through the touch screen. Here Renault is better than Tesla.

> with separate physical wheels and buttons, for controlling the heater / ariflow

Not on Talisman. You can only set the temperature with knobs. You want to increase/decrease airflow? Welcome to the touchscreen.

There are several models, but they all seem to have dedicated windscreen demist buttons even if otherwise airflow control is via touch screen.

They will work fine today, too.

Have you actually driven a Tesla?

Most of the stuff that I want to do is steering wheel, or is controlled by voice after hitting a button on my steering wheel.

If you have to look at the screen while driving, you're doing something wrong.

I use the touch screen for about 30 seconds when I hop in to adjust HVAC, set my route, select a radio station, and that's about it. After backing out of the garage I rarely touch anything but the steering wheel or accelerator.

Can we please put to rest that canard that only people who did not drive a Tesla criticize it?

Depending on what you want from a car it is entirely possible and reasonable to discover that while Tesla is the best EV on the market, they do pretty crappy job of being a car as good as one that costs half as much.

It depends on the criticism.

This criticism was one that anyone who drives a Tesla should know is BS. That's why I said it. It is the kind of stupid thing that people think when they haven't experienced the car.

But if you claim, for example, that the tires wear out too quickly, I'd never question whether you're an actual Tesla driver. (But I would bet money that it is your fault for coming out of your stops heavy on the accelerator...)

(sigh) that;'s exactly what I am talking about. I drove a Tesla (not 3, it wasn't even out yet). And you know what? I was not impressed. Sure, it got nice electric torque, but in every other regard, from fit and finish to UX to dynamics to practicality for my usage it was at best unimpressive, considering the price, and at worst just bad. And didn't Elon, in one of his hissy fits with a supplier, drop the cooled seats option -- something you get in a $30K Hyundai?

That's exactly why Tesla fanboys (and Tesla, by extension)_ aren't taken too seriously -- no, Elon is not Lord and Savior, and Tesla is not the Second Coming. It's a car, with some nice properties (if you want an EV), some serious shortcomings, and with some greatly deceptive marketing around pricing, savings, FSD etc.

"they do pretty crappy job of being a car as good as one that costs half as much"

I would disagree emphatically with this assertion.

The UX in particular seems to have been very thoughtfully considered whereby the few controls that are used frequently get some dedicated buttons and the remainder in the touch screen and/or voice control. The degree of thoughtfulness between Tesla and nearly all other manufacturers is very starkly different.

Well, Tesla lovers do seem to believe that recalling a saved seat position from several layers deep in the center screen menu is more convenient that pressing a button on the door, but I will just respectfully disagree here. I suppose there must be some car, somewhere, that is thought out worse (for UX, obviously) than a Tesla, but I haven't seen one.

Uh, isn't that one click at the top of the screen? I have a Tesla, fwiw, and to say the UX is the worst just makes me dismiss everything you say. There are a couple things that I don't like (eg turning odd the headlights takes a couple clicks), but after owning one for a few years while also owning a Toyota and Audi, I'll take the Tesla.

Well, I'll take the Audi. And according to someone who was bragging about how great Tesla does it (with all their software updates I will not insist that my experience several years ago is indicative of today's UX) claimed that you need to switch to the right screen, select correct user profile, and press a button from there. And even if it is, in today's software revision, a top-level UI element that's always present, it's still located on the bloody center screen that you can reach only after you've squeezed yourself into the seat.

Seriously, I am not really going to take seriously any claims from anyone who says that a touchscreen in a moving vehicle is a good idea. This is an idea that is absolutely ridiculous on its face.

Quite literally there is nothing that Tesla Model 3 does better, than being a car.

Take away all the whiz bang, all the software, the AutoPilot, the dashcam, the dog mode and the arcade games, the massive touch screen and the smartphone app. Touch nothing but the steering wheel, shift wand, accelerator and brake... and drive it fast and hard on a winding summer road. Nothing can touch it, certainly nothing anywhere near its price point, and nothing that you pop the family in comfortably when you’re done.

Pretty crappy job. That’s funny!

Maybe TM3 is a great improvement over S, which wasn't all that impressive.

But there's a little problem -- if you take all of this stuff out you end up with a car that can't even be controlled in any way. I don't think you'd be allowed to drive a car with a steering wheel but no speedometer on a public road. And all of those things are exactly where Tesla... well, sucks. Batteries and motors they do well. Probably better than anyone else at this point. I'll even believe that they figured out how to do suspensions and other automobiley things right. But fit, finish, and that touchscreen on the side, sorry, that's not impressive. And I can think of quite a few quite practical cars that can take twisties as well as TM3 for same or less money, and faster, at that. And with real buttons to control everything.

Yep. And I want physical buttons.

I have a Model 3. I hate the all-touch screen controls. I found the voice control utterly useless but I haven't played around with it very much, mainly because everything I tried failed. At the very least it's not as good as Siri, and I think Siri is generally useless.

Did you try reading the manual?

The two I use regularly are to press the button on the right of the steering wheel and then say, "Navigate to ..." or "Play ...".

Everything else is controlled from the steering wheel.

Because forty some buttons is a better UI than a touch screen you rarely if ever need to interface with. I have posted about this before. "Muscle" memory works on well designed screen UIs as well, especially those which are simple to use and don't involve sub menu after sub menu. If you want to get silly, my TM3 can drive just fine while I pretend to not remember where an option i never would use while driving is.

The Tesla UI is the simplest screen based system I have used in a vehicle. The first rule is, you never really need to interact with it at all during a drive. This is true for many cars, even those with forty buttons AND a screen. Most cars have automatic climate control, automatic head lamps, many have automatic wipers as well. Many replicate simple often used controls to the steering wheel, this usually just means volume control and changing media tracks/stations but its all most ever need during any drive. Tesla's one fault is not having full blue tooth control over audio baked in, maybe they will get off their ass and fix it, who knows, they seem to be fixated on games which you cannot use while driving.

Do a test, first count all your buttons. Put a sticker on each. When safe remove a sticker for each one you actually had to use. Go for it. How is this better? Don't try the argument of taking your eyes off the road. Everyone does this while driving a car properly, checking mirrors and more is a trained activity all good drivers do, taking information in with glances and more all becomes second nature.

The real issue is that in the transition is too many manufacturers are keeping far too much of the old method and combining it with a screen UI, usually a bad screen UI. One that an option you would actually want to use while driving requires more than a quick touch or voice command.

Motortrend's current issue compares a new BMW 3 series, Genesis G70, and a Tesla TM3. They have a nice picture of all three dash boards in one page. What will strike you quickly is how convoluted the G70 and 3 series look.

This Renault is a perfect example of trying to do both methods all at once and failing miserable. Bad UI is bad no matter if its buttons only or screen only and doubly worse when its both.

Which model? The S has physical controls for most things.

Wow, that touchscreen UI gave me serious flashbacks to Windows Mobile 6.1 (especially the dark theme used on the HTC Touch Diamond). Especially because the font looks like Tahoma, but even the appearance of the soft buttons is dated and the overall design is so bland.

Barely looks better than the UIs that come on no-brand Chinese radios.

> The touch screen is filled with insanely small targets

I'm running the latest iOS beta. One of my biggest complaints is that they changed the CarPlay interface and made all the targets smaller! I had a hard enough time hitting them before, now it's even harder, especially when the car is moving and bouncing.

Luckily the worst outcome is that I skip a song or something, and not safety related, but still, come on Apple. You should know better.

> One of my biggest complaints is that they changed the CarPlay interface and made all the targets smaller!

Do you mind elaborating? I'm also running CarPlay with iOS 13, and the apps all seem to have the same usual button sizes/target areas.

I suspect you're thinking of the new "dashboard" view (pictured at https://www.macworld.com/article/3403343/everything-new-in-c...), but even in that case I haven't run into a scenario where the buttons/targets seem smaller.

Specifically the "Now Playing" screen. Before the cover of the album was a transparent background, but they instead made it a standalone picture on the right side, shrinking to forward and back controls (and in my podcast app, shrinking the skip 30 buttons).

I've been working for a few years for a large European trucks manufacturer. Two brands were co-developing a new range of models, one brand a bit more luxurious than the other. The "slightly lower end" brand were making a very fancy HMI with two large colour screens, lots of menus and the stuff. The top end stuff just had a huge bunch of well placed physical buttons and switches. When the prototypes came into drivers' hands, everybody liked the buttons, nobody liked the screens. It came as a bad slap to the people who had worked for years on it. "Those young drivers, the iPhone generation, think our screen based HMI is way too complicated and misleading."

I drive a Dacia and I love its simplicity... I fear the day when they try to make a Dacia look fancy.

I bought new Renault Logan Sandero in 2015 and couldn't be happier. No stupid assist stuff, no computer stuff, just engine, wheel, gearbox and brakes. The only safety stuff that I'm aware of is ABS and airbag which is more than enough for me. My next vehicle will absolutely be Renault Duster with a similar configuration. I need car to drive, not to think instead of me.

Though some things would be nice to have. Like car detection in blind zones. I think that it's not invasive, just some kind of light bulb.

I thought that I would want an advanced cruise control (which measures the distance and accelerates or decelerates a little bit) but I definitely don't want it to hit brakes instead of me. If this feature does more than controlling an engine, I don't want it.

I hired a Renault Mégane about five years ago. The headlight control was a rotational control with very low friction on the end of a stalk. The same stalk also did full beam and indicating. You can guess what happened repeatedly: whilst driving on dark country roads, I'd flick the beams up or down, or indicate, and that flick would also spin the headlights, turning them off. Happened several times to me and my wife who also drove it.

I suppose maybe that car was faulty and the friction was lower than it was meant to be, but still, it was an accident waiting to happen: being plunged into darkness on a twisty country road after passing another car was not fun.

So bad UX is not a new thing for them.

I feel the same way about the Model 3.

The touchscreen interface is fine for a computer or when you're parked but when you're driving it's utterly useless.

At the very least, they need to move the AC to tactile knobs and buttons. I can't change anything to do with the air while driving because it takes too much of my concentration to figure it out. The glove compartment also needs to be moved off onto its own real button but that's minor compared to the AC.

A touch screen is pure evil and stupidity and the product of grey old men dictating their products: "We NEED touch, build it in!"

Thing is, roads are bumpy. G-forces make your extended hand go all over the place. A touch screen in a car is pure stupidity. You want to rest your arm and take control of ONE single controller, either an Apple-like quality touch pad, or a knob you can navigate and press.

They'll get there, eventually. When those fossils die.

I have a Mazda 2 (2017 model) with a touchscreen, but my model also has a rotary control knob which works great - I never have to touch the screen - in fact it's being disabled when I reach 30km/h. The nastiest problem I have is bluetooth volume - where FM/USB (mp3) playback at volume 9-10 (out of 50) are perfect, for bluetooth I have to be at 34-37 to be on the same level. And the problem is when switching between them - the horror!!! But even worse is if I forget to activate bluetooth on my phone and start the car, which after a few seconds of trying to connect to the phone switches automatically to FM and BLARES the fucking sound at me! It's insane.

I didn't have this problem with a Sony player in a rather old car (Opel Astra 2001). It remembered the volume setting for each function separately, so when you switched between FM, usb playback or bluetooth you had the volume you used previously for each.

I contacted Mazda with this problem, but they never bothered to answer.

Moving the cruise control on/off buttons off the steering wheel doesn't seem like the worst decision -- that's something that I usually press once per drive, and never touch it again, so in the interest of reducing the number of buttons on the steering wheel, putting the buttons elsewhere makes some sense. The center console seems like an unusual place to put it, the dashboard itself would seem to be a better place.

Though I don't understand how he hits it accidentally with his elbow, the only way I could hit a button on the center console would be if I lean down and do it intentionally. In the photo with his hand on the shifter, his elbow is on the armrest and couldn't touch the red buttons accidentally

For highway driving, having all the cruise control buttons on the steering wheel is a godsend. Guess it depends on the driver's usage of the car, but I'm a big fan of not having to fully take my hands of the wheel to enable/disable CC or alter the cruising speed/etc. :)

My cruise control has a "cancel" button on the steering wheel (which is not the same as "off"), but almost all the time, I just tap the brake pedal to disable it since I generally want to disable it when I want to slow down.

As far as I can tell from his pictures, the Renault has only the main on/off button on the center console, and the rest of the cruise buttons are on the steering wheel.

EDIT: I found the owners manual, and indeed the center console has only the main on/off button, the steering wheel has the speed up/down (+/-), Resume (R), Cancel (O) buttons.

https://www.renaultusa.com/News/DriversManuals/talisman.pdf

It appears to have a door lock button, so it scores at least one point against Tesla.

Which one? The S, X and 3 have very different interiors.

I had an S for a week recently and it has physical controls for most everything. It felt like driving a normal car, I hated it.

I don't really see a need. The Model 3 automatically locks when put in drive and unlocks when in park. You can disable the unlock on park option. Child locks are controlled via setting and not switches in the door panel that kids can easily play with.

Apart from a scenario where you are in danger and need to quickly get in the car and lock your door, why do you need a dedicated button?

> I had an S for a week recently and it has physical controls for most everything. It felt like driving a normal car, I hated it.

What Model S did you drive? Unless new ones are radically different from any I’ve ever seen, there are no physical door lock controls, HVAC controls or audio controls (except on the steering wheel).

Suppose you stop in a dangerous neighborhood for long enough that you want to put the car in park. The auto-unlock, especially in the absence of a button to re-lock the doors, is potentially dangerous. So you turn it off, and now you have to remember to double-tap to unlock.

To make it more fun, the Model S can get into a state where the doors are nominally unlocked but the handles are retracted. Getting in the car when this happens is awkward at best.

There’s a reason that almost every other car has a physical control for the door lock.

> The auto-unlock, especially in the absence of a button to re-lock the doors, is potentially dangerous. So you turn it off, and now you have to remember to double-tap to unlock.

Double tap to unlock? There is a padlock always in the same place at the top of the screen that you can see to get state and touch to change.

If you need have auto-unlock on and put the car in park, your hand is inches from the padlock to re-lock the doors.

The only scenario where a physical button makes sense is when you urgently need to lock the doors.

> Double tap to unlock?

Double-tap park.

> There is a padlock always in the same place at the top of the screen that you can see to get state and touch to change.

That’s newish, embarrassingly. And sorry, but a little tough target in a corner of the screen is nowhere near as ergonomic as a button you can feel.

Maybe older models are different but I've driven both pre and post bumper redesign Model Ss and a Model 3. In all three Double-tap is for the emergency brake. Single tap on the control stalk parks the car.

> That’s newish, embarrassingly.

Newish? It's always been there to me and to anyone buying a vehicle after it's introduction, whenever that was years ago.

How many other automakers add new functionality to their vehicles years after purchase?

> And sorry, but a little tough target in a corner of the screen is nowhere near as ergonomic as a button you can feel.

A dedicated physical button is always easier to locate/use but adds unnecessary clutter when there is a button for everything.

I personally have never longed for the button as the only time I recall using it in other cars is to lock my partner out of the car just as they try to open it.

It's not that difficult lol. Important stuff (= what the driver needs to be able to access during driving) should be physical buttons that are unlikely to be hit by accident, the rest is well served by a touchscreen that optimally can be controlled and seen by the passenger.

Oh and for what it's worth why are "map updates" still a thing in brand new 2019 cars? That's what OTA or, even better, live map fetching from the Internet is for? And why doesn't any car manufacturer work together with Google for the maps display?! Even a top notch BMW still looks gross compared to Google Maps.

How can they not have designers? It's like they designed it explicitly to be both cheap and ugly looking and have a terrible UX. Making it one or the other could at least indicate a tradeoff being made (form over function or vice versa), but here it's just a complete horror show of too many colors, poor layout etc.

Are "good looking" (boring looking at least) interiors such as VW or Volvos really that hard to make? Just do clean lines, a color scheme, keep things within reach etc. This looks like it was designed by children.

It makes me curious to know how much is bad Ux design and how much is simply people not being able to transition into a new set of technology since they have grown acustomed to the previous way of doing things.

It would be interesting to see the experience that new drivers may have with these designs and then ask them to compare it to the older version.

I think that's pretty much what user testing is, and it should be done long before releasing a product.

That's a good point. Often when I see UX this bad, it's also usually the result of siloed teams or designers working on individual parts without thinking about the whole experience, and it all just gets stitched together at the end.

I can see the console designer being like, "Oh cool, steering wheel designer is out of room, so I get to design cruise control buttons" rather than pushing back with, "This is a really bad idea"

If you've ever worked at a company whose bread and butter is hardware, you know many of them treat software like just some other line item on the BOM: Like a screw or nut that needs to be as cheap as possible and "meet the spec", however insufficiently defined that spec is. I'd be willing to bet that this attitude is what's ultimately behind crappy software in cars. They don't see software as value-add, they see it as a cost that they grudgingly must eat in order to barely compete with the other car companies who also have crappy software. Yet, these companies who are so bad at software, and obviously hate it, keep adding more and more of it into their products!

It was a lot better when you could just ignore the bad software and use your phone for navigation/music. Now you need to use the bad software to operate more and more essential things in the car. What's next? A big screen in front of your face with a 10FPS animation of a steering wheel that you have to drag around with your finger to steer?

The touchscreen enables a bad and dangerous ux design.

Physical knobs—where appropriate, like volume—are amazing because one can adjust the setting almost instantly, without having to keep an eye on the touch screen, and without having to develop muscle memory.

A touch screen still pales in comparison to a mouse and keyboard, for example, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

I for one really dislike touch screens and menu driven controls in most applications. Especially if driving. Even controlling an iPhone is error prone when it’s mounted to a gps holder in a moving vehicle.

Give me tactile buttons, switches and knobs that do one thing well, are keyed with different feeling textures and are backlit.

It took nearly 6 months to learn to accidentally stop hitting the "reduce traction control" button in a 2013 Subaru BRZ with my arm. I considered printing a custom cover for it. In the end it turns out I learned not to hit it, but it's recessed and flat, unlike this Renault nonsense.

I'm driving a Renault Espace Initiale, and the mug holder is placed in the middle at shin height, below the big center block containing the stick shift. It is impossible to insert a full can of coke without spilling some because you have to tilt it. I'm not kidding.

And that's why I drive a Subaru.

My last few cars, were a confusing mess of UI. Both of which had poorly thought out touch screens. This Renault seems to have them both beet in bad ui though. I miss my mini with no touch screen and simple functional buttons!

I empathize, vehicle user interfaces are becoming terrible. How about forging a startup focused on doing outsourced UX for automobile cockpits? Aim to be the "Apple" of design for the automotive industry.

I assume the author is talking about user interfaces when he mentions UX, so...

>Which is a shame because the elements of the design that don't have any actual UX are extremely well executed (both the aforementioned cruise control, lane assist and some minor things).

That is UI design. An interface is a much broader thing than just computer interfaces. It most certainly encompasses placement and behaviour of physical controls.

As for the touchscreen, I got a new MP3 player a while back. I could not find anything but touchscreens now. My old player had physical controls, I could do the common things like skip and fast forward without thinking, without looking.

The new one, well, that touchscreen - put bluntly, I hate it.

I have a recent megane with this and it really isn't a problem

Rented a new Opel GrandX (SUV) - the same issues described in auricle. Whole nightmare as a car for driver.

i find car UX very interesting and see them taking more chances with design sometimes. BMW's iDrive is a great example of where they do some cool stuff such in the music/contact search, lots of buttons, heads up display, and lots of customization

I bought a new X1 in December and I'm constantly amazed when people praise the iDrive system. The User Experience of the car as a whole is horrific, and yet apparently it's a great example in comparison to everything else.

Like the article, I'm amazed at the dumb or careless decisions that have been made. No play/pause button anywhere for example (the on/off button is used instead). Music doesn't stop until you open the car doors after shutting it off. The backup camera doesn't turn off for several seconds - so whenever you take your car from park to drive, it turns on the camera and then just leaves it on for a while. Whenever my gas tank gets near to an 1/8th full an alarm which sounds like the Law & Order theme goes off and a [!] appears in the notifications. The nav system takes a while to start up, so you can't enter an address for a minute or so after getting in. The air conditioning won't let air just pass through from the outside (I'm in California, just let the Pacific chilled air in!). Also, when BMW says you need to change your oil (waaaay too often), you need to go through a secret reset method to clear out the message.

Even many of the physical buttons and functionality are moronically missing. Want to put the back seats down from the back? You have to go around front to pull the tabs. Such a pain. Why?? I want my Kia Sportage back.

It really does make you appreciate California tech companies and their attention to design and the customer experience.

Things like this, make to keep my two "analogic" cars for a long time.

All that my eyes can see is the six-speed stick; all else is forgiven.

Definitely too many buttons

They should have used Qt :)

So many HN folks suggest touchscreens are inferior to physical controls in cars (safety or UX wise) and I can't agree.

Bad interface design is the culprit not the device. I did not need to read manuals for my iPhone, Polar watches (touch), more complicated machines in the garden, washing machine, fridge, coffee machine nor my Tesla Model S.

On the other hand using my ventilation unit controls at home was impossible without manual (non-descriptive menu items, non-circular menu starting in the middle so up/down matters and remembering where is the entry you need when there are many of those you almost never need is painful).

I love my Model S and I am satisfied with its UI design with some remarks like "Quick Controls" content I never use. There is no bullshit, no attempts to look too fancy and hinder the experience. Complete game changer of this car is the possibility of improving UI with software updates.

I am yet to encounter the car without touchscreen that has intuitive controls. My current list of the cars and quirks I remember the most:

2007 Kia Ceed I do not know remember to change C to F degrees or setup clock after owning the car for the 12 years and driving it daily for almost 5 years. IIRC holding the Trip button (one of four in the main row of computer controls) changes something depending on the current context. Kids like to touch and hold buttons and I am doomed afterwards.

2011 Ford Mondeo Alerts present somewhere in the Settings. Paring the phone requires you to push the Phone button and the Menu button. Arrows are only for cycling, Enter is useless.

2017 Peugeot 5008 Rented it for a week on holiday, physical controls. Interface design was complete mess - confusing icons, excessive layers combined with "innovative"/unique naming of menu entries etc. I quit trying to comprehend it after a while. This was one of the worst interfaces ever encountered, on par with the Ford SYNC in the latest models I had the opportunity to use as loaners.

2017 Mercedes GLA Same holds for Audis I've driven. Graphic design is consistent and quite polished which might confuse you that the interface will be intuitive and carefully designed. Animations and images accompanying any task are definitely made for marketing purposes and sales people showing off and to hide the difficulty of achieving the tasks you are up to. Visual clues are often missing and using the control wheel was like spinning the roulette and waiting for the outcome. I believe people who drive Mercedes whole live like it and are used to it. Btw numerical keyboard in the car, really?!

2018 Volvo XC 60 Had it only for a day as a test drive, quite good, no major issues, definitely one of the best interfaces. However the graphic design was inconsistent and this car has touch screen.

2018 Hyundai Ioniq One weekend, no major issues for me, bad graphics design. Do not recall if it is touch based or not, but some buttons were present.

eh, on the bright side your car has the correct number of pedals (three).

My commuter-mobile hauls me from point A to point B perfectly fine with only two.

> There are more times than I can count on my right elbow when I deactivated it by accident.

The author manages to periodically elbow a button that is placed right next to the hand-brake switch and the seatbelt buckle receptacle, below the armrest?

While that's an uninspired place to put half of the controls for assistive driving you'd have to adopt a pretty strange driving position to hit it with your elbow.

Edit. Downvotes aside, I found this random image as a reference [0]. I'm having a hard time picturing the elbow naturally reaching below that armrest while driving. I'm sure someone can find a way to do it but not in any position that a driver should have. "On the highway. Doing 120Km/h."

Even later edit. @dmitriid, any chance you can post a picture of what kind of body position leads to such an accidental press? Don't take this the wrong way, I am genuinely curious how the elbow can get there while driving.

[0] http://www.renault-me.com/CountriesData/GCC/images/cars/Tali...

Ironically, I assume it was placed there because the designers viewed it as less likely to be accidentally pressed there than somewhere on the steering wheel or centre console...

Perhaps, although this doesn't seem to be a problem on basically any other car I drove. Many times it's on a stalk behind the steering wheel and it requires twisting which you wouldn't do accidentally.

But even looking at the picture in the article (the hand on shifter), there's no natural (or safe) position that would lead to multiple such occurrences.

The fact that it's even called "armrest" and on the picture the driver clearly doesn't have his arm there might give you some doubts that the picture clearly depicts real life scenario.

Well we have 2 feet but 3 foot pedals sometimes. The point of the picture was to get an idea of how one could elbow that button: by slumping forward and to the right in a position that no driver should have while driving.

All I can say is try this in your own car.

> Downvotes aside, I found this random image as a reference [0]. I'm having a hard time picturing the elbow naturally reaching below that armrest while driving. I'm sure someone can find a way to do it but not in any position that a driver should have. "On the highway. Doing 120Km/h."

Not even to change gears?

On this other image I found[0], would it not be the arm rest (which folds up) the elbow seems so much closer to the button.

[0]https://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/images/news/gallery/officia...

Sure and now the button is 25-30cm forward of the elbow, and possibly 5cm lower. The guy in your picture would have to hold his fist against the center console and slump a little to elbow that button.

I think author meant that he occasionally deactivates cruise control by other methods, and then have to use this button to reactivate it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com