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Comment by mlyle | Hacker News Reader

> From my experience, the majority of people who drive a car with touch interfaces don't want to look back to old fashioned buttons.

Many automakers that had touch-heavy interfaces are moving back towards physical controls, both because of market demand and evolving industry safety considerations.

e.g. https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur... https://jalopnik.com/honda-follows-mazda-by-ditching-some-to... https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/06/17/ford-my...

I have no problem with touch controls in general, but replacing a volume knob I can find blindly with a relatively small pair of "Vol+" and "Vol-" touch targets is mildly infuriating. It's OK as the driver because there is an actual tactile control on the steering wheel, but downright unpleasant as a passenger.

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It is fascinating just how poorly modern touch interfaces do compared to older vehicles. As an example, with older cars with vacuum controlled HVAC, the sliders and such were very, very "notchy" and you could change all the settings without taking an eye off the road. In the 80s/90s the buttons change to electrical instead of mechanical and you start needing to glance, due to the lack of haptic feedback. Fast forward to the modern era, and you generally have no way to control anything (other than the volume) without a full look at the touch screen, plus a longer look to make sure your finger hits the touch target.

I will admit that the touch screen in my new VW is fashionable and I love all the data screens -- but I have had near-misses due to having to stare at the screen to do stuff like hit touch targets for changing my spotify playlist. It has nothing to do with responsiveness either -- the screen has no perceptible lag, its all to do with lack of haptics / feel.

edit: I drive both an early 90s truck and a late 2010s car. I don't miss the touch screen when I drive the truck, I only miss Spotify / Google Maps.

I can't figure out how to turn the HVAC system on in a newish car.

My old one has a slider labeled "Heat" and "Defrost". Never had problems with that.

One of the issues with those automakers is that their interfaces are in general unresponsive and slow. The one in my BMW sucked. The Jaguar I-PACE is very slow as well.

Tesla got this right with both the touch screen and the physical buttons on the steering wheel for things like volume control.

> One of the issues with those automakers is that their interfaces are in general unresponsive and slow. The one in my BMW sucked. The Jaguar I-PACE is very slow as well.

> Tesla got this right with both the touch screen and the physical buttons on the steering wheel for things like volume control.

Perhaps there's an auto manufacturer or two that got it right. However, I've never driven a car with physical buttons that got it wrong. When I used to shop for cars in those days, I never had to consider if those buttons were compatible with me. Now when I buy for a newer car, it's an added headache to consider, and one that I've not seen add any real value. Going on a test drive really will not tell me enough about whether the interface is good. And worst of all, whether it is or isn't affects my safety.

>Perhaps there's an auto manufacturer or two that got it right. However, I've never driven a car with physical buttons that got it wrong.

You gotta give it some time, because modern physical control interfaces in cars had over half a decade to evolve to reach this point. With regard to touchscreen interfaces in cars, it simply feels like those are still stuck somewhere in the pre-iPhone era of touchscreen interfaces for phones in terms of usability compared to physical controls.

> However, I've never driven a car with physical buttons that got it wrong.

I sure have, the climate control in 2001 VW GTIs is a fiddly mess of small buttons with feedback from a tiny screen almost as low as the gearstick. It's the "high end" system but the lower-end knobs are so much better and safer.

Your comment has nothing to do with what I stated. As I mentioned already, I do have a tactile steering wheel control for volume. But even the experience for a passenger adjusting volume sucks compared to a knob.

And my touch screen, in general, is snappy enough.

I disagree that it "has nothing to do with what [you] stated", as the user experience also influences demand, and I still think Tesla got it right with the touch screen available for passengers to change the volume and the tactile steering wheel control. Do you drive a Tesla?

I drive a Tesla.

I lost the ability to have my text messages read to me, or to respond by dictating them. For a short time there was a half-implementation from Tesla that was in no way comparable to CarPlay, but it stopped working for me a couple months ago and I haven't been able to convince it to start working again.

I also used to be able to select music to play, and it didn't require jumping through a bunch of hoops to find it. Now my choices is the streaming that Tesla includes, or Spotify, and the Spotify interface is awful. I bought a subscription and tried it out, thinking I could switch from Apple Music, but after failing repeatedly to get the Spotify in the car to see playlists I created on my phone, and growing weary of Spotify on my phone or computer defaulting to playing out in the car even when I had been inside for hours, I gave up on that.

I also used to use Waze, or Google Maps, or Apple Maps, depending on what I felt worked best. Thankfully the maps built in to the Tesla aren't awful, but the interface is not without its quirks.

Tesla could solve this by supporting CarPlay and Android Auto, but they won't, because they need us to have a reason to pay for the premium data subscription.

> I lost the ability to have my text messages read to me, or to respond by dictating them

Out of curiosity, which Tesla? Because iirc there was a firmware update pushed out closer to the end of last year, which added that functionality (both having texts read and being able to respond by dictating), and I thought it went out for all Tesla cars.

The only reason I asked about the specific model you drive is because I know that some older Model S and X cars receive slightly different versions of firmware updates than newer ones like Model 3, but afaik the differences are usually related to autopilot/FSD features, not to UX features like this.

I have a Model 3 Performance. The text readout did work for a while, then it stopped. I haven't been able to bring it back. Unpair, re-pair, make sure bluetooth notifications are on, etc. Texts just don't show up any more.

My car is a little psychotic, perhaps :-). Probably a coincidence, but I also can no longer get the dashcam to work. Tried an exotic solution first (Pi Zero emulating a drive, with WiFi uploading at home), but it wasn't reliable, so then I switched to just a regular USB drive (adapter + high endurance microSD card), which worked for a month or so, but has stopped working and I haven't been able to figure out why.

I'm hoping the newest update with the Sentry updates will fix that last problem, since apparently it can format the card now. Though I did hear something about the last release also screwing up sentry for some people, so who knows. I'm at 2020.16.2, so there's at least one more point release that I haven't gotten yet.

Have you tried a full power-off, waiting 5 mins, then powering it on? I am not talking about holding the two steering wheel buttons to do a quick reboot, I am talking about a full power-off through settings.

I've read in some recent threads that this method ended up resolving a lot of really weird and random issues like what you described.

Interesting, I had a brief period where my M3 LR AWD would "forget" that I had enabled text message synchronization with my phone (a recent-model iPhone) and I'd have to open the bluetooth menu and re-enable it, but I haven't really had any ongoing issues with either message readout or the dashcam.

I'm not sure what all of this has to do with the touch screen conversation, but I feel you. It will all be solved with software updates eventually if enough people send formal complaints.

> and I still think Tesla got it right with the touch screen available for passengers to change the volume and the tactile steering wheel control.

That's not a super relevant point in response to me mentioning that my car has a touch screen available for passengers to change the volume and a tactile steering wheel control, and that I don't like it.

There is no way for it to be more relevant than it is.

I am telling you that what you don't like in your car, I think that Tesla got it right. How is that not relevant? What kind of response are you expecting?

Yeah, I was a touchscreen skeptic until I got my model 3: all the controls I care about while driving have physical controls on the steering wheel and, if I absolutely need to fiddle with the touchscreen, I can enable autopilot, which is safe enough compared to distracted driving.

I would argue activating autopilot while distracted is not only counter to teslas instruction, but criminally negligent. Please either drive, or take an uber, for the rest of us.

So, when the road is well-marked and I’m adjusting the AC, you’d rather have nothing keeping my car in the lane? My hands are on the steering wheel, and I’m paying attention to the road, I just know that I’m going to be spending some amount of time looking at a screen to change a setting.

This isn’t “I’m tweeting and using social media and thwarting the attention sensors“ it’s “I know my attention is going to be divided between maintaining my lane and adjusting the temperature/picking a new station so I’m going to take steps to avoid drifting out of my lane into other cars”

“Autopilot” here is basically adaptive cruise control + lane assist, which are both technologies available from nearly every manufacturer at this point. I’m not talking about the beta Full Self Driving features.

Would be awesome to use voice commands mapping physical controls. Say, “Ok, Tesla, put AC control on slider 1”. This also keeps the kids in back from messing with the AC (dads appreciate).

The passenger doesn't need to keep their eyes on the road, though. It seems to me like the benefits of being able to cram a million more things (as needed) into a screen outweighs the downsides of having to glance at a screen if you're not familiar with it.

I prefer touch controls both as a driver and a passenger. I even use a Halo keyboard (effectively just another screen, with no "real" buttons) on my laptop. It takes some getting used to, but eventually becomes second nature -- and then you open up huge new areas of functionality that aren't possible with physical buttons and knobs.

I don't want a million controls on my car.

You have to give it to modern car tech though. This is how one would start Ford Model T: While out of the driver’s seat, the driver would need to pull the choke, located near the right front fender. At the same time, the driver had to turn the crank lever one-quarter turn clockwise to prime the carburetor. The crank lever was located beneath the radiator at the front of the auto. Next, the driver had to jump into the car, insert the key into the ignition, and turn it. Immediately, the driver had to move the timing stalk up and move the throttle stalk down to set the idle correctly. Pulling the hand brake back would place the car into neutral. The next step necessitated getting back out of the car to turn the hand crank a half-turn. This turn of the crank would actually start the engine.

http://www.thebenzbin.com/early-car-starters

(I do miss the ability to jump-start a car using a crank lever.)

But you never had to hand crank a car while driving it down the road.

> The passenger doesn't need to keep their eyes on the road, though.

What if you're driving solo?

You can use the physical controls on the steering wheel if you don't want to use the screen. This subthread is in response to GP saying "but the passenger still has to use the screen".

My 2006 honda civic navigation had a good mix of touch and physical buttons, that is almost no-look. What I find funny though is that since it's a resistive touch and has a beep for every button (after a lag of course), i get "haptic feedback"

Those automakers did not have competitive touch interfaces.

And there's still room on the steering wheel for knobs for the most common controls, and voice control is often available.

I strongly dislike voice control. Speech is a high-latency, low-bandwidth, error-prone medium. A button is a button. One bit, clear unambiguous.

Tactile controls can become so thoroughly integrated in muscle memory that well-designed tools and machines (including cars) feel like an extension of thought. Think "volume up", it just happens automatically from thought to fingers to buttons.

Compare that to a multi-word speech command that requires perfect diction and phrasing over a span of five seconds. That's five seconds of distraction, longer if the command has to be repeated, vs milliseconds for the button.

Part of pilot training in the old days in the Air Force was the pilot was blindfolded, and the instructor would call out a control's name, and the pilot had to put his hands on the control.

Or he wouldn't be rated to fly the airplane.

In an airliner, the critical controls are all uniquely shaped, so the pilot knows by the feel which is which.

I agree, and the voice control implementations I've seen leave a lot to be desired. But they do work without taking your eyes off the road, or hands off the steering wheel.

I think the most common commands can all be mapped to buttons on the steering wheel, which similarly is as close to possible as "negligible reduced driving capacity to use" without the tediousness of voice control.

But I do think the theoretical safety benefits of physical buttons that are not on the steering wheel as compared to touchscreens for features beyond the ones commonly used while driving are probably overstated.

I share your dislike for voice control. But using it for some non-essential controls (like the air conditioning) while driving a car is the one place I've thought of where I would be comfortable using it.

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