> design issue in which everything works as intended but the learning curve might be too steep.
It could be entirely argued that a design with a too steep learning curve, _especially when intended to be used in a moving vehicle_ is in actual fact a "design issue".
How many other cars do you need to learn a button combination on the steering wheel to reboot the infotainment screen when it crashes while driving, and then while it reboots your turn signals stop making sounds and you don't have a speedometer?
All in all I'm extremely happy with the car, it's an amazing drive, but the centre screen is definitely an issue.
In the city, there is a lot of light. It's not really ever truly dark. In rural areas, on a dark night, especially with no moon, your eyes can adjust to the darkness...
I tend to turn all light off inside my car when driving rural at night.
That won't work though, if you have a massive, huge LCD with backlight constantly throwing white light at your eyes. Worse is if it 'shuts off', then you do something (change radio channel/interact) and blinding light smashes into your eyes.
An OLED would help. A 'red only' theme would be even better. Smaller displays better beyond that.
I get that Tesla rethought auto design. That's cool. But it seems like it only rethought from a very urban, perfect-eyesight, 20 something perspective.
You're right about the red theme, it would be welcome.
(I have owned cars with LCDs before, and it's annoying if I can't completely shut them off).
OLED would at least have no backlight.
And what about my dometers? Speed, o? In a traditional car, my eyes adjust, and I can read them without additional light.
At least an oled could maybe be themed to have tiny, red dometers... and being oled, no backlight...
It still leaves the issue that one has to turn their head to see it... but, better than nothing....
So this might really not be as much of an issue as you suspect. But there's only really one way to find out, and that's go try one out.
We all have different sensitivities here. All our eyes are different. Mayhap, I'm more sensitive to dim light, more distracted, etc. Whatever the case... I've modified many cars I've bought, to allow me to completely turn off all internal back-lighting on all controls.
I don't want a light glow on my traditional speedometer. My radio analog controls, door lock button, and other controls to have ANY lighting. It's annoying, distracting, and I don't want it.
So considering this, imagine how annoying I find a massive LCD with any backlight. Even the dimmest backlight is many times brighter than a turned down analog backlight on classic style car displays, buttons, knobs, etc.
My beef here is threefold.
1) Why on Earth is my speedometer to the right, so I have to turn my head to see it. Why is the speedometer not always there?
2) Why is it on a display that always has glowing light, or I can't see it. NOTE: yes, I can see a traditional car speedometer with only starlight/moonlight. No, I'm not mistaken, yes I can.. so says 32 years of driving.
3) Oh, I wanted to try a Tesla. But where?
Where would I do that? Even when they had dealerships, which they've closed most of, there aren't many in my region.
There's a whole ball of 'Tesla is still in its silly stage', such as not having anyone within 500km who can fix my car, not being able to buy parts, local dealers not being able to fix them, and the absurdity of thinking roving repair shops can fix a car at -40C, in the middle of an ice-bound street, during snow storms...
But beyond that, I actually was in California and thought "Why not make their job easy, I'll test drive one here!"
Nope. Sorry. Was flatly told no, as I didn't have California drivers license. I explained several times that I was on vacation, but the mantra was that "I can't buy local, so I can't test drive local."
Of course, this isn't germane, but you did poke the whole "just try it" into my face.. so I had to respond. ;P
But then you need the HUD hardware and another little computer to manage it, and since the Model 3’s “everything goes in the infotainment system” is fundamentally a cost-cutting measure, I doubt it will happen. Or if it does, it’ll be a premium trim item.
And since vehicle speed is arguably pretty important for driver safety (if not when flowing with traffic, then when taking a sharply curved exit ramp off the highway) it’s not a good look to put it as a paid upgrade. Tesla wouldn’t want to admit that a second screen is helpful.
Best case would be to make the main screen stop crashing, but if that were easy they’d have done it already.
You still have time to turn it in as a lemon and get a refund.
Moving everything into hidden modal screens of the infotainment system is not a trend I'm excited about.
A premium car with premium luxuries like bluetooth, air conditioning, GPS, self-driving, power windows, heads-up display, that button that open doors on minivans, airbags, and the like will have a lot more failures than a 1950-era Ford F150 truck. Does that make it a worse car? A better car? Or a bad survey?
Tesla has a lot of gizmos. Luxury cars have more gizmos than my car. I think the survey reflects that more than anything else.
Of your list, the only thing I'd consider a premium luxury today is a heads-up display (and self-driving, though I'm heavily cynical on the _current state_ of self-driving).
Tesla isn't being compared against 1950s era trucks, it's being compared against 2020 models. Of your list, I'd not consider any of those other items gizmos. I mean, airbags? AC?
I'll admit I threw AC, airbags, and power windows in for comedic value, but as for the rest of those, my car definitely does not have them.
It's not just which gizmos, but also the specific gizmos. If your car's audio has two speakers, versus a dozen woofers, tweeters, and what-not, more things can go wrong. If there's split front/rear AC, more things can go wrong. If your car has a motor to move the seats, more things can go wrong. When I sit in a Tesla (or many luxury cars), it has about three or four times as many things to break as my much more basic car. And when they break, they take a lot more to fix.
I don't want that. If someone still sold a VW Bug classic, or an old-school Ford Truck, I'd be driving that.
Or to be fair, the one thing on the list I do want is bluetooth. I'd trade my fancy-schmancy power windows for bluetooth if I could.
But to the OP/parent's point, my newer car is a luxury model and it has a touchscreen infotainment thing -- and I hate it. 10/10 would rather have nobs that I can feel physically, or even just elevated bumps on the plastic (kinda like braille) so that I know I'm on the "seek station >>" part of the touchscreen.
People are going to have more issues and encounter more problems when using Microsoft Word versus Notepad. Word would therefore perform worse in a survey like this. That doesn't mean Notepad is a better piece of software or that Word users would want to switch to Notepad given the option. So what is this survey really telling us?
... which is a major design flaw.
I was using adjective definition 1. You are assuming adjective definition 2.
I mean I get how people might not know how to open the glovebox but it was one of the first things I was shown when I picked up my car. Once again I almost never have to open it.