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Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

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nabla9·

It's good ergonomics and safety. Not needing to look at the screen and fingers is just better.

Overdoing touchscreens and blue lights in dashboards are ergonomic UI failures justified by fashion.

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I happily sacrifice backup cameras/aux input/Bluetooth/etc. for a truck with pretty much all orange incandescents.

I’m in a similar boat - I’m looking at new cars but want zero screen nonsense and minimal bells and whistles. I would love to contribute to electric cars but all the ones I have test driven have unsafe dash UIs for something as simple as adjusting the cabin temperature. I have driven Audi SUVs for quite while because I have dogs and like to ski and play outside (and even those have had absurd UIs since the mid-2000s), but I may just end up with a late 90s Tacoma - easy to fix, decent all-wheel drive, super-safe and intuitive dash interfaces... the electronic UI future/present is hideous to me and inferior to physical knobs and buttons. Mazdas also look like a decent option.

In my opinion, BMW has found a decent solution here, there are still physical buttons for everything, but it also has a touch screen. That way while driving you can use the physical controls, and when stopped you can use the touch screen.

I just went and drove an X3 Hybrid based on your note - I actually quite liked the interface. The options are still a little overhwhelming, but it's far less invasive than most of the other cars I have been looking at.

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