Feds asks Tesla to recall vehicles over failing touchscreen displays
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I don't own one, and each friend I ask tells me the same thing across S, 3, X, and Y: "Great tech! Amazing experience! I mean, sure, fit and finish is a problem, repairs take forever, hard to get parts, you just live with the smallish problems... Well, no, never had this many issues on <any other car brand> but this is the future I'm driving! I'll get even newer stuff in upgrades... Oh, the physical parts? That's a problem... But the savings! Of course, no gas payments! Well my power bill did increase, but it's gotta be cheaper than my gas."
Each person was initially effusive then, when pushed, realistic. Sloppy assembly, broken features, things that we would never accept in a usd$90K car from any other brand... Til Tesla both lowered and raised the bar, depending on your pov.
The power of Brand: the comfort with paying more for an item or service wirh equal or less quality than alternatives in general, but with one (or a small cluster of) perceived unique value prop. Amazing.
And even with all the evidence of the problems, I still want one too...
(A coda: the cutesy naming of tesla sort of sums it up around lots of flash, some amazing function, some tawdry qualities: the models sure are "s3xy".)
Sometimes I think that owning a Tesla would be neat, but I always manage to kill that voice in my head by looking up the prices. Works every time.
https://insideevs.com/news/447593/tesla-suspension-issues-ow...
The term was originally used in either awe or derision depending on the person, but in that case it heralded exceptional success.
1. The driving experience (fast acceleration)
2. It’s different and unique
3. Owning one seems to have cachet
It’s not the worst manufactured car I’ve ever owned but it’s not the best either. The service experience varies but doesn’t match the luxury brands. With as many as are on the road people regularly want to talk about my Model S like it’s a Ferrari or something. The rise in my electric bill is a fraction of my old fuel bill but I can’t say it justifies the cost. The model X is particularly ostentatious with its gull wing doors. A couple families at our children’s private school drop their children off in one. The cars get far more attention than the more expensive luxury cars in the drop off line.
So it’s purely an emotional purchase. Something car manufacturers have been using to their advantage for some time now.
The TL;DR here is: people who rave about finish are like people who complained about the iPod based on storage capacity. Tesla really is doing something very right, and ignoring that based on the (very real) perception of fanboyism is cutting off your own nose.
Sure, for rare longer trips we have to take her car, but all of the benefits you mention for your Tesla are also true for my cheap, limited-range Fiat. The acceleration, the handling, it's a thing of beauty and a joy forever!
I feel like most people who say things like "Yea, it's nice, but what about all those problems?" would change their tune if they actually owned one. After the first test drive my view on other vehicles instantly changed to "How do people continue to drive those covered wagons?"
It seems pretty common that people compare Teslas with the car they had before. It's like comparing an entry dell laptop with a MacBook pro.
I think it's an immature car and most buyers are attracted to the brand appeal, and use it to appear next gen to their neighbors. As usual, no owner will recognize this but it's a well known phenomenon that manufacturers use against us.
Do you think Tesla has a commitment to that sort of longevity? People are always talking about theoretical reasons why electric cars should be more reliable. But if a Tesla is like a smartphone on wheels, who is using a smartphone from 2006?
There are dozens of reasons why Teslas are much better EV’s than competitors have come up with. Most owners (I probably know an order of magnitude more than you) are pretty clear eyed on some of the quality issues, service and especially the buying/delivery experience. Most (not all) owners I know like the mission of the company and really love their cars despite some of those issues.
To the issue at hand here, this is the eMMC endurance issue. Tesla should absolutely replace that for free since it is their software writing too much data that destroyed them.
I will say that for the price my expectations are quite high.
I haven't personally driven it either, but that's what I gathered from the reviews and spec sheet. Maybe after driving it I would change my mind, that's certainly possible..
It's also interesting that Bill Gates chose the Taycan as his first EV when he could have afforded anything he wanted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_or_Display
https://luxurylaunches.com/celebrities/from-going-to-jail-fo...
I wonder what environment the car was stored in and its condition after 13 years.
Not one feature was broken except one USB port, which I was able fix myself. Headlights were replaced once before I bought it (HID, not LED) and the motor was replaced under warranty in its first year. I had the front sway bar link replaced because it made a little clunk. It still has the original brakes on the rear (which I'm about to replace, myself, they're readily available outside Tesla). This is a third year Model S, remember. They've come a long way since.
There are places where the fit of the carpeting could be better; looking at new Model 3s, all such fit and finish issues seem far ahead. Still, mine's better by and large than my 2006 Jeep.
There are plenty of Tesla owners that have problems with their cars, and Tesla's customer service experience varies widely between service centers. But to say that someone else has had more problems with their Tesla than any other brand is just an unlucky Tesla owner. Or one that has never owned an Audi or a Land Rover or a Jeep or a Cadillac or a Jaguar or a first-gen Kia or a lot of other cars.
That Tesla could even make any brand-new car, in America, in the 21st century, is miraculous. The fact that it is a revolutionary car only adds to what you call a distortion field.
(Edit: cutesy naming? It uses [until Model 3] an AC synchronous motor, invented by Nikola Tesla. It couldn't be a more appropriate name, imho.)
I suppose with the Tesla maybe it's the feeling of buying a little ticket of the future and as such you might feel okay with dealing with teething problems when it comes to a car brand that is trying to do better for the environment in a way that car brands snobbed off in the past.
Their software now detects the issue before it occurs and adds a notification alerting the driver. [2]
I assume the difference with a recall is there’s no limit to the age of the car, and it would have to be done proactively on all vehicles.
Currently 15% of vehicles have had this issue according to Tesla.
[1] - https://www.tesla.com/support/warranty-adjustment-program
[2] - https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/attachments/96f386d3-2a95-49...
One complication is that there were various reasons to upgrade, not just eMMC failure.
Sure, today, it's a generous 8 yr / 100k mile warranty voluntarily extended, but I can easily imagine a scenario where Tesla (or whoever else is large) has bean counters that figure out most of these parts will fail 2 years and a day from now, so throw 2 years as a cheap means to appease owners.
In fact, many auto manufacturers today (and historically) have not covered technical defects in electronics as well as they should, in my opinion. I would argue for greater regulatory enforcement on this front. "Bumper-to-bumper" is not the same as "bumper-to-bumper-but-not-the-silicon-bits", and it can be a meaningful and large difference in the total cost of ownership of a vehicle that is increasingly focused on "the-silicon-bits".
If this stays a purely proactive measure that adds to the Tesla experience, I'm all for it, but I really hope regulators continue to hold their ground without ceding to the industry pressure of "we'll self-regulate because we have the best data on individual component failures and can provide a better customer experience around it than recalls."
It's not like the regs and/or Tesla have fixed the discovered flaw in a new design, and will be replacing the old part with the newly designed part. In that case proactive recall would make sense.
But that's not the case here. Here if you've only used 0.5 of 8Gb, and Tesla is required to make a recall, all Tesla is doing is replacing your old unit with the exact same model but now 8Gb free space instead of 7.5Gb free.
Instead, if a new design is not developed, shouldn't it be treated like a recurring maintenance? like when the memory is 6 or 7Gb full, the user gets a warning to take it to the repair to have the unit replaced, or something.
Also why isn't the memory emptied from time to time? old data should be of no use and should be backed up to Tesla cloud, or user's cloud storage outside the vehicle or something? In which case the whole exercise is moot.
My understanding is that the parts have decent endurance, it was just that a ton was being written there.
If that's true, replacing the hardware is a long term fix.
Edit: elsewhere in this thread points to 6000 cycle endurance, which means a best case of 42 TB lifetime writes, although write amplification will lower that.
That's enough for 6gb of logs a day over a 20 year lifetime which seems plenty.
Although that's also predicated on a controller that wear levels well.
Pretty rookie mistake there.
The problem isn’t lack of capacity, it’s that Flash storage(of all kinds, from microSD to NVMe SSD) bears only so many write operations.
Reading is fine but reflashing takes away lifespan like what poisonous metals do to a person, they gets slower and slurred and eventually die.
It’s not a problem had their software been actually tested and finalized before shipping so the cars don’t have to download Chromium patches every few weeks. Tesla being Tesla do that and break cars.
- One is the system memory. It'll have OS, apps, necessary data. This shouldn't change frequently. Like one update a month, or a few months. Should last a lifetime.
- Second is the daily data memory. Logs, metrics, whatever. This would go bad more frequently, but the functioning of the car shouldn't depend on this part. If this stops working and user doesn't replace it, the rest of the car should work, except that no new logs will be generated. Or user is given the option to upload the logs straight to the cloud (is a Tesla vehicle always online?).
Of course you will find few Linux distributions are set up like this, even if they would benefit tremendously (see Raspberry Pi SD card corruptions..). But your throwaway Android phone probably does it.
Nokia had logbufd on their linux devices (N770/N800/...) to prevent NAND getting abused by constant writes. They realised very early on that writing logs during runtime is essential for debugging purposes but also that it would kill the internal flash in no time at all.
With tmpfs backed log partition, you still need active log rotation. Logbufd was an in-memory ringbuffer that listened on the standard syslog socket, and if you spewed too much logs, you only killed your own ability to go back in time. If you fill up tmpfs before rotation gets a chance to rescue you, you will break all applications that don't handle out-of-disk-space gracefully.
Those are primarily caused by transient power loss. Yes, you can use software to paper over hardware problems but why not fix the hardware first?
This is the same fix a southern Cal company has been performing for a few years, at car owner’s cost.
They are not doing much in the way of preventive replacement, and their “predictive failure” notification is BS afaict. Maybe it’s new, but I’ve not yet seen it when my MCU starts acting up.
It’s currently a $500 non-warranty service, but they won’t do it until the chip fails.
Ask me how I know.
Edit: mem sizes
If they are using eMMC, it should be trivial to just query the controller about the flash health which should be a pretty accurate indication of when it's going to fail.
Just because it was release on 11/24 doesn’t mean all cars got it that day. Figure it can take a little while depending on how they roll these releases out to the fleet.
I've never seen this notification on my 2015 Model S, whose MCU (the center console display referred to here) has become increasingly unreliable over the past year. Its gotten so bad that there's almost a 50/50 chance of needing to reboot it every time I drive. (its actually even worse than that now, as the car now gets stuck installing a firmware update every night and needs a reboot to get that bit working again)
I honestly can't tell if the issue is eMMC partial failure, corruption, or simply a lack of proper regression testing on Tesla's part. (After all, if all new cars use the new MCU2 then they probably don't care about my MCU1 car unless they have to.)
That being said, I personally care a bit more about long term reliability and responsiveness than being annoying and making them pay. So the moment I qualified for an upgrade to their newer MCU, I just went ahead and scheduled that. Sure, it actually costs me money, but in exchange I get a faster UI, better software support, and hopefully fewer issues. (I plan to keep the car for a while still, and MCU quirks are really my only complaint.)
Holy. Shit. If this is true (I no reason to doubt you, yet at least), the market cap of Tesla makes even less sense. Who in their right mind would invest in a car company that can't even build a car that work half of the time you're using it? Especially since all controls are depending on the console as well.
Recalls are pretty common across cars manufacturers, even the ones seen as reliable, such as Mercedes or Volvo. As for as anecdotes go, I have rented an almost brand new Toyota that would turn the lights off on 90 degrees turn, that was frightening :)
Maybe touchpanels for any major control systems without tactile backups is a stupid idea?
It's just that painting a car around the battery pack is the sexiest and highest margin way to sell it.
Now if there is a new battery chemistry on the horizion you can start to worry.
First, this doesn't affect the parts of the car necessary to actually drive it. (Remember, the dashboard on the Model S is a separate component.) The actual "car" part of the car still works just fine, and you can even reboot this part while driving without causing problems.
Second, most people who actually own these cars tend to be somewhat protective of the company's image. Therefore, while you'll see plenty of ranting on Tesla-specific forums, it rarely leaks out into the greater conversation.
Third, and most importantly, all of the reporters who write articles covering Tesla are doing so from the perspective of an outsider looking in. They jump all over the great features and new easter eggs, but are completely and utterly oblivious to all the "quality of life" issues you'll only ever notice if you actually own the damn car and drive it every day.
I had a similar failure in my Infiniti 2006 G35. The Bose stereo had a cap that would blow, which would cut power to the whole center stack, including climate control and defog. The radio was a $2,000 part, and they never extended the warranty. I ended up replacing the climate control panel with a non-US version of the part that bypassed the radio.
It’s good that Tesla extended the warranty in this case, as they should have. I think there’s one key part that’s even better, and as far as I know totally unique to Tesla;
> So the moment I qualified for an upgrade to their newer MCU, I just went ahead and scheduled that. Sure, it actually costs me money, but in exchange I get a faster UI, better software support, and hopefully fewer issues.
Tesla has actually designed a harness to allow their newest generation of MCU to be retrofitted into their older cars, and will factory support this upgrade. This gives you access to all the latest infotainment and driving visualization features that came out well after the car was made.
I don’t know of any other car manufacturer which supports their late model cars like this.
15% is a HUGE recall.
> Elon Musk bragged that the Model S's 17 inch screen isn't automotive grade, but now Tesla and its customers are mired in "replacement hell."
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...
So they chose to intentionally reduce the car's range when parked in hot weather (e.g. a day hike in a forest where you need the range the most to return home) because they didn't get an automotive grade (Grade 2 instead of Grade 4) screen like every other auto manufacturer? wow..
Two separate accidents in 2018-2019, Model S crashed, fire started, owner (and passenger in the second case) survived the crash but couldn't get out of the car because the flush electronic door handles didn't unlock and present themselves out. The police officer on scene couldn't open it to get them out. Both cases everyone inside the car burnt to death [1][2][3].
In all modern cars, including the Model S [4] the doors are supposed to automatically unlock on a crash or airbag deployment. I haven't heard this happening on any other car (not that many cars use those flush door handles anyway).
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a29576096/tesla-model-s-la...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3CJuX8QdjM
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tetR1QHzHrM
[4] Page 26 at https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2016_Mod...
[1] https://virginiatech.sportswar.com/mid/12654629/board/vtloun...
The front window is made out of laminate glass so that it won't shatter on a heavy impact (or simply a stone chip) and spray the occupants in the face with glass fragments or shards. Even if you crack it, or manage to make a hole in it, it's pretty difficult to get through it, and certainly difficult to make a hole big enough for a person to fit through.
The side windows are made out of tempered glass, also known as safety glass, which when broken shatters into tiny pieces rather than large shards. However, it's really difficult to break. Blunt force often won't do it: you need quite a lot of force concentrated on a very small area. This is why glass breakers have quite sharp points and are often made of tungsten: it allows the to focus the force so that the glass will break on impact.
It's possible the officers involved simply didn't have anything suitable for breaking the glass, and very likely that the occupants didn't.
(Which reminds me: I've been meaning to put glass breakers in the door pockets of my car for ages. Must do that.)
Even when fighting for your life inside the car, the window can still hold strong (only the first person survived to tell his 14-hour tale).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDFJbk7BOgM
This is how most people think its done (if they know about it at all) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ltheqCQnMQ
Which is not easy at all, specially with a bruised shoulder from the seat belt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7cANvD0CRE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU9xj-I1kMA
etc etc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE8XmHAP4j4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAK5DZwrS70
For each BLM case there is a one or more similar for other ethnicities with all video evidence that gets no further media coverage and no justice to the victims.
I LOVE the car and will stick to it that it's the best car I've ever owned but it has its flaws and hopefully this recall teaches Tesla a lesson.
How is a three year old car aging?
I have a twenty year old Honda and a six year old Toyota and both feel amazing. The Honda doesn't feel new, but it doesn't have any problems. All I have to do is change the oil.
Are we switching to a disposable car model now?
It shouldn't be; depending on source, average length of new car ownership in the US seems to be somewhere in the 7-9 year range, and average length of car ownership (including cars bought used) seems to be ~4 years, and average car lifespan seems to be around 15 years. A car 3-4 years from new shouldn't be “aging”.
I hope they’re getting sold to Mexico or something, not scrapped.
Also, "aging" is going to be heavily influenced by socioeconomic group. For some people, aesthetic damage to the paint or interior is enough to qualify as aging. Other people are more interested in the functionality, and other people are interested in whatever drives. I have friends that consider a 3 year old car to be aging, and I have friends who drive 10 year old cars and think they're just fine.
I do think Teslas (and electric cars in general) are going to have an impact on the used car market, especially on the cheaper end. These batteries don't have tremendously long lifespans, and a replacement often costs as much as a cheap ICE car.
I'm curious if there's going to be any profit in repairing electric cars with new batteries to sell them in Mexico or other parts of the globe, or if we're basically just going to be cutting off part of the used car market. The social impacts of developing countries losing access to a relatively cheap supply of vehicles could be bad.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/odometer-disclosure-req...
20 x 13500 is 270k. I don't think that's average.
https://dmvnv.com/news/20023-new-odometer-rules.htm
"The average age of a vehicle in the U.S. is now almost 12 years, up from 7.6 years when the odometer rules were last changed in 1988."
That's exactly what this recall is meant to address: that the eMMC is aging faster than what is reasonable.
I'm afraid we have done long ago now. BMW estimates that 90% of buyers won't keep their car for longer than 3 years. They are rolling out a subscription model for features based on that fact - so you buy the car which has all the functions built-in from factory, but then pay an annual fee to unlock them. Fancy heated seats? You get a 7 day free trial, after that it's a paid unlock. Same with adaptive cruise control, adjustible suspension, sport driving modes, etc etc. Tesla might have pioneered this model but BMW is taking it all the way. And they have the gull to say it actually saves their customers money so it's a preferred option.
To keep the meme bubble Musk's created alive and justify the market cap as well as personal buying decisions, it is neccessary to create a conversation where a Tesla is always the default, the "normal".
Thus: A three year old car is "aging", the steering wheel falling off is no reason to complain [0] and buying a two-ton sportscar is the ultimate pro-environment move.
[0] https://preview.redd.it/canfcfr00tw41.jpg?width=551&auto=web...
The group you are describing are the ones who bought the car. The one I am describing are the ones who are holding Tesla shares/options and doing mental gymnastics how Tesla is still undervalued and will moon forever.
Anecdote time: my parents bought a secondhand 93 Toyota Corolla that I inherited and drove until 2011. They continued using it until 2018, and got rid of it. It was still running. A few plastic internals had failed and the engine was rough, but still going. It easily had another 5ish years on it.
Still worked like a charm, and it wasn't a particularly fancy model or brand.
I hope GP just used "aging" meaning "not brand new", it would scare me deeply if we started replacing cars the way we do smartphones.
Teslas seem to be on the same path as smartphones - even if the original hardware doesn't get any slower as such, the experience gets worse and worse and worse with updates, to a point where a car that's less than 10 years old is now uncomfortable to use. It's a tragedy.
27/83 = .33
3/17 = .18
Yes, the math checks out. The 2017 model is only 18% of the age of tesla motors, while the corolla was 33% of the age of Toyota.
How many miles does the car have?
The screen isn't a mechanical part. That's the equivalent of someone trying to justify their radio failing because they drive a lot.
Sorry if my statement wasn't clear.
There is no such thing as a failed emmc card - it's simply that the built in firmware has failed to correctly remap data around failing flash sectors. There is always life left in the actual flash provided you're happy to throw enough error correction at it.
The right solution is to use higher quality storage and to keep frequently-written logs on a removable device.
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2020/INRM-EA20003-11321.pdf
CNBC provided the link and they're saying Reuters broke the original story.
Interesting choice of functionality to call out; IMHO backup camera is much lower in importance (Teslas still have rear windows and physical side-mirrors) but HVAC and other controls normally used when traveling forwards would definitely be high. How about things like the speedometer?
The speedometer is on the dashboard display, which is a somewhat independent unit that will work fine even if the MCU (center console display) isn't working correctly.
And probably other cars that are commonly used in cold climates where people wear gloves.
Of course, there are buttons on the steering wheel and the stalks.
Edit: Model S, I don't know about others.
Designed lifetime of Tesla cars is about 6 years. After that parts like batteries start failing and need expensive replacement. There is no after market for parts and no second hand market.
Normal car with basic maintenance lasts about 15-20 years.
How is Tesla more "ecological" again?
It is by no means the highest-mileage Tesla on the road.
If they still make batteries in 10 years then perhaps Tesla will prove to be the more ecological of the bunch. However, when I look for the price of a new battery for the Roadster, all I can find is discussions about how there are no batteries available, and if they are, the batteries are the price of a new, normal car. For the Model S, the price is much lower (about $13k + labour) but according to news posts I've found from the beginning of 2019, Tesla has already discontinued the batteries for that model.
For any car to be ecological, replacement parts need to be available for years after the original sales date. For most petrol-based cars, this has not been a problem, but for silicon valley company cars, this can be a dangerous pitfall. Batteries can suddenly fail, making the entire car worthless if there's no replacement available for a decent price.
It's a cool, high-tech car for rich people, which is a perfectly valid reason to get one, but if it really is that ecological only remains to be seen. Of course, it's still far more ecological to buy a used gasoline car and drive that around for another ten years than it is to buy a new EV purely because of the pollution that comes with producing a new car.
Longer term, I don't think that the economics of ICE cars will beat battery cars any more than the economics of horses beat cars. It is no more difficult to continue to make batteries available than transmissions.
We're still in the first decade of practical electric cars, and the 11th decade of ICE cars. It won't happen for a while.
The motive to reinvent something entirely instead of making gradual improvements is something I cannot understand. It is like rewriting the entire healthcare bill and completely disrespecting the work of the previous generation of lawmakers instead of progressively enhancing it.
Maybe this comes out of genuine hate for the previous engineers. And if not hate, then they just didn't respect them much.
You could easily adjust features in your car while looking at the road using plain old dials and buttons.
(you know, it could be because touch sensors don't work with space gloves)
I'm with you on this, but it's a pretty great example of when a touchscreen isn't a safety hazard: very unlikely I'll want to pop the trunk while I need to keep my eyes on the road.
What's even crazier to me is the way futuristic movies depict interfaces that float in the air. Has anyone thought that through? Your arms would get tired so fast. There's a reason our best input methods have our arms resting on a surface.
This has been known since 1963. Not kidding:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad
That was the first complete light-pen system that could be used by a non-programmer. Sutherland immediately declared the light pen was a stupid idea because all the blood drains out of your hand.
Mazda on the other hand has announced getting rid of touchscreens from their vehicles.
[1]https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2021/01/07/mercede...
[2]https://www.motortrend.com/news/2022-ford-fusion-active-cuv-...
That module is positioned in such a way that water collects around it if the car gets sufficiently splashed from the front, and it dies even though the PCB is conformally coated.
Screens are much more likely to be tied to complex systems that could fail. Buttons talking to a BCM by grounding out wires is pretty simple and if there were ever a recall on a switch the part would be cheap.
It costs $600 and is faster than your computer.
P.S. imo voice is way to go together with touchscreens.
Can you provide a link to their commentary? I would like to read it in full.
Even latest Nissan's Leaf kinda sucks (poor battery thermal management).
Maybe different trim levels move more things to physical buttons than touch screens?
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a29654225/analysis-the...
I never understand this. Unless the interface has like, no more than 2 buttons on it, I'm no better at using buttons than a touch screen. Are people regularly interfacing with complex analogue button systems without even glancing at them?
at least some tesla UI requires touchscreen interface for things such as wiper control [1]. normally this is a lever and tactile knob, with zero distraction potential and no learning curve beyond where to put your hand.
personally, i've memorized the stereo controls of every car i've driven more than a few times.
I do and it is strictly inferior to keyboard.
Also, there was a case locally not too long ago where a victim of a bloody knife attack almost bled out trying to unlock their phone and dial 911 with bloody fingers.
Can't find what you're looking for on Google, but Apple has been trying to fix this by allowing you to press the lock button 5 times to bring up emergency SOS. There's also an 'emergency' button on the passcode screen.
The distressed person to know about the workaround.
The distressed person to remember the workaround.
The home button or whatever fancy biometric unlocking to work with a bloody finger or face.
The emergency button on the touchscreen to recognise the bloody finger keypress attempts.
I think emergency calls work on most phones without unlocking. My android phone is locked with a pin and that input screen has the option to make an emergency call.
Most driving interactions in a Tesla are through the stalk or knob rollers on the steering wheel (that adjust based on situation). It is very well thought out.
Voice is an option for nearly everything as well, and it is actually good.
The key is that they aren't locked into an outdated fixed UI. Blackberry lost because of their keyboard.
Finally, for the scattering of buttons in a traditional vehicle that are used rarely, you still have to visually scan the entire dash to find it and hope their icon is meaningful. This takes your eyes further from the road than a well positioned, responsive screen.
Fog lights for example.
I couldn't turn on fog lights in my ICE car without looking for the knob behind the steering wheel, and then fiddling with the options.
I've never driven a Tesla or another car with a touchscreen. I almost never need fog lights, so I wouldn't even know which knob to turn which way in my new car. Doesn't help that it's different for every car manufacturer. I'd actually prefer a touchscreen with big, properly labeled buttons for this.
Look, I'm not arguing for replacing physical controls with touchscreens, I'm just pointing out that it's not as clear-cut as some knob-proponents would have you believe.
Physical controls excel at repeated use though, because you develop muscle memory for it. Imagine if the blinkers had to be activated through the touch screen. That sounds completely ridiculous, right?
Again, you're arguing against a point of view which I've never professed.
Yes, of course it would be ridiculous if you had to activate your blinkers through the touchscreen. Did anyone claim otherwise? Are the blinkers in a Tesla controlled through the touchscreen?
Fair enough, but your argument that physical buttons aren't so great basically boils down to "they suck the first time". Which is correct, but in the long run they're simply superior.
I think a row of knobs along the bottom edge that correspond to the buttons/icons directly above would be the best of both worlds: flexibility of software-defined controls (except the number/spacing becomes fixed), with the tactility of real knobs.
Oh to have an unlimited budget.
Does the tesla know that I've changed heading and the sun is now providing some radiative heating and the thermostat can be turned down? Does it know that I got a chip off my windshield that affects the cameras, and I need to manually turn the windshield wipers (or brights, or etc) on and off every time a vehicle passes and sprays me? Maybe I just want a big ol' power/volume knob to turn it off and on easily without looking - most cars have those on the steering wheel and I hate them.
(To be clear, I love Tesla and I truly hope they continue to succeed - but even more, I hope Toyota et al get it through their thick heads that BEVs are the future and gain ground in a hurry. Competition should make everyone better...)
All (well, maybe only those manufactured within the last 5 or 10 years) cars have an auto temperature mode which regulates the temperature for you if it deviates from the set temperature.
No you don't.
Many drivers, including myself, will adjust thermostat controls simply through touch and feel.
Re-read the part that you quoted:
> > [...] that are used rarely [...]
Unless you rarely use the thermostat controls..?
The model S/X have better controls + a dashboard. Autopilot is controlled by a separate stalk.
That said, controlling lights and climate control with tiny touchscreen targets in a moving car is... ludicrous.
Controversial take. I think Blackberry lost primarily because of their locked-in/niche OS at a time when the app scene was exploding. The keyboard if anything was a compelling reason to stay with them, especially in the exec/professionals sector of the market.
If blackberry had successfully executed a full iteration of their build/design quality with Android OS at a point where they could have retained their enterprise dominance, I think they would still be a major player today.
But it didn't go that way (a major cause for which was the scale of change that would have been needed to pivot BES/BIS early enough). I don't think the keyboard contributed to Blackberry's demise.
That weird scroll nubbin, on the other hand.... and let's not forget the 'haptic' touch on the Storm.
I would say that a modern swipe keyboard after training by far beats old style BB keyboards (not real computer keybords where you can use up to 10 fingers).
I still miss my blackberry for sending emails. There were keyboard shortcuts for everything too, like press F to forward or R to reply, q to expand display names to email addresses.
You could also assign tasks for when you held down a key at the home screen.
Most models also had a dedicated hardware mute button with distinct tones for mute/unmute.
If you were a heavy user they were much quicker than touch screens.
They just sucked at anything unrelated to email, and weren't great for most users who never bother to learn their tools and become efficient.
You have to scan the dash roughly in the area you recall the button may be, and identify it visually. After that, you can return your gaze to the road, while your hand finds and manipulates the button. Touchscreens require you to focus your eyes on the button for all the time it takes to find it, press it, and confirm the UI actually registered the press.
https://www.br-automation.com/en/about-us/press-room/say-goo...
https://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2019/11/2021-Ford-...
Top top that dials/knobs are more reliable than buttons.
I still covet the Honda Civic/Accord 2004-2008 dashboard. I didn't even use the steering mounted controls as the knobs were so easy to use.
Edit: just realized this is probably what Apple will end up doing.
I've driven a model 3 and I find the gigantic tablet to be not only distracting but impossible to safely interact with while driving. Maybe I'd get used to it but I heavily rely on the tactility and feel of buttons and dials to know what I'm doing while keeping my eyes on the road.
It was not a pleasant surprise when I was looking at some mid 2010 Ford Super Duties and wanted to research what it would take to add in an Apple CarPlay head unit. (wasn't added an option from the factory until 2017). Turns out if you get a Lariat or even a well optioned out XLT you get saddled with a touch screen that integrates nonsense like the HVAC and heated seats. The interface is dreadful and you'd be stuck with it for the life of the vehicle. Thanks for nothing Ford.
they changed the software to log less a while ago, but the damage was done on many cars. Not 100% sure this recall is related to the same issue but it sounds like that’s what they’re saying
“ Investigators determined that the expected usage life rating for the 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory device is about 3,000 Program-Erase cycles, after which the eMMC NAND flash memory device would become fully consumed and no longer be operational. At a daily cycle usage rate of 1.4 per block, accumulation of 3,000 P/E cycles would take only five to six years, the agency said”
It seems very short sighted of them.
just change the loglevel from debug to error, tesla.