We're Not Even Close to EVs Being as Cheap as Gas Cars, Mercedes Says

We're talking about maximizing safety, not just reinforcing something that is already done. What is safer: one hand on the wheel or two?

> What isn't safe is to be looking away from the road ahead of you. At 80mph, common freeways speeds, it's insane to do so.

At some point in time, I will consult my navigation. Being able to quickly glance and understand the map is important, and a display that's easier to read translates to it being safer. Which is easier to read, a smaller screen with small graphics and small text, or a large one with larger text and graphics?

> No current automated controls fix the heat/AC needing to be adjusted, specifically defrosting the windows.

I forgot that the physics of when a window fogs up is completely unknowable. I guess its impossible for us to figure out the conditions for when a window fogs and make a system to automatically defog them. Oh wait, never mind, this isn't the stone ages, cars can easily know when their windows have the possibility of fogging. There's really zero reason why all cars can't have extremely reliable defoggers; you should really complain to your car maker that you don't have it as I'd say having your car automatically defog improves safety. I have it on my most recent car, once again I never have to press the defog button. My car is already defogged by the time I get to it, and the auto climate makes sure the conditions for a foggy windshield never happens. I don't get why you'd choose to have a car which requires you to manually intervene with the defogger, once again that just seems like yet another distraction making your car less safe.

That said, I will agree things related to critical safety should still have a physical button. On my car with a giant screen, there's still a button over by the headlight control for max defog, in the rare case it somehow gets this wrong. Which has never happened, but OK, I'll agree automation isn't always perfect and this is a safety critical feature.

That draws me to something that is still almost always manual when it really should never be. Headlights! My car does have a manual headlight control with an automatic setting that it never leaves. Sure, you'd say, we need to make sure headlights remain a manual control, its a safety feature! I'd argue the other way. There's practically zero reason for any passenger car to need to turn off their headlights while driving, giving people that control makes us less safe. I see tons of people driving around at night without headlights all because they get a manual say in whether their lights are on or not. Letting people turn their headlights off while driving makes us less safe.

I will agree additional lighting like fog lights should still be a manual control. Once again, critical safety components should still have a physical control.

> temps need to be changed

They really don't though, not while you're driving. The climate conditions in your car probably didn't radically change since you put your car into gear, you're not really going to be noticeably different at 71F vs 72F. Its an additional distraction. I maybe kick the temp up a few degrees in the winter and bring it back down in the spring/summer time, and this happens before the car gets put into gear. Probably four adjustments to the temperature a year, and I say that leaving my house at ~50F right now and it'll be >90F when I leave the office. All the rest of the time, its wasted space on my dashboard. I'm not constantly adjusting the thermostat in my house, I programmed it how I like my house and it dutifully carries it out. Why would I want to constantly be fiddling with the AC when it could be automated? Thermostats are a solved problem. Good auto climate controls have existed since the late 90s, there's little excuse for needing a lot of intervention in your climate control. Let the system do its job and quit getting distracted trying to micromanage it.

> Automated wipers suck, and often get it wrong. Mud splashes, must be washed away.

Here I completely agree with you, and mention so in my last comment. The rules on when and how fast wipers should go on are much harder to automate than the climate or the defrosters or the headlights. While I do use and enjoy my auto-wipers on my cars, they're still not perfect. That said, I prefer for these controls to be on the stalks and not the center console where the touch screen we're talking about is. I wouldn't want to have to reach to the center console to adjust my wipers, that's a regression from the current state of affairs.

> hazard lights engaged to alert traffic around you

Isn't this a legal thing in the US? Kind of worthless to bring up this point as every car in the US is guaranteed to have it regardless of if its got a large touchscreen or not. But once again, I do agree, critical safety features should have physical controls.

That said, there really aren't that many critical safety controls. We've identified what, maybe a handful of them? Wipers, defogger, hazard lights, parking brake, door locks, door levers/handles, window controls, gear selector, maybe mirror adjustment, maybe fog lights if equipped on your car? And even then a lot of those controls shouldn't be in the center console, almost all of those are better placed in other areas. In which case there being a giant touchscreen in the center console makes zero difference about whether those controls are physical or not, as they're not affected by the center console at all.

> based upon the horrid state of current UI design

You know what's horrid UI design? Having to type an address with a wheel. Having a ton of buttons which never get pressed. Needing to read the next turn name in braille or on a tiny screen.

Here's the center console on my car with a lot of buttons[0]. Bluelink? Setup? INFO? C'mon, these buttons get pressed a few times in the entire life of the car. Giant "Climate" button when there's already a lot of physical climate controls wasting space? A huge fan speed selector knob which never gets turned, because once again, auto climate controls, why would I want to micromanage it? Why should I need to manually turn the A/C compressor on or off, the defogger should just know how to control the humidity without me manually intervening. Practically the entire bottom half of this whole button area is darn near worthless to me, it essentially never gets touched.

I do prefer a physical volume knob even though as the driver I don't use it as I've got volume on my steering controls, its nice for the passenger versus some touch slider. That "TUNE" knob though? Its probably only been turned a few times the entire time I've owned the car. I set the presets for the radio stations I listen to and can change those with the steering controls. SEEK? Well, once again I've got steering wheel controls, why do I need that on the center console?

Meanwhile the thing I actually do use on the center console, navigation, suffers from having all these physical buttons that never get pressed. The maps are much smaller and harder to read while driving. Putting in the destination before I get going is far more annoying. Planning out a complex route is way more frustrating than it should be. Changing settings in the car while not driving is more annoying with the smaller screen and a bunch of worthless buttons. Overall the center console is worse for having a lot of buttons, not better.

[0] https://paulgeorgedaniel.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/santa7....

Even then I'd still argue a purely analog interface on your car isn't solely the best car user interface. There's literally over a thousand settings to be changed on my car; are you really suggesting that having a thousand switches, buttons, toggles, and sliders is the preferred way of configuring my car? I imagine not, in which case it makes sense to put those behind a screen. If I'm only going to then be making changes to those while parked, why would it matter to me if I'm then changing those settings on a physical control or a touch screen? Why don't you use your phone with a rotary dial to interface with it?

> Because the touch screen controls are not demonstrably safer than physical.

You're misquoting me, the first part of that sentence is extremely critical for that argument of safety. "And if I never have to take my hands off the wheel..." completely negates your argument of safety.

The touch controls aren't supposed to be interacted much when driving the vehicle. That's what the steering wheel and voice controls are for. Its safer to use the steering wheel controls than it is to take your hand off the wheel and mess with a control on the center console, so if your argument is about maximizing safety having no controls outside of the steering wheel is the best choice. The touchscreen isn't there to be used by the driver while the car is in motion.

> I don’t understand the false dichotomy analogies you are using when better analogies like voice control can justify a lack of analog controls.

I do like voice controls, they work well for me. In fact I do reference them in the above comment with the statement "Media controls happen by the buttons on the steering wheel or voice commands." When I want to change the playlist or switch to the podcast app or whatever, I use voice controls when the vehicle is in motion. I use voice commands for other things like placing a phone call as well.

I do understand some people's frustrations with them as they often have a harder time with hard accents or less common dialects. I'm mostly talking about touchscreens here because the topic at hand is complaining about how cars are getting bigger and bigger screens, which to me is a positive and not a negative. If anything, the increasing usefulness and reliability of voice controls further points to the reason why cars adopting touchscreens and shedding a few more buttons is less and less of a concern.

> Can’t I have a physical switch just as easily that enables automatic “AI” powered digitally masterful climate control?

But, why would you want that? It would be a button I'd press once when I first got the car, and that'd be it. Toggling it off is essentially choosing an uncomfortable car; why would you choose to make your car uncomfortable? And then, if you'd never press that button other than the first time to turn it on, why bother having the button at all? What benefit does a button never pressed actually give?

Why don't we have every single lightbulb in the car have its own toggle button and dimmer knob on the center console? Have several buttons for changing the colors of the accent lighting. Have a dedicated d-pad for controlling the headlight position. Have a set of dial clocks (so you can feel the hands), knobs, and various buttons to set the charging profiles on my EV. A physical button to toggle between HD radio and not. A number pad for phone calls and speed dial, along with a SEND and HANGUP button. A big TUNE knob in addition to SEEK up and down. Fade and balance knobs. Buttons to navigate folders for the MP3 files on a flash drive. Buttons to program the various settings of the MyKey system. Buttons to change between the one stage or two stage unlocking modes of the remotes. A toggle to enable/disable the passive key liftgate. A toggle button to control the liftgate motion control. A few buttons to control the easy entrance/exit. Buttons to control the several different features of the trip computer. Wouldn't that be the preferred way of doing things? Every setting, option, adjustment can be a manual physical control available on the center console. We'll have a center console with hundreds of buttons, dozens of knobs, a few sliders, and touch feedback displays. More buttons, more better, regardless of if they're actually useful or not!

Or maybe, we only bother with physical controls for safety critical features. Turn signals, gear selectors, windows, door locks, door latches, hazard lights, wipers, etc. Then put other commonly used controls as physical controls on the steering wheel, like media controls. Then, everything else that's not commonly used can be behind some kind of menu system on a screen. Hmm, what's been shown to be a popular and useful way to navigate menu systems? Trackballs? Pointer nubs? Wheels? Maybe...a touchscreen??

Why waste useful control space with buttons that never get pressed? Can you please answer that question?

Look, I'm not an anti-button touchscreen maximalist. There's definitely things that make sense as physical controls, I agree! Things that actually do get pressed often should be physical controls, I agree! I wouldn't like for my garage door opener to be buried behind a menu. On my many button car there's a button to turn on the 360 cameras when slowly rolling, I use that a ton when parking but on my touchscreen focused car its behind a menu so its a feature that rarely gets used now. I'm just against interfaces with a ton of buttons that really never need to get pressed. Which for cars with a lot of physical buttons, seems to be well over half the buttons. Hell, cars with a lot of physical buttons have so much space dedicated for buttons there's usually dead buttons, spaces where clearly the designer was expecting they'd need a button but in the end they made the car without it. Clearly that's more useful than having the screen be a bit bigger!