Not to mention using a touchscreen to adjust the temperature while driving is incredibly dangerous compared to a dial you can feel for without taking your eyes off the road.
- latency
- it has a boot procedure when you turn the car on. While this happens, the controls have quite substantial latency. However the first thing that happens is it begins playing audio.
- there is a knob for adjusting volume, but it's still part of the same system as the rest of it. There is still substantial latency to this control, especially immediately upon turning the car on. However even a little latency here is really annoying, because one naturally adjusts volume via trial and error.
- if you've paired the car with your phone via Bluetooth, it immediately sends a message to your phone to start playing whatever audio was played most recently at whatever the current volume is. I wrote a tasker routine to intercept this, but an android patch a while back helpfully broke this and I haven't bothered fixing it.
All of this combines for a user experience dramatically worse than an aux cord. It's kind of spectacular in its terribleness. And this is an otherwise great car.
Yeah. In the same boat and my wife like to play pranks when she uses the car. Turns the volume to max right before removing the key. When her phone is not found it defaults to radio. That "saved me" from having to drink my morning coffee in the office on more than one occasion + it's good training for the heart.
Edit: Forgot to mention that the volume knob is ignored until the system fully boots up and the audio starts as soon as you twist the key.
> it has a boot procedure when you turn the car on. While this happens, the controls have quite substantial latency.
I've got one better. Controls during bootup in my car are simply ignored, and the bootup duration for Carplay in particular is so bad that it makes the bluetooth delay seem acceptable.
> However the first thing that happens is it begins playing audio.
This is ironic because I wish mine would start playing. There's no setting for playback behavior either. The only setting, in fact, is the ability to reorder and add/remove third-party apps.
Oh, worse still, sometimes audio doesn't play even when you manually select something. The UI will register it as playing but the audio doesn't come through. When this happens, you have to disconnect and reconnect your phone, which is dangerous in motion. It's a joke. It makes me wonder what the deal is, and I have no idea who to report the bug to.
> All of this combines for a user experience dramatically worse than an aux cord. It's kind of spectacular in its terribleness. And this is an otherwise great car.
Yup. My beater in college that came with some random aftermarket radio was better. Carplay is pretty but beyond that it feels like an afterthought as an experience.
How about no sound? How about defaulting to silence? Nope…
A touchscreen from an 20 years old Archos MP3 player is extremely bad while an iPad Pro M1 is very good.
At least to me, I haven‘t seen a compelling reasons that touchscreens replacing analog car controls isn‘t a square peg going into a circle hole.
Not saying they'd definitely be good if only some one loved 'em, but judging from the car touch screens I've used I believe no one has tried yet.
What is allows for is: cost cutting. Not having to install a mask, a button, wire harness and QA everything is a massive manufacturing cost saving. It speeds up production and lowers the amount of components that need to be sourced, installed and later made available for replacement as part of a service.
This is the same situation as with Electron apps - the savings aren't for YOU the USER, the savings are for person MAKING the thing. They get all the benefit at the cost of your user experience.
I tend to have the same opinion, but at the same time I'm not convinced:
- I bought 1 year ago a new car for 80k $ => that's not cheap and in my opinion putting 4 extra buttons (up/down) or 2 extra knobs to control the temperature of the two front seats wouldn't have been an incredible engineering challenge that would have added hundreds of $ to the cost (which was anyway high).
- we have ~100 buttons that all work reliably on our keyboards, which are connected to our PCs/notebooks with just a single cable => I admit that in a car there is the extra challenge of temperature variance (car parked in the Sahara or somewhere in Iceland), but I cannot think that that's an engineering wonder (worked fine during the last 100 years).
Therefore maybe the trend is driven by designers: make everything shiny & slick, risk of having the own work thrown into the trash when taking a step back to do usability tests vs. physical controls so let's just forget about that.
I wanted to mention that. Sure, the way auto electronics were traditionally installed was expensive but a keyboard is $20 by itself, a midi music keyboard designed for wear and having buttons and knobs is ~$150. A modular system of instruments and controls that fits around the steering wheel and has a single cable coming out could not be that expensive.
Changing to something like would require a lot of adjustment of electronics processes - different chips and voltages to allow the modularity and single cable, I would guess. But touch-screens also need this I would imagine.
Although I suspect the addition of backup cameras has given automakers excuses when it comes to rear visibility.
I hate Electron as much as the next average HN user, but isn't the benefit of Electron actually kinda for the user as well as the developer, in the sense that Electron is basically a one-stop shop for porting to other platforms?
For instance, Microsoft Teams is written in Electron. This means the application is pretty damn well identical whether users within my company are using Windows or Mac computers. There are advantages to that.
I'd say for myself, Unity is a great example of where, basically; if I went 'native', I would really only be supporting one platform, like I used to when I did game dev in the late 90's and early 00's. But Unity gives me the power to flip a switch, and then all my friends can play pretty much the same copy of my game on any platform of their choosing.
It also means if there are bugs on one platform, they usually show up on another as well; making QE and addressing bugs a little bit easier, making for a better user experience.
Not a fan of Electron, just saying that there are benefits to the user for using such a system.
Disadvantages too. Unlike a website, I want the software on my computer to take advantage of the native UI and other features unique to the OS. If Electron didn't exist MS would still build teams for multiple platforms. It would disadvantage small developers but the majority of users (who use well known software developed by large companies) lose out on the prior mentioned benefits thanks to Electrons existence.
2022 Honda Civic but with physical buttons probably doesn't move the needle because car buyers are price sensitive and because 2022 Honda Civic with screen is still better than alternatives.
I had a 2017 Honda Civic Hatchback. First year of the new model design, it had a touch sensitive volume control... After that, I think it was the 2019 and up all Honda's came with a volume knob AS A DIFFERENTIATOR because the UX was so bad without it.
I wonder if someday we'll have an open-source car, sort of like the framework laptop. I think it would be amazing. Think of the robust market that has cropped up around custom PCs and custom bicycles.
It does take way too long to boot up.
I’m just not buying an EV until there’s one that doesn’t rely on a giant touch screen for everything or I can’t buy an ICE vehicle anymore.
After the panic subsided, I decided to learn the voice commands. It seems that each device, now, has its own language, which we have to learn in order to function. A modern tower of Babel.
We can hope, but there's reason to be pessimistic:
> With traffic fatalities spiking over the past few years and with no real plan for how to make screens less distracting, we seem to have entered into the type of brutal acquiescence that’s common in the tech era; car manufacturers will keep putting bigger and more complicated screens in cars without much thought to safety or even functionality, and we, the consumers, will continue to buy them.
> ...
> The incentives of carmakers are pretty clear: Touch screens are cheaper than designing and installing a mechanical panel. And given that most cars today are reliable, come with lengthy warranties and an array of mostly uniform features, a big screen becomes a way for a car brand to distinguish itself from its competitors, especially on the showroom floor before potential buyers have a chance to really immerse themselves in just how annoying the screen will be.
One of the weaknesses of the market is that it doesn't necessarily give consumers what would work best for them, it just lets them pick from what they're given. Barring regulatory action, I don't see device-makers moving away touchscreen maximization.
Who's this "we"?
I'm in the pre-buy stage, it looks like my record of non-car-ownership will end at 23 years. (My last car was stolen from a SOMA lot in 1999.)
It does look like I'm buying used and IC, because I will not have a touch screen. I've driven basically every model of car you can rent, and some of them are less offensive than others, but they're all ass. Backup assist is vaguely nice, but I learned to parallel park before they existed, so I don't really care. And everything else about them is actively worse.
The UI is such a weird thing to cheap out on. As far as I'm concerned, keep your butt warmers and solenoid-driven seat adjustment, I want physical knobs I don't have to look at to use.
My car has these things, controlled by physical buttons and knobs. They're nice features and they don't require a touchscreen to use.
That's not a solution - you have to look at market of brand new cars, as whateber is avaliable now will replace all the used cars.
> Of course it is a solution. I end up with a car that doesn't have a touch screen.
The point is that solution is only a band-aid. Cars wear out. New cars turn into used cars, which turn into "classic cars", which then turn into museum pieces. Especially with the later two steps, supply drops and maintenance becomes harder.
There is a reasonable chance I won't buy another vehicle, so I don't care what the rest of the market does.
Good for you, but why do you feel you need to weigh in on the new car market when you have no intention of ever participating?
Because we're discussing a complaint about modern cars, and "always buy used ones that predate the change, and plan to die before those become unavailable" doesn't really address the complaint. It's a rather idiosyncratic and radical way of avoiding it, and bends the conversation to discussing that personal idiosyncrasy.
Also worth acknowledging that the battery makes up a huge chunk of the car both physically and in terms of cost, and yet is a consumable, so I guess this lowers the resale value of EVs significantly? I wonder if it's even worth any of the remaining savings on the rest of the car after fitting a new battery. Maybe the next stage is scaling up lithium-ion recycling to drive down battery replacement and general battery cost to a point that "everyone else" can join in the EV game.
It would be a big step backwards for society if a new wealth gap is created when oil becomes too expensive to continue running cheap ICE cars and only moderately wealthy people can afford cars priced exclusively at "new" values without a 2nd hand market.
That's coming whether you want to or not.
Once we start pricing in the externalities of climate change into road vehicles (which is beginning to happen, slowly), cars will become increasingly unaffordable to those in the bottom quartiles of income.
I don't want to drive—or negotiate with AI to drive—a giant cellphone on wheels.
Not sure I agree with that. Even Porsche are doing touch screens, unfortunately.
Touchscreen for other things: android auto, apple car play (which provide maps) and more complicated user settings (such as whether you want the lights to stay on after you turn off the car for a while)
It's a shame they went more "slick" with the 2022 refresh, still tactile, but just more flush and less accessible without a glance. [2]
[1] https://cdn.motor1.com/images/mgl/OYAqe/s1/2020-chevy-bolt-e...
[2] https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/02/2022-...
https://www.automotiveaddicts.com/25445/2012-chevrolet-volt-...
They do have a rotary dial and push button that controls the display, so no touching it. Makes it a lot simpler when your UI designers are restricted to left/right movement and button push. Can't hide things all over the place and under deeply nested menus.
Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are designed to be touched. Navigating either without a touchscreen is a horrible experience and requires significantly more steps than just touching the item you want on the screen.
The only thing I can remember might be the address entry, but that can easily be done with the keyboard on the phone itself (click "phone" icon in the on-screen Auto keyboard to handoff).
That said, people I know have a strange resistance to using voice commands with their cars and phones.
Like if I want to tell my alexa to turn the temperature up on the thermastat I have to remember this exact phrase: Alexa, tell the ecobee to turn the temperature [up, down], [ecobee name]. Anything else and alexa tells me "ecobee doesn't support that". And alexa/siri/google are all top of the line, offline processing inside a car's CPU is measurably worse, and syntax is even more esoteric.
Ever try to use voice commands to tell your car to give you GPS directions to the nearest walmart? Basically impossible unless you have the street address memorized, and even then it's a 10 minute ordeal with a lot of stops and starts because the processor wasn't listening as soon as you started speaking to it so it only caught the end of an address, or it misheard a number or street name, etc.
Voice control is far from being an acceptable alternative to physical dials and switches.
1. Do not want to talk in the loud-clear voice needed for them to work (e.g. someone else in car is on their phone, kids are sleeping).
2. Completely soured on the experience due to things like this[1]
What I think is a lot more weird is that archaeology works: i.e. you can dig in old European cities and find the remains of older cities underneath. The short answer is that stuff like dust, decaying plant matter, erosion from nearby mountains and debris from the buildings themselves can effectively create this new layer on top, but it still feels counter-intuitive because we're not used to thinking in these timeframes: https://www.straightdope.com/21341986/how-come-archaeologica...
On the latest Mazda 3 (2019+) it does seemingly only use the screen for info and back up camera. There's a big wheel in between the seats to move about the menus. I test drove one recently and it is very nice and intuitive.
Though I don't know if they followed through
> Like most modern Mazdas, the CX-5 uses an ultra-wide, non-touchscreen infotainment system.
Buttons and knobs for HVAC
https://www.autoguide.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/20...
HVAC is screen-independent. So is volume, thankfully.
I have a 2018 Mazda3 and I like the backup camera. But I can control the climate control and temperature with physical buttons. The seat warmers have buttons. I can control the volume with a knob or on the steering wheel.
The radio, unfortunately, is software. Seems like that much is unavoidable. But the small screen that is there is secondary to everything else I want to control while driving and I don’t ever need to use while driving. I’m typically using Apple CarPlay (or previously Android Auto) so if I do need to do something, I can use voice controls and at least keep my eyes on the road.
I don’t mind small screens, as you said, they’re not going away. What I don’t want is a giant screen that controls everything.
All the smart TVs I ever had lasted a long long time physically, but after a couple years they invariably started being noticeable slower than when I bought. The same happened to a guitar effects unit I had: changing patches became somewhat slower after update. And the battery of a wireless guitar transmitter I had now only lasts half the time it used to after the update. I honestly can say I dread updating almost any software today.
Absolutely does. You see this in console video games. As soon as online updates became possible, game-breaking bugs at launch became practically the norm, instead of incredibly rare (minor bugs were common enough before ["I AM ERROR"], sure, but game-breaking ones, while not unheard of, were rare). Charging $60 for a late-alpha-quality product.
If it was all executed well, it would be fine. The problem is, it isn't.
A public beta used to actually be a mostly-finished product, but is often used now as a 'preorder for early access' period. The last one I participated in was for Elder Scrolls Online, and it was kind of funny with how broken things would be. It wasn't as funny when the game launched with a few of those bugs still in place.
I try to avoid buying tech that can be updated, and tech that can connect to the internet in general.
Could this be a form of assisted obsolescence, in which a user who has owned a device for a few years is being subliminally urged to buy a new model?
These days the digitization of everything means that modern cars with physical controls usually have up/down buttons to change the fan speed or temp. So like the Ford Flex I rented recently, you can't tell from touching the physical control whether the fan is at max speed, so the sequence is, look on the console for the right button (because there are were a half dozen or so identical buttons next to each other), hold it down, while listening to the fan speed until it sounds like its stopped getting faster. Then when you want to slow down, one has to look/feel for the button, hold it for a second or two until it seems to be roughly at the right speed, try not to over/unershoot because its laggy/etc.
Some of this is the result of climate controls designed to hold a given temp rather than setting the fan speed directly, where the assumption is the fan will run at max until it reaches it set point. But that is annoying in a whole other set of cases, including the one where the car isn't doing a good job of circulating the air causing a hotspot on the sunny side/etc. On my wife's car I find myself pushing the climate controls to max cool when I get in because its trying to run in "silent" mode, or waiting for the AC to come up to full pressure and I want it to cool down faster, then I have to look at the controls to reset it back to something reasonable when it finally starts to reach a comfortable temp.
Haptic feedback is a core part of how humans process the world, and to remove it in favor of more frequent updates seems like a naive decision at best.
Flatness in phones works because we can use our full attention - which is also why car accidents happen when people use it while driving.
I very much agree with you, and would like to add that flatness in phones is a feature because today phones are pocket computers, and computers should be able to provide any arbitrary UI to function as such. Cars on the other hand are not a computer nor are they intended to function as one.
The fact that modern cars expose part of their on-board computer to the driver is no excuse to treat any capability that may be handled by said computer as something exclusively accessible via a touchscreen UI, especially when its something that is expected to be interacted with while driving (audio playback control, climate control, windscreen wipers, etc.). A touchscreen is fine for features that should not be done while driving and did not exist or were not easily accessible prior to the ubiquity of touchscreens in cars. For all intents and purposes those are computer features. However, subjecting anything that was previously available via mechanical interaction to it is an unacceptable regression.
I ended up giving this exercise to a lot of candidates. About 30% said they would project the UI onto the windshield.
It can act as a spring, a rotary encoder, a joystick, small detent, big detent, etc.
Putting a trimmed-down Android tablet into a car is cheaper for manufacturers, but it's bad for usability.
There's been some research done that finds touchscreens are more distracting than drink or drug driving:
https://www.ala.co.uk/connect/in-car-touchscreens-more-dange...
Apparently they wanted the Apollo style space-age interfaces with all the knobs and switches. Just, they didn't have the budget, and paint was cheaper.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/how-star-trek-artist...
> According to Michael Okuda, original Star Trek art director Matt Jefferies had practically no budget. "He had to invent an inexpensive, but believable solution," he told Ars. "The spacecraft of the day, such as the Gemini capsules, were jammed full of toggle switches and gauges. If he had had the money to buy those things, the Enterprise would have looked a lot like that."
> What could be simpler to make than a flat surface with no knobs, buttons, switches, or other details? Okuda designed a user interface dominated large type and sweeping, curved rectangles. The style was first employed in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home for the Enterprise-A, and came to be referred to as "okudagrams." The graphics could be created on transparent colored sheets very cheaply, though as ST:TNG progressed, control panels increasingly used video panels or added post-production animations.
In the 32nd century, tho, they use programmable matter because people like tactile feedback, it turns out.
(Aside, in the novels they came up with a reason for this: During the Earth-Romulan war they had to go partially low-tech to avoid the Romulan telecapture technology, a technology they'd just developed to remotely hack into and control enemy starships. Apparently the design kept for ~100 years up through TOS when they finally learned more about the Romulans.)
I've read this argument again and again but I wonder: How often do you people change the temperature in your car? Mine is set to 21°C since two years, never felt the need to change it.
People use cars differently. Your experience may not be universal just because it is consistent. Besides individual variation people also differ in whether and how many passengers they regularly transport and how many drivers share the car (e.g. my wife and I share one car and often drive together).
In my cheap pickup I have to constantly adjust temperature and fan speed. In my old German "ultimate driving machine", it's set and forget.
Soon:
“You need to return the call from your mom before the car will start for home.” Etc.
There are annoying devices which have a very small number of tactile buttons, and overload them with multiple functions. Monitors, watches, and clocks tend to be especially bad, because the user interface is not used much. So you get some tiny unlabeled buttons, and have to consult the manual to find out when you need a short press, a long press, a press and hold, a two button press, or a paper clip.
Another class of annoying devices is point of sale systems. Some say they're ready for your card but really aren't - the store's system and the credit card terminal are not sufficiently aware of each other's state. Some have a RFID sensor, but it's not clear where the sensor is. Or when it's listening. Some are just really slow. Probably because they're doing too much in a busy "cloud". However, POS systems do work better today. I haven't had a transaction totally fail to be completed in several years.
Though, as an aside, dials for temperature and fan speed are fine, but they also use a dial for changing which vents the air comes out of, which makes no sense. Also, the dials rotate infinitely, even though the ranges are finite. It means I still have to look to see what the setting is at, instead of being able to tell by feel.
By comparison, the 1992 Honda Civic climate controls are way better: https://i.imgur.com/r8JjjNw.png
Yikes. I know I'm just a nobody on the internet, but if I worked at Honda in any position of power, I would do everything in my power to get the people responsible for rubber-stamping this fired.
This is unacceptable for a modern vehicle.
But I agree that by objective standards, it's unacceptable.
They aren't. Your car may be a poorly designed exception.
The things you need to use need to do while driving can usually be done with controls on the steering wheel.
If you need visual feedback while using your steering wheel controls you can glance at the dashboard screen.
>using a touchscreen to adjust the temperature while driving is incredibly dangerous compared to a dial you can feel for without taking your eyes off the road
Your car is poorly designed. You can adjust the temp on MANY new cars without the touch screen with simple up down buttons and very clear temperature with its own always on display.
I understand this concern and opinion. I just wish that people who had this opinion realized that their car has a very modern voice interface that can reliably understand commands for temperature changes.
I know, I know, it's not the buttons you're used to, and these systems used to be very bad. But give it a shot sometime. I was impressed with Tesla's implementation, and I imagine the rest of the industry has caught up too. The best part is, it's the safest method of all, because it doesn't require taking either your hands or your eyes off the road. So if safety is your jam (and it ought to be!), this is really the best solution.
Unless... - The radio is playing. - The windows are open. - You're driving in heavy wind/rain/hail pelting the car or other driving conditions making an awful racket. - You don't drive a super expensive car, but one designed by marketing, bean counters, and summer interns. - Other people in the car are talking/conversing. - Other people in the car are sleeping (long road trips aren't uncommon for many). - You have an accent. - You don't speak a language supported by the car maker. - You have a speech impediment. - You have a physical disability preventing clear or any speech. - A software update breaks the system.
So what exactly is the benefit of moving to touch screens / voice control? I'm pretty sure physical buttons and dials don't suffer from any of those problems except for maybe physical disabilities, but at least with physical buttons/switches/dials, you or a third party could modify and/or tie into them to suit the specific needs of the disabled driver. Good luck getting the auto makers to let you modify their software for a similar purpose. I just don't see the point in moving from something that works well in the vast majority of scenarios to something that works measurably less well, with virtual no real benefit. Fine if voice control is in addition to physical, tactile interfaces, but the trend toward replacement doesn't fill me joy.
When it works -- and it works in most of the situations you mentioned (spoiler alert: I work in this space) because it's designed to -- it's safer than using any physical controls at all.
I get that adoption of the half-ass solutions is frustrating. But if we are truly targeting a future where being able to manipulate car features is to be as safe as possible, voice is the best way to do that, at least until we have a solution to beam thoughts directly to the car's computer.
Also, cue the skit about the thick scottish-accented guy trying to activate a voice-activated elevator...
Buttons, please. And only buttons.
The link for those wishing to watch and skip a google search:
So sure if you are willing to talk to your car like you're a CNN news anchor, then yes voice interfaces are great and far safer than touch screens.
Very new, expensive cars, sure.
Meanwhile, most cars are shifting at least some controls to touch, because they have to have a big screen anyway (backup camera requirements).
My family tried an Echo Auto for voice control in one of our cars last year, but we ended up disconnecting it.
We drive through hills and mountains often, and it was common for voice commands to be ignored or to have seconds in latency because of spotty mobile network.
It worked OK in cities, as long as you were not on an underground parking lot, which was a common occurrence.
Changing the temperature while driving on a good touch interface is trivial and incredibly far from incredibly dangerous. Besides with CC systems nowadays people look at the set temperature just as often. More advanced features like toggling internal air circulation do require a peek, but so do the buttons on most classical cars where you have multiple buttons in a row with unlit icons.
I still prefer buttons for the tactile feel and feedback, but the downsides you listed are pretty much made up.
The great benefit of a touch screen is unlimited update capabilities. It seems absurd to me that there are still cars rolling off the factory line that have unupdatable software in 2022. Your car is basically outdated and replaceable by something better within a year. That’s great for the manufacturers, but not for the customer. Compare that to a 3+ year old Tesla which works almost as good as a brand new one despite big upgrades to their internals, largely thanks to regular updates.
A car from the 70s, with proper care, would still work today just as well as it did when it was brand new.
In my view, a car should only require software updates in very rare circumstances. It should come with hardware and corresponding software that is fit for purpose and works. Most definitely I do not ever want any over-the-air updates. Requiring updates is a sign that the software was not properly engineered in the first place. I do not want that in my car.
If, for example, we are talking about upgrading the entertainment system, then it should just be made modular, like it used to be. Want to get an improved entertainment system with a better screen / better navigation system etc.? Take the old one out and install a new one. But the old one must keep working as well as on day one 20 years in the future, without any required software updates, even if the manufacturer goes bankrupt.
Or, maybe your personal experience doesn’t translate to everyone, and touch controls are indeed dangerously distracting for most people. What we need here is evidence (user studies) and not anecdote, but anecdotally I can say operating a touch screen without looking at it directly is not something I’m capable of doing, even for things I use often.
Looking away for even ~3s at motorway speeds is 100m driven without looking at whats in front of you, I'd say that's fairly dangerous
> The great benefit of a touch screen is unlimited update capabilities
It also introduces a single point of failure for any features on it, at least with physical buttons you stand more chance of operating other parts of the car if one breaks.
You say this like it's a good thing. It's bad enough when apps get non-optional "updates" that make the experience worse. I don't want my car interface to go to shit because a designed wanted to add more padding to everything.
More realistically though, this means cars will stop getting updates after a few years but the remote access system will still be there providing a juicy attack surface for hackers.