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Comment by brushfoot | Hacker News Reader

I think it's a moot point.

One of the features of modern cars is conversational UIs (CUIs) that enable a truly hands-off approach from controls altogether, both touchscreen and analog.

I hardly use my car's touchscreen except for discoverability, and definitely not while driving. Speaking to the car is easier and more efficient:

- "I'm cold"

- "Turn on the windshield wipers"

- "Navigate to work"

CUIs have evolved to the point where controls are generally a hindrance to consumers and manufacturers both. Why include expensive, breakable analog controls when you can give the driver a better user experience hands off.

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> Turn on the windshield wipers

"Can't open the trunk with the car in movement."

Clicking a button is orders of magnitude faster than casting a spell. Voice controls fail more often than analog controls break. You do not want a delay to turn on your wipers when you are at 60mph and hit a sudden localized rainstorm.

> Clicking a button is orders of magnitude faster than casting a spell.

It depends on how many buttons there are and how familiar the driver is with them. I like not having to remember/look for the positions of analog buttons on the dash.

> Voice controls fail more often than analog controls break.

I haven't had a voice control failure, but any system can be designed with varying degrees of reliability. CUIs have a lot to offer in the way of safety and convenience.

> It depends on how many buttons there are and how familiar the driver is with them. I like not having to remember/look for the positions of analog buttons on the dash.

If it's your car, this problem will solve itself for you in short order. There's not that many functions that a dashboard needs to do that you won't familiarize yourself with it in a month or two of driving.

Look to a computer for an example, some shortcuts that you probably use on your keyboard are downright arcane, but because you use it so frequently it's probably natural.

Not everybody wants to talk to their devices? I think they are fine to have, but there always need to be a fallback to a manual hands on input.

I agree with this. Voice control fitted to cars is pretty terrible still. It interrupts playback, takes a long time to resolve an input and takes even longer to repeat it back to you before doing it. Siri makes this a little bit better, but she's not been given access to the AC APIs of my car.

Buttons are the way. Or those cool switches from fighter jets... I'd like to see those in a car.

> Voice control fitted to cars is pretty terrible still. It interrupts playback, takes a long time to resolve an input and takes even longer to repeat it back to you before doing it.

I can't speak to all cars, but this isn't the case for Tesla. It's a very good user experience. It may be inconsistent across manufacturers right now, but as that evens out I don't see a barrier to more adoption.

I wish I liked the way they look and that giant touch screen. But I don’t, so I have to suffer my disobedient voice control.

Alternatives are important for accessibility, but I don't agree that they need to be available to all drivers at all times. The idea of going back to panels of analog controls that I have to reach for and memorize the positions of just isn't appealing. They break, the paint fades, they chip. CUIs are easier and safer in general.

"turn of windshield wipers" What speed? I know intermittent. I don't know what the fast speed is called, I call it crazy wipers, I suspect the manufacturer's don't call it that. And that's just a 3 speed wiper, some have more speeds.

"I'm cold" well if you say 'goodnight' to Alexa, she says goodnight and carries on with the music which isn't what I want. I can imagine "I'm cold" being the same, and even if the car does get the hint what do they set the temp to?

"Navigate to work" I know where my work is, I mostly want to navigate to places I don't know, and are therefore not in the memory. So it's "car navigate to some street, city X" "Would you like 1 some street, 2 some street, 2a some street...."

Or "Do you mean some street or sum street or summ street?"

And that's assuming they know the pronunciation, the locals of Slaithwaite can't agree on the pronunciation. And theres many places pronounced weirdly.

How do you know what you can say? Do you keep a separate vocabulary, like you would when you talk to a pet?

Start with telling it what you want in natural language. Conversational AI is good at understanding variations like "I want, " "I need," "please," etc. The touchscreen can help you discover what features the car supports, and those should have CUI commands that are easy to intuit, which you can then use while driving.

Sorry, but this sounds like a nightmare to me even if it worked well, but the actual quality and robustness of CUIs is nowhere near what you imply. In any case, there’s about 0% chance any car computer is going to do the right thing if I say “I’m cold”. And in no world is saying “turn on the windshield wipers” a better user experience than turning a knob within easy reach, especially if you are listening to anything or if you have other people in the car.

> the actual quality and robustness of CUIs is nowhere near what you imply

I don't agree - I've been very happy with my car's CUI. I can't see going back to analog controls or touchscreen. There just aren't that many commands that I need to execute while driving, and the CUI understands them all.

Mine triggers when I say my kid's name with different vowels and number of syllables. I had to turn it off.

If I have to press a button to make it work I might as well press the button that does what I want.

It seems like a good idea for adjusting the climate control but I apparently didn't pay enough and it replies something along the lines of "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

So far it hasn't offered a monthly subscription to enable that feature.

My car has full touchscreens and can't understand even the most basic voice commands. Ask it to navigate to the town of Drachten (NL) and it's likely to route you to some village in Serbia or just say "i don't understand". It's utterly useless.

Until it doesn't work, then voice is the worst.

Let's see:

- you never drive with your windows open?

- you never drive with passengers that you talk to?

- you never listen to music in the car?

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