Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

My friend has a Tesla and they have 2 different seat/steering wheel/mirror presets they use before driving and I've watched them do it multiple times within a second. They tap a few times and everything automatically glides into place which seems super convenient, that would be 3x different manual motions in my Civic to move the seat, mirrors, etc (finding the steering wheel toggle is always a struggle).

The only thing that seems annoying about Tesla is the A/C is toggled via the screen.

Otherwise it has those same controls for changing songs/volume/assist on the wheel.

View on HN

This is far from a Tesla feature. Seat/wheel/mirror presets have been a thing on analog luxury cars for a long time.

Sure but the critique was about Tesla having a touch screen menu for it.

They tap a few times and everything automatically glides into place...

Every car I've owned in the last 10 years has had this feature, except it's tied to the key fob, so there's no tapping beyond unlocking the door. If they truly have to tap a few times just to get an electric seat into their saved position, then Tesla screwed that up (but I'm pretty sure Tesla ties those settings to the owner's smartphone/key).

They just bought a Tesla last week so idk if there’s an easier way to trigger the two different presets. I’m guessing two different fobs can toggle one for each person or something? Or the fob has a button to toggle between them?

My friends wife only drives once in a while so I doubt they have to change from the default preset often.

But I’m pretty sure it’s universally agreed on HN Tesla took the touch screen thing too far.

> 2 different seat/steering wheel/mirror presets they use before driving

This was a feature on a truck my dad bought in like 2002. It was mapped to physical buttons near the seat controls. Tapping a few times is a regression.

You don't even need to toggle any buttons. All those things can be tied to your key, or your phone if you use bluetooth as your key. Climate and A/C is also a preset, just set it to 70 on Auto and never think about it again.

Of course you could make physical buttons for presets as well :)

A lot of modern cars can be told to tie the presets to the key fob (it's a setting, not usually turned on by default).

If you open the driver's door with your key fob in your pocket, your presets are loaded and the seats and mirrors move to what you want. If your spouse opens the driver's door with their key fob, everything changes to their settings. If you have more than 2 drivers, you can buy extra key fobs at the dealer (expensive!!) and the car will keep track of settings for those too.

It's not just luxury cars that do this ;)

Sooner or later, those settings will not be tied to (or saved on) the fob, but your smart phone. Everyone has one of those in their pocket.

I found the car related announcements in Apple's most recent WWDC key note monumental in their reach. Many manufacturers signed on (notably except Tesla, Mazda, BMW) to support the next version of Car Play, which in a sense might reflect a surrender of the UX ownership:

> Ford, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti, Honda, Acura, Jaguar, Land Rover, Audi, Nissan, Volvo, Porsche, and more

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/06/apple-announces-multi-d...

They're currently tied to your phone (or NFC card if you use that) for most Teslas, since that's usually your key.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com