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Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if any of you that consistently spew all this hate for touchscreens own a new-ish Tesla. I was skeptical at first but it's far better than the myriad of buttons and knobs in any car I've had before. The combination of automation and voice commands cover most of the cases where you'd be fiddling with controls. And interacting with the display really isn't all that difficult either, especially when you've got lane keeping on, where you can afford to look at it for a couple seconds.

There are also physical controls on the steering wheel for the most used functions, but they aren't absolutely necessary.

I'm also curious about how they accounted for bad UX in this study. They didn't just test Teslas, but also other cars with touchscreens. My experience is that the touchscreens in other cars are smaller, slower, more janky and have worse UX in general.

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My family has two cars - a 5 year-old Subaru and a relatively new Tesla. The Subaru has great physical controls for pretty much everything. It has a slightly janky touch-screen for changing audio sources (with nice physical buttons on the wheel for pause/skip/change channel). The touch screen is a little frustrating to use, but I rarely need it. I can imagine I'd be pretty annoyed if it was required for car functions or climate control. But the buttons and knobs are great.

The Tesla touchscreen is very good. I would be annoyed if I frequently had to use it while actually driving, but I don't. Everything in the Tesla is pretty much automatic, including climate control, windshield wipers, lights, and door locks. It's easy to use the touchscreen to raise or lower the temperature a degree - that's the main thing I find myself doing while driving that requires the screen. Everything else I do has a physical control on the wheel. The one frustrating exception is defog which the latest update put behind a menu. I have them shortcutted on the home screen but it is obnoxious.

I think having a big screen is nice. It does require thoughtful UX design and a few physical controls. Tesla probably errs a little too much on the side of automation + no buttons but it's generally well done. As driving becomes more automatic I think it really is less important to have tactile controls and more important to have screen real estate.

Totally agree. There is so much less interaction required with the controls (whether hardware or software) with a Tesla. I also have a relatively recent Audi Q7 in addition to my Tesla and holy crap the physical dials and buttons are horrible to use in the Q7 compared to the Tesla M3. With the Tesla, all my settings such as my last listened to Spotify station, seat position, auto wiper/lights preferences, etc is saved and I never really have to interact with the screen unless I need to enter in a map destination.

Even for map destinations, I always use voice control. Don't remember the last time I entered an address manually - the voice recognition is nearly flawless.

I drive a Tesla and to be honest I would appreciate a few more physical buttons, e.g. for climate control and seat heaters.

But the touch screen is not as bad as it sounds like. The trick is to grab the screen by the edge and use the thumb to tap it precisely. It can even be done withou looking.

Steve Jobs said it best in 2007. They have all these phones with full physical keyboards. But what happens if three months down the line you get a new brilliant idea on how to improve the interface? You can’t add more buttons! The devices have already shipped.

I agree, but I think it's more a problem of the latest software update rather than a fundamental issue with the touch screen. Older versions of the UI had climate control and seat heaters always up front and in the same location on the main screen. They recently buried these in version 11, which was a huge mistake. I think they believe that climate and seat heaters are better automated and don't need user interaction but I don't know if that's true.

I've owned a Tesla for nearly 3 years and I love the touch screen and the lack of dashboard buttons. From a purely design point of view, buttons/switches/dials, IMO, really make a dashboard look like an ugly mess. I get the heebie jeebies whenever I drive my wife's older Honda. As others have pointed out just about everything can be done through the steering wheel buttons and/or voice control.

I'm wondering about the test though. "the drivers had time to get to know the cars and their infotainment systems before the test started". They tested 12 cars, how many testers? How long did they really take to get to know the system? I know for me, when I'm driving a new car I feel like I just stepped into the pilot seat of a plane. It takes me several days to get comfortable with any car. In addition, they only performed 4 tests which could have easily been memorized prior to driving. One test being "Reset the trip computer" give me a break, who does that and while driving??

Does safety improve as length of ownership increases? Does age make a difference? Do people who grew up with touchscreens fare better than those who didn't?

Well that's partly sampling bias. You're not likely to own a Tesla if you hate the touch controls. My wife and I went through the car buying process this year and test drove a Model Y. I was pretty meh on the touch interface and my wife hated it. We ended up with a non-Tesla EV.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Like I said I was skeptical at first. There's also a bit of acclimating to a new way of interacting with the car - e.g. trusting it to turn on the lights and wipers for you, as well as learning how to use the voice controls. I don't think it's biased to say that automation and voice are more ergonomic than buttons and knobs while driving. The screen is mainly used for visualization in the Tesla. The navigation experience is so much better than other cars.

Can confirm, drive a Tesla and don’t need any extra buttons the screen is fine thanks.

Yeah, I have no issue with my Model Y.

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