In the spirit of the present article, mechanical locks (especially for anything car related) are better. You can't hack into them. If you force or break them, you are forced to leave physical evidence behind that you did so. Not so for a Bluetooth or WiFi hack. This is why I will not enable my smart garage door opener. I don't even have pay by phone, because they offer an attack vector via NFC directly to my bank account. I carry credit cards instead.
Sure, carrying all those pieces of metal is annoying. I got a KeySmart to help mitigate this. I carry my car key in my wallet with my cards. It's worth it, and there are ways around the costs.
I think the tesla glove box is easier for a driver to open than a manual one. Two rapid taps & it's waiting for you
For me, the weirdest/most dangerous quirk is that the 'gears' (drive/reverse) are located on the right stalk, on several occasions I've toggled it in the wrong direction.
how do they work in small spaces when there's active noise around (small children screaming for example)?
Single droplet in the right spot => furious wiping. 100 droplets in the wrong spots => no wipe.
Climate - My preferred mode is to have the A/C on but not actually directed straight at me (so through the windshield vents), but auto also blasts through the front.
It would be interesting to see what the cognitive loads are between a physical movement and a set of voice commands. I remember reading a study that found talking to another person in the vehicle was the equivalent to having had a certain amount of alcohol. I'm sure there's a difference between voice.commands and conversation, but interesting nome the less.
Having an actual conversation with someone is much more distracting because you need to listen to them, preserve social norms, etc.
For whatever reason, my wife's voice does not do well with voice control (despite being an American with an average American accent). And I have a slight Scottish accent (pronounce my Rs and /hw/) which, despite being mild (lived in the US for nearly 40 years) still causes trouble with voice control.
- You do not have a generic north american english accent
- Are not speaking English and standard english.
- Have any sort of speech impediment
- Can’t remember what something is called or a specific command
- Want immediate feedback
Oh and they have a tendency to fail at random.
I have no skin in the game personally though. I just thought it would be interesting to see the figures in comparison.
For me, it never hears me. Doesn't matter if I talk loud or quite, fast or slow. I'm a native english speaker with no regional accent. Tesla also has no explanation.
Thing is, even if it worked for me, I'd still trade it for dedicated buttons. It borders on aggravating when my wife is driving to be mid conversation and have her suddenly yell out "wipers on".
Voice commands fail the universal design principle. I haven't tried Tesla's but I hate using voice commands and it's not an option for everyone. Not every language is supported and if you have a heavy accent or, like me, a speech impediment, even the industry leading software with training does not work most of the time. Pushing a button is quicker than speaking, especially if you have to say the same thing multiple times.
I mean literally 0 times, this is very US-centric (and maybe UK/Australia/NZ) way of thinking. So US car working safely only via voice command? That means it isn't working for me.
TBH I would never ever want such a critical piece as car commanded by voice. We are 4, no way car will reliably grok everything for it 100% of the time and nothing else (that's the bar to compete with for buttons, not a nanometer lower).
1. It will take multiple seconds to react even if the entire windshield is completely covered in water. Like zero visibility. I've had this happen on multiple occasions where water from the opposite direction is splashed over on my car. To manually start them I have to first toggle it with my left arm on the left stalk, then set it to full speed with my right arm on a touch screen. All while at high speeds and trying to perform an emergency stop / regain control. The manual toggle on the right stalk wipes one time, in the slowest speed. You also have to wait for this to finish before it will actually adjust the speed you selected on the touch screen.
2. When they're in automatic mode and I enter a tunnel they will turn off, which is good, but you'd imagine that Tesla with all these supposed self-driving capabilities were able to deduce that it will most likely be raining at the other side of the tunnel, and be prepared to turn them on quickly. They don't.
3. When I manually toggle a single wipe it seems to reset whatever algorithm they use to decide if the cameras are detecting that it's actually raining. I can't really see any reasonable scenario where I'm not also using windshield wiper fluids that this makes any sense.
4. It will randomly just start in glaring sunlight, often at maximum speed. To add insult to injury, if you're in a country that uses a lot of salt on the roads during winter it will then coat your entire windshield in it, causing it to speed up, making it progressively worse, until you can do the "toggle dance" with both your hands to disable it.
Recently Tesla decided that you can't turn off things like automatic windshield wipers and high beams when you want to use adaptive cruise control or similar features. I understand that it has to be able to detect cars in front of it, but I don't understand the rationale of forcing these features to be on automatic. Just let the drivers know they have to turn this on in situations where the car isn't confident it has enough light or visibility to do it.
They recently fixed some of the issues with high beams. You don't go around blinding everyone like you did previously all the time. But it will also just randomly turn off because it sees a sign or a parked car, or take 4-5 seconds to turn back on again. Making them practically useless. In scenarios where I have to use high beams it's often critical that they turn right back on after passing ongoing traffic. If I have them in automatic mode you can't toggle it back on again. You have to wait for it to figure it out. The type of headlights that Tesla now uses, often referred to as "matrix lights", are capable of selectively turning blinding off parts of the light beam, but for some reason they don't use this capability for anything other than making them write "Tesla" on walls in front of the car if you perform the "light show".
I bought a aftermarket product[0] that connects to the ODB-port that lets me overrides these things. And it lets me put programmable physical buttons to do things like toggle windshield wipers in the car. The concept of having user programmable buttons in the car is something I really like, and I think this is a concept that should be explored much more. All the buttons in a car should be programmable. There's more[1] and more aftermarket upgrades to Tesla's that adds capability like this, but everything is living on the whim of a guy who'll just terminate people's API access on Twitter, so there's that. The weird thing is, besides the windshield wipers, automatic high beams and some of the questionable choices Tesla has made, like removing ultra sonic sensors, I really love the car.
[0] https://enhauto.com/product/six-s3xy-buttons [1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ctrl-bar--4#/
Ah yes, the only other control method that manages to be worse than touchscreens. It works well if you speak absolutely perfect english, but for those of us for whom English isn't our first spoken language, you can kiss voice controls goodbye. Just a complete pile of trash, and incredibly frustrating when the car repeatedly misunderstands you.
Voice control goofs with my South African accent all the time...
Maybe it’s been improved with hardware upgrades? His is around a 2017 I think.
Next issue is the quality of voice recognition. It just sucks.
Oh, and wipers are a pure fucking BS in Teslas. They removed a $5 infrared precipitation sensor, and it STILL doesn't work well.
My most recent (23 Impreza) was the first with full-blownsies infotainment. It is just an absolute shitshow.
Slow, laggy, buggy, hard to understand menus. It randomly turns black and takes a minute or two to turn back on when starting driving. If you get in turn the car on, and put it into a gear without waiting for 20-30 seconds, the screen and therefore radio will be completely unusable for anywhere from 30 seconds up to five minutes afterwards.
It is just awful. Awful.
(15 years old is the magic number in MA where the car no longer has to pass emissions checks during inspection)
I wonder how long it will take for people to start selling jailbroken cars...
Sign me up!
This is a huge improvement over my 2008 Kia where I twist the stalk and don't have to look at it and I can keep my eyes on the road.
OTOH, my old Kia doesn't have Full Self Driving. Ah well.
Don't worry, neither does Tesla :)
But - at one point, when the shift was the right stalk, wipers were controlled via a switch, knob, or other mechanism either on the dashboard or on the left stalk.
So. It's not like changes haven't happened before.
Also my parents are older and something in their skin makes them routinely almost invisible to capacitive touch controls - heck I still have trouble from time to time getting displays to register reliably.
I loathe touch controls and will never buy a vehicle that only has touch controls. Luckily all my current cars are in excellent condition and I pamper the crap out of them. If I'm lucky I'll be able to be buried in them :p
Being able to toggle a single wipe, with or without wiper fluids is also something every single car I've ever operated has had. In addition to be able to control it from the stalk.
Not everything has to be reinvented. They walked back a little on the steering yoke, but for some reason they still remove the stalks and have touch buttons on the steering wheel. The one thing that everyone with the yoke categorically hated.
Disgusting.
I’d hate to try to operate vehicle controls with the same hit-and-miss interface. Give me tactile controls any time.
Compared to putting the steering wheel on the wrong side it seems like a minor point.
FWIW, ever car I've ever owned or driven in the US has left stalk for turn signals and right stalk for wipers. Headlights are often on the left stalk as well, but sometimes a physical on the dash (usually to the left of steering wheel).
Regardless, I have a strong dislike of touchscreen UIs in cars. Fine for the main radio, as long as I have physical controls on the steering wheel. But for open the globe box, or adjust the seat, or changing the wiper speed? GTFO, that's asinine.
There are ZERO constraints preventing them from still including physical buttons except for impractical hipster design philosophies. Want to have touch screen in addition to physical buttons? Knock yourself out. But I will never buy a car with pure touchscreen controls.