Slapping a tablet everywhere and letting the code monkeys figure it out is probably cheaper than making various knobs and buttons.
I dread the day I have to get a new car. Even Subaru, who are usually behind the curve, have gone all touch screen.
Then the makers try to minimize costs by having the screen do everything.
I’d like to say I’d pay more for real buttons, but I’d never buy a new car.
personal anecdotes, but the vast majority of me being a passenger to someone else's driving, they all used their mobile device for GPS. even the couple of cars i owned that had a nav system, the GPS came from the mobile device. it required their app to be installed to input the destination, making the internal unit just a second screen for your mobile.
I suspect most people don't use most of the native manufacturer apps even if they sort of need to provide them. Aside from rarely changing some settings, my touchscreen is mostly just a screen.
Granted, he took a long time getting a smart phone because they weren't allowed in his secured office, while dumb phones with no camera where allowed longer. On the other hand, he's also automated his home (a few times with updates), so it's really the one weird outlier.
Nowadays, there's a few companies that actually seem to do a decent job of GPS in the car itself: Mercedes has a good tech in their new EVs that seems smooth. Android automotive (not auto) cars have built in Google maps such as Polestar, the new Cadillac EVs, and some other Chevy products do well. Although it's not much different than just having an android phone with android auto. And, of course, Teslas own system which is all inhouse.
There's little reason to use a phone in the traditional phone holders if you own one of those cars.
Mostly, I just use my phone. It's simpler and faster. My cars are too old for carplay/android auto, and my experience with android auto was that it was worse than the phone in a clip or a cupholder, but carplay seems nice. For longer drives to unfamiliar places, I'll put the address in the car too, sometimes the phone gets tired of listening to GPS.
I'm sorry, what?
GPS seemed to work ok on the return trip. And I was getting an LTE signal for most of the drive too (gets pretty spotty at my friend's house, but I was streaming music when the GPS stopped, and that kept working)
Sorry, I don't have a debugging tale here; almost all of my excursions into figuring out why an Android device is doing something wrong leave me wondering if the device is doing anything right, and usually without any more insight into the original problem. Not going to try to do it, unless it's important, and probably not on a vacation.
i wish i could be more like you
Easy to set up and keep updated. But... I'm not driving 70mph when I'm trying to dim the living room lights.
Even the flappy paddle gearboxes still have a weakness, namely they dont have a clutch peddle to dip when the traction control/esp decides to have a nightmare and ends up trying to cause accidents, where oil, ice or snow removes the grip and temporarily freewheeling is the fastest way to get the vehicle back under control before reengaging the drive system.
And these tablets like displays ruin the night vision, I actually liked the old Saab displays where you could press a button and it switched the lights off to loads of buttons and gauges for night driving.
Cars have got noticeably worse with these tablet displays.
Is it though? It's not like they have to reinvent the button each time. Buttons that last a decade or three have already been designed.
I wish dealership margins were that thin.
Cars are much more expensive post pandemic than pre-pandemic.
Dealership margins, as I recall, are 10-20%, also not great.
Mfg margins have come up during the pandemic, interestingly, but historically have been very low[1]:
> While estimated aggregate industry operating profit margins are 6 to 7 percent (Exhibit 1), large variations in profitability exists across companies. For instance, some European niche, luxury companies make double-digit margins more akin to those of high-tech players, while mass-market (or value-focused) OEMs make 4 to 5 percent.
[1]: https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Automot...
I’d guess it’s an ease of design and manufacturing decision when you can eliminate so many buttons so easily.
Aren't they? I had a vague impression it happened. And of course, some McDonalds' locations charge you something absurd for an extra ketchup packet.
That applies only to ketchup packs, though - they always charge for sauces. The only place I ever got sauce containers by handful for free was in a KFC in Shenzhen, China.
source: came from a farming family. All income goes back into the farm and we continually buy new circles.
Automotive grade controls are pretty expensive (it's not unreasonable to expect them to be operative from -40 to 140f, UV resistant, dust and vibration resistant, etc.), and as with all hardware, BOM cost is king. Even if the button can be stolen from an existing design, it still costs real money, and adds manufacturing labor costs.
The button then has to be tested, and kept in stock for service purposes. What if the button has silkscreen printing on it? It might be the same hardware button for the traction control and the trunk open button, but now they are different SKUs because the label is different.
So let's say I can eliminate 10 $1 buttons (that is an extraordinarily cheap button) by moving functionality to a touchscreen that is going to be in the car no matter what. I reduce the BOM cost by $10 per unit. That's a bunch of buttons that also aren't going to have warranty issues either. The wiring can all go straight to the head unit in a single bundle as well, and there are ten less connections for the assembly line to make. If I do that on a popular platform like the Corolla selling 750k units per year, I have just reduced expenses directly by 7.5 million, plus the cost of install, and simplified the supply chain.
By having a huge touch-screen instead of knobs there is much less need to synchronize between the teams because the inheritor design team just needs to place the screen somewhere. And it's easy to imagine that it can significantly shorten the time to delivery and the costs.