Tesla Model X Owner Has Had Enough of Minimalism, Adds Physical Buttons | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Model X Owner Has Had Enough of Minimalism, Adds Physical Buttons

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89 pointsthunderbong88 comments

"This is a pretty cool mod if you can't live without buttons in your car, but it obviously defeats the whole purpose of minimalism."

I don't even agree that the tablet is minimalism. The tablet interface is complicated, dense, and compact. That is not even what minimalism means, it's just the arrogant vision of one stupid futurist. (I know Musk is intelligent, but not nearly as much as he thinks he is, which is how I like to define stupidity. Perhaps I'm using it more as an opposite to "wise" than "intelligent"?)

Minimalism is about having less detail. I mean technically minimalism is an art movement, but using it in the modern sense, minimalist car UI design would have to remove options that control things precisely. So unless the Tesla's tablet interface has fewer capabilities than a traditional dashboard, there's nothing minimalist about it. In some senses, it's less minimalist than a good traditional dashboard because it adds a very stupid layer of complexity.

"We moved all the options into a screen. That's minimalism right?"

Sure, if your definition of minimalism is the physical aesthetic of the car when it's turned off and you don't need to interact with it in any way.

> minimalism

More like minimalism in terms of cost. A tablet can be used in many cars as an interface, the only cost is the different software for each model. No need to make molds and manufacture physical buttons and a console.

That’s the real reason why it’s done, that and fewer components to install/fix.

And making updates / fixes to said software is world's simpler/faster/cheaper than handling physical part recalls

"The occupant doesn't need to interact with it in any way" is, I think, an actual design goal for Tesla. Not that they'll get there, probably, but to have people get in, touch nothing, and get out at their destination does fit the evident dream.

Controversial Opinion: I think the tablet controls hidden behind extra menu buttons is just a stopgap until a GPT takeover of those controls.

I should just be able to talk to the car to do what I need it to do. That would be truly minimalist.

I doubt that's controversial if we generalize from GPT to computer-control. Tesla has probably been banking on FSD this whole time.

I’d much rather turn a knob than look to the passenger, say “hold on, stop talking so i can change the volume. car, turn down the volume… car, slightly turn up the volume” i find the noise level i want

Why would anyone design that? Only the things you're unlikely to use while driving should be strictly voice controlled

You can already do that in a Tesla. Or pretty much any car in that price category. These days the understanding and responsiveness could be described as “pretty good”. But still nobody uses it because as long as you are able-bodied, voice control is a shitty interface. It requires you to keep context in your head of what the machine is thinking about (instead of whatever conversation you were already having). It requires you to interrupt any conversation you were currently having. It requires the system to give asynchronous confirmation that it fulfilled your request after you have made the request, instead of clicking while you are turning a dial or pushing a button. Anything with fine grain controls requires a back and forth dialogue, such as the volume problem a sibling commenter described. Sure, a better text model might be more graceful at handling a statement like “my windshield looks too foggy” but that’s really a tiny marginal improvement over what we already have and nobody uses.

> Minimalism is about having less detail.

I think you’re onto something - the distinction between minimalism (philosophically) vs minimalistic design (the watered down version used colloquially). One is a way of living, another is cramming as many features as possible while keeping things intuitive.

I’ve given this a lot of thought - and I know some people hated buttons/love the sleek aesthetics without them. Perhaps the reasonable thing would have been to offer it at an add-on/option.

I am willing to bet this was debated internally. They likely dropped it in favour of the simple design to reduce costs/time/dependency and optimize the speed of manufacturing.

When it comes to one-bit interfaces, a capacitive touch surface which has to be calibrated to align with human ideas about which distances count as "touch" is maximal to the extreme.

> I don't even agree that the tablet is minimalism.

The aesthetic minimalism defeats itself as it adds untold complexity turning what should be a simple switch into a cartoonish Rube Goldberg machine. It makes me sad that we are filling cars and just about everything else with e-waste so manufactures can keep a leash on our wallets.

> "This is a pretty cool mod if you can't live without buttons in your car, but it obviously defeats the whole purpose of minimalism."

What IS the purpose of minimalism in this context, exactly?

There is no minimalism in this context, actually. So it's a meaningless question. Tesla just cut corners.

I vastly prefer the tablet -- so I guess it's the arrogant preference of two stupid futurists.

The dumbest "minimalism" was removing the turn signal stalk. That's how Teslas can keep their margins higher than the Detroit Big3. And no union helps Tesla I guess.

My Model 3 has a turn signal stalk, unless you're talking about something other than the lever you tap up or down to turn on your signal.

e: So apparently that's been removed in newer models. What a stupid fucking decision.

Model S a couple years ago https://jalopnik.com/lets-bitch-about-teslas-removal-of-the-...

Model 3 recently https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2023/09/08/tesla...

It has been removed on the "refreshed" M3

Lots of news articles about this - they dropped it from the latest iteration of the 3 a little while ago, after dropping it from the S and X a couple years ago.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2023/09/08/tesla...

They're probably referring to this example in the first paragraph of TFA:

> "the replacement of turn signal stalks with steering wheel buttons on the facelifted Model 3"

They removed them on the Model S and replaced them with capacitive steering wheel buttons when they launched the steering yoke

That's right up there with changing the purpose of a column in a SQL table, after a certain date.

I don't know which models or years they did it in, but they deleted the stalk on some cars, and moved the signals onto the touch area on the steering wheel.

Yeah the model x has a different design too https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modelx/en_us/GUID-1C20964...

I drove a Lamborghini Huracan a while back and whilst I loved the car, I absolutely hated that the turn signals were buttons on the steering wheel. It took me a while to even find them at first.

Exactly

Turn signal & horn moving to touch buttons on the wheel.. which move when you spin, is insane ergonomics

I got tired of how touch-centric the Model 3/Y was and saw the Model S/X as being slightly more traditional and then he goes and nerfs them too.

Crazy how much Tesla can get away with. That's the power of Elon. He could convince the desert to buy sand.

As an aside, desert countries do buy sand for construction because desert sand is not very good for anything.

Buyers doesn't seem to complain. In fact they seem to be call everyone else a luddite. Wonder why?

Buyers are too proud of their purchase to dare complain as that would undermine their purchase decision and get them made fun of.

Found a Toyota buyer

Horn is still on the airbag 'button' in all Tesla cars. They added the functionality back to the Model S ones that did not have it (apparently it needed some software update?).

LOL yes, exactly... The initial software had only a small button.. they had to get customer complaints to revert to you know.. having the center of the wheel honk the horn.

Why reinvent the wheel to make it so much worse?

> Turn signal & horn moving to touch buttons on the wheel.. which move when you spin, is insane ergonomics

Car's back in the day would have the shift up/down levers on the wheel like racing cars do today. Same issue but people still managed.

Do you mean gear paddles? No they didn't. Unless you mean F1 cars in 1995.

And 1995 is not "back in the day" anyway. It's not "back in the day" unless everything is in black and white!

Also gear shift paddles generally dont rotate with the wheel because they are attached to the column.

But as you can see, any negative statements re: Tesla.. results in 2005 era Apple fanboy levels of self delusion and bargaining.

I say this as a huge Apple fan and former Tesla owner (who might buy one again if the circumstances fit).

It's a thing to attach those paddles shifters to the wheel now instead of the column. Manufacturers now think you will be changing gears mid corners when the wheel is turned and think you will have a hard time locating the paddles if they were on the column. Someone needs to tell them in racing that's not how it's done.

People used to have horses instead of cars, people still managed.

If you're referring to column mounted prndl stalks, they don't turn with the wheel. Examples: Mercedes, older Model S, and lots of pickup trucks.

If you're referring to paddle shifters, ironically Ferrari (of wheel-mounted indicator buttons fame) mounts them on the column instead (again, not turning with the wheel). IMHO both are fine for street and track usage because manual shifting is most likely triggered when the car is (almost) straight. However this assumption does not apply to turning indicator controls, which by definition are used when you are, uh, turning or about to turn!

Precisely, Tesla went their own way for no reason other than cost.. it is objectively worse than their previous implementation, the mainstream implementation, and any of the competing less-standard implementations that Tesla defenders are grasping at.

There's a reason you don't put control buttons on moving parts.

It's like putting the elevator buttons on the door. Want to press your floor, please wait until the door shuts.. or lunge at it as the door moves. Want to hit the door close button.. sorry that's no longer possible.

Imagine motorized blinds where the button is on the blinds. Better get the ladder out when they are up & you want to bring them down.

Imagine a fan where the buttons were on the spinning blades, or the center rotor with buttons moved while on.

I don't understand the design decisions. You know he was heavily involved in some Tesla change when its something this dumb because no one can stop him.

On a really old car (Rolls Royce Silver Ghost from the 1920's): https://www.flickr.com/photos/kt/2837813095/

Those are not for the gears.

Those column-mounted paddle shifters also span a large radius on both sides, which combined with their quick steering ratio makes them effectively available at all times aside from when you're putting in a lot of steering lock – which is the one scenario you shouldn't be shifting aggressively anyways.

before you bark - have you tried using it for any meaningful amount of time?

Yes, I drove a model X on a road trip before.

Hated the yoke turn signal.

Part of what makes physical controls better on standard cars is that their diversity of size, shape and feel makes them easier to identify by touch. A knob on the left for volume, a button in the middle of the knob for radio on/off, a pair of buttons for scanning stations, etc.

My CRV has a strip of identical buttons along the side of the display, and I find them just bad as touch screen for all but the top and bottom buttons. I imagine this would have simular issues.

I was test driving recently and it's crazy how many cars have gone all in on the screen-only interfaces. Only the cheaper models still have the tactile haptic interfaces. Tesla is the Apple of the car world - they've been christened the virtuous God and thus things must be created in their image.

It's absurd. If someone loved Teslas, they'd go buy one. They're looking at, say, Hyundais, because they already said no to Tesla - so stop trying to be a knockoff.

I blame the managers for this. Copying tesla is the CYA move.

Thing is, Apple actually improved things by making phones (almost) all-touch. Touchscreen phones fucking rule, despite the challenges presented, because there are so many different applications you need to control on your phone that physical buttons would be pretty cumbersome and would always feel like a poor hack.

A car does not have the same functionality or purpose. Touchscreens are a distinct step backward when replacing radio and lighting controls. I'm not going to play Baldur's Gate 2 on a damn Tesla because I have to drive it, and if I didn't have to drive it in a world where self-driving was good, I'd just play it on my damn phone. (Actually I'd play it on my Steam Deck, because the physical controls are best-in-class.)

Right but that's not it with Apple. Things like multiple SIMs, microSD, headphone jacks --- early android phones even had micro-hdmi ports and removable batteries. They also used to be a more convenient form-factor before Apple started trending towards phablets. It also took about a dozen years before they would not easily crack because Apple, and thus the rest of the industry, insisted on a design that looked more like a fashion accessory than something you use on a daily basis.

Every move Apple did, basically the entire industry cloned. iPhones are readily available. If a consumer wanted it they'd get it.

Instead of the much vaulted diversity or thousand flowers supposedly blooming, you just get different brands of the same decisions.

This goes back to a Ries&Trout quote from the 90s: If your competitor is selling coca-cola, it's probably easier to start selling snapple than wannabe coca-cola.

But that's not what tech does. Instead, a designated leader is deputized king bullshitter and all the other players chase it. It was anathema to progress when Microsoft occupied that space in the 90s and it's still that way today.

> physical buttons would be pretty cumbersome and would always feel like a poor hack.

Except for typing text, of course, for which touch screens are worse. I no longer write email on my phone, because typing anything longer than a couple of sentences on glass is too frustrating. In that way touchscreen phones have regressed from the experience I used to have with a BlackBerry.

Back then we called them "crackberries" because you could do a lot on them. I mean we still have "crackiphones" today but that's a different meaning.

Yes, that's true. Typing actually sucks. Frankly I don't like typing even on a tiny keyboard like a Blackberry's either, but it's for sure better than a touch screen.

How would you fix it without violating the form factor?

I've seen lots of attempts, such as foldable and rollable along with butterfly keyboards (ibm style, not apple) that clasp to the back of the phone and use a novel layout, but nothing really great.

With current technology, nothing I can think of.

Ideally, a touchscreen that can alter its shape to create tactile "key" bumps overtop a software keyboard but remain flat by default.

I've seen prototypes of those but nothing production.

Here's one from 2009 https://www.wired.com/2009/05/prototype-display-combines-tou...

It's not actually a hard technology. I've felt a few of them in person at various things like CES and SIGGRAPH. They're a bit jelly-like but aren't bad.

I guess we'll have to hope Apple "invents" a revolutionary iButton feature for iPhone/2024 and then we'll finally get that because that's the Only Innovation Pipeline that exists

It makes me almost want to work for Apple on their iPhone team to get them to knockoff the bullshit

Minimalism in the sense of overuse of capacitative interfaces is purely a cost cutting measure, not aesthetic. Moving parts == things which go wrong and need a lot of tedious installation and testing.

Maybe the installation and testing is tedious, but I have far more confidence in my 2008's physical radio buttons than an iPad glued to the dashboard. The only thing that's every gone wrong is the volume knob getting loose, and it's a minor annoyance which - crucially - doesn't affect any other functionality and could be easily replaced if I cared.

Best of all, I don't have to take my eyes off the road to use them. Touchscreen controls are, frankly, idiotic in my opinion.

Capacitive buttons aren't just on touchscreens. It is now very widespread for cars to use capacitive touch sensors behind static labels. They're reliable in a way that touchscreens aren't and at least have fixed locations and functions, but the lack of tactile feedback still makes them an abomination.

Touch screens still go bad all the time, just like buttons. Do they just put touch screen in cars and not test them? I don't see how a row of 12 buttons is any more difficult to test than a touch screen.

If you are a “passenger” sitting in a car being driven by Tesla, the massive screen makes a lot of sense.

Tesla would get more credit for their approach if full-self driving were more complete - and I believe Tesla thought they would be further along with FSD than they are.

As it stands, driving a car with a massive screen is annoying and relatively dangerous.

> I believe Tesla thought they would be further along with FSD than they are

Well Musk has been promising that it will be fully ready next year for the last decade. Which sounds like a horrendous expectation to work under as an engineer.

> Tesla thought they would be further along with FSD than they are

That's because they have either been lying or willfully ignorant of how insanely hard FSD is. Their engineers know what the physical challenges are, but I don't know about leadership.

Touch screens are cheap and lazy design. Worse, it's more dangerous because physical interfaces have tactile feedback so you can use them to some degree without looking at them. It's more dangerous too.

On a phone it makes sense because of limited real estate and mixed utility.

The real reason car manufacturers do it is to push design problems into being software problems. Sucky UI? We can fix it in a software update! We can ship sooner too because we can update later. This is cheaper and faster than having to think through the UI/UX before you build it.

I don't know anyone who likes driving a giant iPad.

I think an interesting approach might be a hybrid system that works with both touch and physical buttons. The bottom of the screen could have some generic buttons that could be used to navigate the interface eyes free with some optional audio feedback. For example, I'd imagine a row of buttons like in the OP where maybe the left two buttons are up and down. Depending on the context, the buttons do different things but those two always mean up and down although up and down might mean volume up/down, fans up/down or menu scroll up and down. The screen could then give huge display feedback for those things that wouldn't require much if any driver attention.

The nice thing about the touch is that it allows for a giant display that requires less visual attention when used in conjunction with buttons. It also gives flexibility to add (hopefully inessential but pleasant) functionality or fix interface design mistakes after the fact. It just shouldn't be the primary interface while driving. Like I have no problem with the audio system having an eq app with just a touch ui because I probably don't need to adjust eq when driving, unlike say volume which ideally would just be a physical knob or rocker.

But yes I agree that most current touch interface are horrible lowest common denominator solutions. They are easyish to learn but tend to require significant visual attention which is obviously poor design for something that is used when driving.

Nothing makes me more upset, as a builder/tinkerer, is when I spend money on a expensive/luxury technical product that I have to iterate on to make it acceptable for basic functions.

Personally I consider luxury items to be inherently broken and avoid them at all costs. They're just expensive, almost never of any actual quality. Status symbols and whatnot.

When you buy something expensive that has lavish marketing, you can be pretty sure most of the difference in price went to marketing.

The article is pretty light on details and pretty heavy on empty phrases like "To each their own, we guess. Like it or hate it, owners are free to personalize their vehicles". As a Hacker News reader, I'm mostly interested in how this "hack" works, but the article unfortunately doesn't offer any details on that (ok, at least they warn you that the video is in Mandarin, so a few seconds saved there).

Agreed, the article is more like throwing a lit match into a barn than educating a good hacker. I think there's some good discussion happening here about design but on reflection this whole thread probably doesn't need to exist because nobody is learning how to hack their Tesla's dashboard.

Yeah, how does it work!?

There has been a set of buttons available for a while from a popular aftermarket vendor (https://abstractocean.com/products/s3xy-buttons) that interface through the OBD2 port. There is a good amount of reverse-engineered information out there on Tesla CAN bus messages (e.g. https://github.com/joshwardell/model3dbc).

If you have some coding and electronics experience, it'd pretty much be a matter of gluing some libraries together. Probably easier than gluing the physical buttons to the car.

Almost certainly via wiring into the CAN bus. There's quite a few aftermarket addons that require you to run a line to the internal CAN bus to have certain things function (like popping the trunk, for instance).

I've also seen some Bluetooth based ones that require using your phone, which then relay to the Tesla app to perform functions. Not sure who's using those quite frankly, seems like a bad solution. Also this panel appears to do thing you cannot do in the Tesla app, so I don't think it's using that method.

Not sure why they haven’t used tactile vibrations on the screens like iPhones but stronger and more accurate plus finger hovering sensors to indicate/enlarge the button focus when your fingers get close. Part of hardware buttons is getting an instant feed back that you’ve switched it without looking.

Because those things cost money. Tesla went with the touch screen as a cost cutting measure.

I don't think the screens are even "automotive grade" - not meeting temp and vibration standards that it will definitely experience in a moving vehicle exposed to the elements. This is how Tesla was able to use such a large screen for so long while other manufacturers have yet to catch up.

That's the older Model S screens (the vertical ones). As far as I know all the current models are automotive grade.

Driving a 2016 Land Cruiser and then immediately going to drive a Model 3 right afterwards was shocking. The Land Cruiser ergonomics were so good and everything was physical and I didn’t have to think about much (except for the air conditioning which is a pain in the ass — and is touch screen). The Model 3 made me do work and I noticed myself talking to it a lot while I hunted around for stuff and looking at the screen a LOT while operating the car. It’s a good touch screen but touch screens without haptics are a broken paradigm. Software defined cars demand them I guess, but it is something I absolutely hated about the Tesla. I can’t speak for others, but for me the gigantic touchscreen was a net negative and put me off the car.

I love the marketing:

Let's make the most uncomplicated to manufacture design possible, with basically a touch screen, and we can design the software forever, and call it "minimalism". Meanwhile it is not minimalistic or simple.

As it has been said in many contexts before "make things as simple as possible, but no simpler"

I chose a Mazda as my car because of the physical knobs they put in to control the infotainment, I absolutely swear by it, and I love it. It is far less distracting then trying to tap a spot on a screen while my hand is shaking due to small bumps on the road while I'm desperately trying to not look away from the road itself.

Cars are the best example of how decades of usability tests, feedback and research can evolve the UX of the driver tremendously. How many things we do at the car without even looking at the controls (because we need to pay attention to the road).

Then comes the industry "foreigners", ignore everything that was learnt and put all controls behind the screens "because we need to be minimalist".

Now the UX inside the car is worse because drivers need to look to the screen (and away from the road) to find the AC control (I had a though time finding it on a Polestar the other day).

IMO while capacitative surfaces are often bad design for car controls, it's worth noting that it's a strong correlation but not absolute.

It's technically possible to make a capacitative button (A) always in the same spot and (B) textured and (C) gives audio/haptic feedback when activated and (D) isn't activated by the merest exploratory brush.

Satisfy those "do it by touch" requirements, and the kind of switch underneath becomes an implementation detail.

I would have maybe kept my Tesla if it came with this! The software update in December 2021 that moved the buttons for features like the defroster that I had grown accustomed to over 2 years of use was maddening.

Could someone please explain how this works? How do the physical buttons control the touchscreen?

There's a receiver that connects to the OBD2 port. Example: https://abstractocean.com/products/s3xy-buttons

Oh I see, thank you.

I wasn't able to find a link to the original video or where I could get a similar device. Anyone able to help?

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