Volkswagen Will Bring Back Physical Buttons in New Cars
insideevs.com
insideevs.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38686967 17 hours ago, 211 comments (thedrive.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38678853 1 day ago, 52 comments (afronomist.com)
God I hate touchpad or touch based controls or whatever the correct term is, even on mobile phones they are almost always terrible to use.
The big difference with a phone/tablet is that you're looking at the screen when using it. That's fundamental to the interaction experience. Cars are _completely_ different: a driver should be looking at *the road*.
Touchscreens as the main control interface for cars were a stupifying dumb idea right from the start. It's as if the alphageeks burst through the design studio doors, shunted the ergnonomicists aside, and proclaimed anything physical was neanderthal and out of date. Behold, the emperor has new clothes! "We can do all this in SOFTWARE, and it's adaptable, we can use clever colours, and look if you just tap this menu three times and slide along here, YOU CAN BOOST THE BASS IN THE RIGHT REAR SPEAKER! Show me how you do THAT with your Victorian buttons!".
Fair play to Mazda for leading the resistance movement here - and good to see VW actually listening and doing something about it. With any luck, touch screen car control will suffer the ignominious death it deserves.
Few buttons and a wheel - all you have to go through the journey to type your start and destination points, amount of people, age, discounts, etc.
for specialized repetitive control, doesn't seem to make much sense to me - certain functions in car, will be super repetitive, AC control, speaker volume, etc.
even for phones this logic applies, volume buttons are still physical
this means that something like navigation is better of with voice/touch (coz who would want physical letter keyboard there) ... but to pull down a window? yeah, hell nah with touch
More like already out of date. There’s no chance that any system that doesn’t play Spotify is a match with my phone. Or any navigation that isn’t based off Google Maps. And so on.
If I have to connect my phone, they already lost.
What if car dashboards were BYOD? A standardized API and connector, and you could have a choice of aftermarket UI -- screens, buttons, knobs, whatever. You could get used to it and bring it with you for rentals or to your new car.
You really don't need a lot of physical buttons for a car UX to be safe. And each button shouldn't need a separate cable. That button pad can be the exact sam N buttons for every model, every trim, and regardless of which side the steering wheel is on. The design with "flying" screens in front of the dashboard feels modern but it's of course a cost saving, which can be copied for the button pads. And use a single cable to the button console. I can't see how it's a massive production headache or cost if it's built that way.
It's not 1989 you don't need 2 wires per button and 9 buttons for favorite radio stations.
Then there is the thing I never understood: we can't use a phone while driving but we can use the touchscreen of the car, which is basically the same thing. Actually I understand why we can't (or we don't want to) piss off car makers and all their money, but yet where is the logic in that from the point of view of safety?
That's why (at least where I live) you CAN use a phone if it's stuck on a holder. Because otherwise it would make no sense because it's just a touch screen right next to the screen where you change radio stations.
> I switch radio channels with a wheel on a stick on the steering wheel, change volume with two buttons there.
I think all cars have 20 buttons on the steering wheel these days, which is great. You don't need 1 button per radio station you just need a 4 way thing for next/prev and vol up/down. And since it's so few buttons why not have them under the thumb.
Are you sure? I am all in favor of physical buttons where you need quick access, for example steering wheel and climate control. But touch screens are quite awesome to simplify access to more complicated settings. I hate it when you have four buttons to navigate through nested menus.
It certainly is nice being able to switch to one of a handful of stations with just one press, though. Why not have that?
Then physical buttons/controls for common things (volume, wiper, etc.), and a general knob for navigating things on the screen.
I'm not sure why 48V specifically makes this feasible, though it definitely makes it more efficient (and lighter). I watched a video on it a couple weeks ago and it made sense to me then, now I'm not sure why you couldn't make a 12V network. Maybe it's just more expensive.
Apparently the Cybertruck is the only or one of the very few cars that have done this.
High power things scattered around the car often can take advantage of Ethernet. things that cannot get a lot of power can get by on lower bandwidth data buses.
If the car didn't have car play I'd refuse to take it as it's clearly faulty. I can't remember the last time I had a rental car without those features.
plug in usb
press "ok"
method, no matter what the manufacturer.
Sometimes I have to press the "carplay" icon on the screen, but it's quite rare
The bigger problem is that some cars are USB-C and some are USB-A. I have both cables in my bag though.
I don't bother with wireless car play as my phone always needs charging anyway.
I have to select CarPlay on the Honda I bought last year so it can't be that rare.
all the big touch screens don't really support multitouch and the volume of navigation versus music is different/deafening/unconfigurable and the waze carplay app is garbage
i.e., I always just use my phone on a holder + connect via the car's bluetooth since I'd rather have one good device/screen with proper audio since bluetooth works much better sadly...
Can't wait for the post-mortem analysis in 10 years.
Sorry that is not something i am going to cry for GM over
However, I would prefer to plan my navigation, browse settings, configure the car, and peruse statistics on a nice snappy capacitive display UI. Please do keep/build that.
In a Tesla, these things are in a predictable place physically and the controls respond quite nicely. I can use the scroll buttons and other buttons on the yoke to control these and various other things without taking my eyes off the traffic. There's even good voice control for things like navigation (“take me home”).
However, I've encountered some challenges with the blinker controls, particularly when the yoke isn't upright. I've gotten more accustomed to their placement and can usually find the right spot instinctively, but occasionally, they either don't respond or I press the wrong area. It's a minor but noticeable annoyance. I'm thinking about adding tactile stickers to the wheel to help identify these spots more easily.
The blinker control placement confused me: how do you change the indicator direction when turning off a roundabout? With a stalk it's just a press down with your little finger, but surely with buttons that move with the wheel it's harder?
Or is the yoke on a Tesla so sensitive that you don't turn it far enough round for it to be an issue?
That seems to be the intended direction longer term. Cybertruck is designed with drive by wire and very sensitive steering at low speed. I have some doubts about it, but if it works well, it may eventually end up in the other cars too.
The yoke is upside down every drive for me. Just getting out of the driveway it's going to be upside down.
The yoke is fine doing extreme turns, my hands find it and I can turn it all ways very quickly multiple turns. I'm not concerned of “extreme situations” or anything like that.
But when I want to "blink right" it's a real fucking problem to figure out where exactly on the yoke I should exert sufficient pressure. Unless the yoke is upright and I'm “holding it right”; as it were :)
And maybe less of an issue in Cybertruck with steer by wire.
Driving a recent Model S.
Selecting the temperature can be done on the wheel, or with a single press on the screen in a predictable spot.
Same with media: play, stop, volume, next, previous.
Other adjustments, yes, those may need a modal interaction. Much like physical dials. I would slightly prefer physical dials, but not something I would need to adjust during drives almost ever, so I don’t see a problem here.
And the media controls are a mess that changes periodically with updates.
I worry HN has gotten itself into an "alternate facts" mode again with this subject, where the hyperbole has led people to assume facts that don't exist. The real world is always more boring than the most upvoted comment.
Being a flat pane of glass, I would worry that you need to use hand-eye coordination to locate the button, whereas with a physical button you can feel for it without looking.
And even if it's always visible on the touch screen while driving, I still need to look at the touch screen right?
My main use case for climate controls is turning recirculation on/off when i come up behind a clunker where there's no space to overtake and need to recirculate so I don't suffocate. That is not a good time to take your eyes off the road, except maybe if you're Elon Musk.
Also, on the one Tesla I've driven i couldn't understand how the turn stalk (it still had a physical turn stalk, I believe Musk has apologized for not removing that one physical control from the car) worked. It only signaled while i was holding it when i wanted it to stay signaling and the reverse. Useless in any intersection that's not at 90 degrees. Designed in California :)
A few years ago I had a rental (can't remember the make but I think it was korean) where you had to move a slider. Doing that is of course extremely easy while driving, especially if the manufacturer forgot that touchpoints should be perspective-corrected for the drive (every point was way to the right of where I saw it).
- climate control, driving modes, gearbox etc... are all physical buttons. As is entertainment if you count the steering wheel buttons.
- radio, navigation phone and some other non essentials are touch screens (there are two of those)
- car parameters and display are controlled by buttons on the steering wheel and displayed at the display unit
As it should be. Only thing I miss is buttons for the touch screen controls, but then the screen is reactive enough, even with gloves, so it is not really an issue.
My last car purchase it was not easy to find a newer vehicle without that junk. I see such things as signs of low quality. I don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on anything connected to some cheap Chinese touch pad. It ruins the entire experience.
If I wanted navigation I’d use my phone. Any car I have to configure, I will loath deeply.
The car with a touch screen has buttons to select between volume, radio and carplay and works fine. Cruise/Limit is a button on the steering wheel, and there's a roller for volume, changing tracks, etc.
Heating/aircon/defroster is a dial/physical buttons in both cars, same with things like hazzard lights, internal lights etc. Handbrake is a real handle, not a random button you hope is working.
There is no need to touch the touchscreen while driving, but having a map there is quite handy, certainly better than a phone in a cradle on the dashboard.
Just because a car has a touch screen doesn't mean you need to use it to operate basic functions. The problem isn't the screen, it's the lack of buttons for operational functions.
That’s a great general question that can be asked in many places that software dwells. My answer and thinking is therefore general as well. It’s a trap. What would the great Stallman say about touchscreens in the cockpit? He would be correct too. It’s a Trojan horse, once they get the touchscreen there it’s a matter of years before driving involves watching ads to offset fuel tax costs or whatever else the leadersip has decided the world must do now.
Judging by the cars you name I'm guessing you are not in the US, I don't know what your local laws are. Probably similar but different years and other minor differences.
The app would do things like planning trips, showing mileage statistics, giving you verbose errors in case the vehicle has issues, and for an EV you could plan and control charging for off-peak times, etc.
If you would like that, why wouldn't you like the same in the car itself? Those are not things you would need to use while driving, of course, but it would still be quite a bit nicer that going to "stats menu 001" "L" "2" "11" and viewing a number on some LCD readout...
The LCD readout doesn't require long-term software maintenance, because it's entirely local and just works regardless of who's in charge at the car company.
They do. It will just be free for the first 3 years, 20/month next 3 years... up to 500/month for collector's items :)
There were no buttons on the steering wheel? Which model?
>you even use the touch screen to change gears.
Wow, really wondering now which Tesla model did you drive, where you had to change gears?
I'm not sure when you would use neutral but I suppose in a service situation, something pretty unusual and again on the vast majority of Teslas, whether you count by the number of models or the number of individual shipped cars, that's also done with a physical stalk so the touch screen is really a non-issue here. Yes, shifting into neutral is done with the physical stalk. As is reverse and drive.
But perception matters. I think Tesla should do a better job educating the public about their cars, because people form all sorts of opinions and then it's hard to even have a conversation because the baseline knowledge about what is going on has to be totally reset. Even people who drive a Tesla once come away mistakenly thinking it has no buttons (!!), which is so far from the truth it's hard to fathom what phenomenon we are witnessing here.
> on a nice snappy capacitive display UI.
Heh, until very recently a lot of manufacturers' infotainment was comically unresponsive, VW being a standout there (along with the worst-in-class screens).
I wouldnt be opposed to have an option of touchscreen control (current BMWs have that), except that touchscreens are neccesarily placed so low that you have to take your eyes almost fully off the road.
They didn't just arbitrarily decide that, old suspension setups (even ignoring the terrible springs and dampers) were terribly unsafe and unpredictable. I encourage you to search for some videos of old cars going over bumps, taking evasive maneuvers or even just driving around a corner normally. The amount of bump steer, roll and lift is absolutely terrifying.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38131504 , and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35851369
Feels more like PR to encourage improvements are coming.
Two screens, one positioned and angled for touch, one for driver visibility. Physical controls for climate, volume, and accessing touchscreen functions & menus.
This doesn’t seem like an incredibly hard problem, but rather that designers (or the marketing folks) have been convinced customers are impressed by extremes. In the ‘90s, dozens of buttons on the steering wheel. Today, nothing but massive screens.
Today’s car drive you, you don’t drive the car. I sat in a Tesla and felt I was in a future that I didn’t want to be in. Everything physical abstracted away into a smooth curve or a flat screen. we have let middlemen come between us in reality and we’re going to pay for it whether it’s in more expensive repairs or dislocation from nature.
> We do not have feature X" is never a valid problem statement. If you need proof of this you only need to look at a modern car which has a touch screen where no one said, "I need to slide my finger on some random piece of glass to a precise point to set my blower in my car while I am driving." No one has ever said that, right? But somebody did say, "We need touch screens because young people will never buy our cars." This is what happens when you are not talking about the problem.
[1]: https://youtu.be/c5QF2HjHLSE?si=M6apr6fG_YaIDOpj&t=1826
Tesla also added more on-wheel capacitive buttons in their Model S refresh and got negative feedback, but they worked on it for the new Model 3 refresh and I only heard a much improved, basically physical button experience. Not to mention their non-existent UI lag on their screen.
So if customers only know laggy screens, and weird feeling buttons, maybe it is not always the right way forward to go backward.
And well-designed physical buttons have identifiable marks or features on them to help you find the right one purely by touch. The input type (button, dial, lever) shape (round, square edges to the right), dots on the button and location (I change songs in the top left).
Four years after Mazda. But the video still shows big touchscreens, useless themes and distractions of the driver. Why they mount office monitors on the cockpit instead of building them into the cockpit?
I count 9 buttons. No distinct knobs for volume or temperature. Again One button, one function. Not two functions, no long pressing, half pressing or whatever bad user interface ideas somebody can have. Donald A. Norman explained that well in The design of everyday things. And group that stuff logically.
They aren’t even the first car manufacturer to reverse on this. Do these companies not test market these things? Like, I’ve never heard of anyone actually _liking_ these all-touch controls; it’s transparently making things worse to save a few cents.
Personally I'm inclined to write this one up to a confluence of "manufacturers think people want this", and also customers think "I want this" - and reality is now catching up!
Later, customers will find out, but by that time, they will already own VWs, so VW will have achieved its goal. Similar pattern to dieselgate in my opinion.
A while back I was considering buying a Tesla, but I rented a Model X for a long trip and overall found it pretty enjoyable. However, I found their heavy reliance on touch interface pretty annoying, and did a much deeper dive into other EVs as a result.
The HVAC has auto mode but if you want a physical button you can assign steering wheel buttons to it as well.
Sometimes it's just a user knowledge issue.
I'm quite disappointed that the new Porsche models have a load of touch screens. I'm a fan of the Cayenne from 2012 which has an interior full of physical buttons and feels a bit like an airplane cockpit.
There's physical buttons for the windscreen blowers, and hazard lights and few other critical things. Otherwise, it's just not been an issue for me at all.
If your new smartphone has a different UI, learning that won't put anyone at risk.
Not so with the IVI system in a new car.
This is so obvious, you can only shake your head in disbelief the current state of affairs ever was allowed to be.
But a lot of the disbelief and dismay people have is based on them imagining, with horror, things that are not actually the case.
Days of discussions:
It probably even feels fine the first 10 minutes and they're not likely to have more than that scheduled for one test.
Have them stuck in traffic for 45 min each morning and afternoon and they'll understand :)
But they are not a hot California startup speaking at TEDx about how they will change the world so they must be in the wrong.
Critical path controls should not be touchscreen.
I’m very far from being a usability expert, but I think a good rule of thumb would be putting less-essential __digital__ functions like maps and audio in the touchscreen, but essential __mechanical__ functions like climate control (which includes seat heating/ventilation) be controlled by physical buttons, switches, sliders, and/or knobs. This makes it more intuitive and also more safe to control frequently-modified functionality while keeping eyes on the road.
I believe this is an essential safety issue, and it’s infuriating that companies with billions of dollars in resources and, presumably, lots of engineers and designers and usability experts with concerns that are probably ignored. Especially as cars continue to include more headline safety features (i.e. used to sell and even upsell) which are far more expensive than the components they’re skimping on. It’s very petty and irresponsible.
The US government has more or less abdicated its responsibility to keep corporate greed in check. Hopefully, the EU will step in and fill that void.
I am very happy my Mazda has dedicated single-function physical buttons, and it'll automatically switch to the mode you're thinking of when you press a button.
The tablet control via physical button is amazing compared to touch screen, takes a minute to get used to, but far far far far far far far less distracting when driving than a touchscreen.
The regulators are literally asleep at the wheel and this should have never been permitted for any critical adjustments such as temperature and even audio volume. The hazard button being the only exception is not enough and Tesla turned that into a capacities touch button on the cybertruck making using it with wet hands or gloves impossible.
In Switzerland you get fined if you eat while you drive! Having to hunt and take your eyes of the road to adjust the temp is way worse.
Now if touch screens had a dynamic 3d surface that you could navigate blindly it would be something else.
It's not about touch nor physicality of a button or knob, but about a control that is not dependent on UI state
Do you really believe that you can close your eyes and touch the "Start" button on a windows machine at arms length every time? Try it throughout your day. I doubt it.
The tactile feedback is important to know that you're making the adjustment you want, and to help you find the right control input.
We're both aging ourselves with "Start button", by the way.
It's exactly about touch! The fundamental point is not needing to turn your eyes from the road.
A dynamic tactile touch screen solves the problem of finding the controls, but if the knob that you find could be the volume or the temperature depending on the mode the UI is in, you're still likely to look down to check which one it is.
Edit: And even some clever solution like giving different shapes to different modes doesn't help a ton, because that still uses more brain cycles and time than "reach for where I know the volume knob is and turn it left". You'd have to reach out and feel the control, and if it's the wrong one then reach for the mode switcher and then find the correct control. That's distracting regardless of whether the eyes can stay on the road, and you're very likely to pull your eyes down instinctively to help with that complicated process.
There's two problems with this. Firstly it's generally unknowable what will appear where on the touschreen. Secondly even if you just want to know exactly where the touchscreen is then you need to look at it.
No, I disagree.
The heterogeneity and tactile response of the UI is fundamental, at least for me.
Which quadrant of the display is the control in? You flick your eyes to check. Ok, now is my finger in the right place? You need to check again. Is it at the right level…
For the terminally space-brained like me, buttons and dials work much better. You flick your eyes and can see where the control is and in relation to what. Now you can trace with your finger to the area of the controller, and feel around to locate it in relation to the other controls. If it is ridged, you have tactile feedback on its orientation.
I often and traveling with my wife, and get annoyed that I cannot some options because we are in motion - my wife is driving so there is nothing unsafe about me using the touchscreen. (when I drive I try to avoid looking at the infotainment - there is nothing on it that I need but it is still a distracting hazard)
Consider settings like: how long it takes for the car to shut off the lights automatically after you turn it off and lock it. Or other obscure things. You're not going to have physical buttons for that. You'd have a digital screen with next/previous/ok buttons. That isn't any better than using a touch screen to access those settings. Arguably worse UX.
Another posted suggested allow touch screens but have them not operate while car is in motion, with no override, and I think that's a much more targeted/palatable proposal with (maybe?) less unexpected consequences.
I assume you mean "no touchscreen controls" is extreme. I probably wasn't clear. By "controls" I meant those for "live" controls (environment, audio, etc). Touchscreen for settings totally make sense - as you said, it doesn't make sense to have physical inputs for settings like lights off delay.
>have them not operate while car is in motion
I'm okay with that too
Also who needs a nice big screen to watch Netflix while we are parked waiting to pick up our kid? We can watch on my phone, my wife doesn’t mind contorting herself to see.
Same reason why (in absence of extreme environmental conditions) difficult climbing routes are considered quite safe: Because people are aware of the danger in the specific situation.
Doesn't eliminate the need for safe design, tho, attaching giant spinning metal blades to dashboards might solve many problems, but few in favor of the driver.
If this were applicable to drivers made up of the general public, we wouldn't have a glut of accidents caused by people using their phones while driving.
The attitude of constant danger will even protect you from another weird climbing stat. Having avalanche survival/safety courses increases the probability that you will die in an avalanche. One of the people who taught me how to ice climb died in an avalanche. We don’t want more dead climbers.
I hate touch screen controls in cars for things that are adjusted during driving like everyone else here. But please let’s not go for a default of „the state has to allow it“ for all new inventions - as dumb as they may be.
What is there you think needs proving? People can adjust the volume knob or AC without looking. You literally cannot do this with a touchscreen.
"We got away from the physical throttles, and that was probably the number one feedback from the fleet - they said, just give us the throttles that we can use," said Rear Adm Galinis.
OP article is probably a case of the market working it out if Volkswagen is doing it without regulation. I doubt Tesla-like multi-modal touch screens are going to be default ever. They were never a good idea.
But regulation is essentially the people coming together to say "never again", and that is their right in a democracy. Like it or not as inventors or inventor-adjacent folks we might look more harshly at it. But we also have that power and I don't see a problem per se in using it to direct the market on somewhat trivial things like this.
My wife will finally be able to use my phone chargers b/c of the EU legislation on apple chargers.
That article is about controls on a military system. You make it sound as if people are steering their cars with touch controls, which they don't.
Screw overregulation, I do not want the government to assume that I am a complete idiot and regulate every single part of my life.
"Overregulation" is a squishy political term. We cancel each other out on this issue (assuming you're US-based). I'm not advocating for car controls to have regulations, but would be fine if they took sensible action. But they probably won't need to.
I think it also may not have mattered. We, as in contemporary humans, continue to devalue our attention/focus in regards to our technology. I think that’s the core problem with digital UI is they just requiring too much of our active attention where as physical knobs allow us to passively perform actions with muscle memory (low attention requirement)
If they took all the knobs and put some in the glove box and some inside the console and some in the back seat and so on… we wouldn’t consider that an invention. It would just be obvious that the knobs were difficult to access. That’s basically what they did but act like it’s fine because technically they’re still right there on the dash.
In summer 2017, the USS Fitzgerald collided with a container ship near the Japanese mainland in an accident that killed seven sailors. The McCain was off the coast of Singapore when it hit a container ship, killing 10 of the Navy destroyer's crew.
The report blames touch screens.
IMHO, car screens are useful to watch some telly or films during your boring commuting
yes, let's prevent regulators from applying and enforcing no brainer life saving safety regulations without first being required to spend decades studying each individual issue and then litigate each individual issue for another couple of decades, ensuring that nothing ever gets regulated ever
because that's what you're asking for, whether you realize it or not
That this hasn't happened yet might be because automotive regulation is in general a joke in this country, as the car companies run the economy and thus have strong influence government. But the pressure was building. Plus the customers hating the touch screens, as the article is saying, that will have been a small factor.
[0]: https://www.adac.de/verkehr/recht/verkehrsvorschriften-deuts...
It's planned obsolescence. Every part of the car should be good for 20 years. 20 years ago, we were using Moto Razrs and it would be 4 more years until iPhone changed how we think of touchscreens. These junk touchscreen cars from this era will not make it without extremely expensive repair
They’re infinitely modifiable in software.
If you’re doing a model refresh and want to add a button, you change a few lines of code instead of redesigning the dashboard and sourcing parts and adjusting the assembly process and updating the engineering documents and maintenance and repair manuals and…
With a touchscreen, you plan "touchscreen here" and the UI can be modified in software basically up to the point the first production car rolls off the line (and even after that, too).
For what it's worth: the physical buttons being linked to certain functionality from the beginning is the whole point, and is the defining characteristic of "good usability".
When your buttons change arbitrarily, you will always require eyesight to identify the buttons, which is radically unsafe and creates a horrifying UX since regulators have not yet banned all touchscreen use while a vehicle is moving
We will always need to tune the temperature, switch turning indicators, turn on warning lights or change the volume.
Touch screens are only cheap. And it is questionable that we get any software update in ten years. Not even thinking three decades ahead.
And probably we will be glad that there are no software updates removing* or changing* features. With constant updates and internet connectivity we will not get any car safe.
Basically we want electric cars. Not computers, at least none we need to handle.
* e.g. Shimano Di2 (shifting groupset for roadbikes) with a Hammerhead bike computer: Shimano forced Hammerhead in 2022 to remove the support for the Di2 because Shimano now consider them as competitor. One of the reasons for mechanical groups is reliability! * Hello Windows Users. Do you like automatic updates? How about enforced updates? May we increase requirements?
With touch buttons or touch screens you only need to decide on the screen size and placement and everything can be done later in the development. It is quite an advantage from the car manufacturer's view.
It's not clear. Does statistically normalized data show more or less death when buttons and levers were the only way to adjust temperature?
I don't know, have any?
To play devil's advocate, trying to adjust the AC using regular buttons on an unfamiliar rental car can be a nightmare too. Trying to decipher the tiny icons and lights while driving, what magic combination of button presses and knob positions will work?
There's an argument to be made that for something like temperature control with its various modes (heat/vent/cold, strength/temperature, fan speed, which combination of vents), a large touchscreen is actually a far superior interface -- easier to see and more intuitive.
(Physical touch buttons on the steering wheel for basic adjustments-while-driving like temperature up/down and volume up/down are still important though.)
What the others in this thread are commenting on is the fact that in cars with touchscreen based controls, every time you adjust the AC in a car you drive every day, it is cumbersome and distracting.
I've had cars with terrible physical controls and cars with really well thought out touchscreen controls combined with a lot of automation.
It isn't obvious that fumbling with buttons below the wheel, near my knee is better than the screen right in front of me. I can't even find them by touch easily, because they've made so many of them, including for nearly useless functions.
I agree with "easier to see and more intuitive" and I'd use it when parked. But when driving, I don't want to "see", I want tactile feedback on whether I hit a control.
I don't agree with this logic.
When you rent a car it's common sense to familiarise yourself with the controls before you start driving it.
Ideally you ought to take 5 minutes to check these things out before you set off. And if there are buttons you at least can do this if you want to.
There is no argument. This is a ridiculous idea.
Unless your hand got caught in that 3d surface.
If you need to turn on the defroster, pull over, turn on the defroster, and pull away again.
Just design the vehicle better. I can see the status of my HVAC without taking my eyes off of the road—it’s on a display mounted on top of my dash, forward toward the windshield—and turn on defrost mode with the press of a single, large physical button inset inside a large knob which provides a clear touch cue.[0] I have never had to take my eyes off the road to adjust any of this system.
[0] https://assets.bpwalters.com/images/bens_car_blog/10k_review...
The radio should only have minimal accessible controls while driving. However even then remember that the non-driver should get the ability to have more control.
Unfortunately most legacy auto seem to have hired their talent directly from printer manufacturers like Canon and Epson. So blindly copying Tesla isn’t going to turn out quite so well for them.
Ye EVs could potentially have less software than ICEs. Simpler motor ECU and often no gearbox or clutch.
Instead the manufacturers take the opportunity to push more stuff on us.
That being said, I like the UX of our cars. But the newest ine is from 2020, the oldest one from 1982...
The SV motto
See also how every laptop is becoming a MacBook and every phone is becoming an iphone. Non removable batteries, touch screen car interfaces, soldered in memory, removal of things like headphone jacks ... Competitors fall over themselves trying to follow any design signal they see.
You can disagree but you really ought to be evidence based and not just vibes.
People tolerated it so there is no pressure for them to change.
To demonstrate the validity of this response, you can apply it generally to a wide variety of things they do.
The variations on the doors, all of them, the model release order being S3 X Y, it's kind of all over the place. Their logo even looks like uterus (https://twitter.com/Jam_0s/status/1531368537847214080).
They're obsessed with differentiation for the sake of it. Look at the cybertruck. It's a company run by a middle aged man with hair plugs, 3 wives and 11 children who bought a 44 billion dollar company as a vanity project.
Cap touch buttons or physical buttons both require a circuit board, so that costs the same, but cap touch buttons just need one big sheet of material with some screen printing placed over the circuit board. Physical clicky buttons require each button to be designed, manufactured, screen printed, and the clicky action to be tuned for feel and durability, none of which is cheap. Physical buttons may not all be exactly the same size and shape due to design considerations, so that's injection mold tooling variations, additional supply chain part numbers to manage, and additional ways that manufacturing can screw up assembly. Physical buttons can jam, get stuck, or fall out, so engineering time needs to be spent ensuring this won't happen 10 years from now, too.
At least: Y * (1 cable + 2 plugs + 1 port at the controller + clips).
Wire Harnesses for modern cars are seriously complicated affairs[0]. And even using more modern variants they still need to be installed manually.
[0] https://www.carscoops.com/2022/05/carmakers-are-rushing-to-a...
To serve a level of functionality, you have a curve described as
PriceOfMonitor(MonitorQuality) + X * PriceofCheapButtons
Oh, come on. It's a laptop panel. It's not "smart", it's just the same display/touchscreen component you can find for $150 on Alibaba or whatever.
But hey, good luck sourcing your parts for serial car manufacture, or anything even remotely serious in a commercial environment, from Alibaba... What's your alternate source of choice, Wish or Temu?
I personally drive a Model 3 and would appreciate to have a few more physical buttons though. (But it's not a bug deal for me.)
Did you type this on a touchscreen? ;-)
Route planning typically happens when stationary — or if you have passengers, they'll obviously use the systems onboard (or on their personal devices) to do navigation.
But if you're driving alone, and no-one else is navigating for you… you'll have to stop.
the problem isn't that you're doing something with your free hand and sparing some mental capacity--else the manual transmission would be outlawed--it's that if you have a poorly designed car, you have to look away for long enough to lose track of what's happening around you.
good on you for realizing when you can't safely operate your car. but me, i just bought a car i can operate safely.
I understand a lot of people don't and this significantly increases the rate of vehicle collisions and other accidents.
But the wider point is that we keep doing this over and over again, forgetting the lessons of the past, prioritizing flashy and less usable UI over ugly and usable because it's either cheaper or more convenient for the people making UIs, or it's the zeitgeist and it's all they know.
What they're actually optimizing for is looking impressive/high-tech to help sell cars and reducing build costs.
Touchscreens add flexibility (and lower production costs), but that flexibility comes at a cost. There is no universally agreed-upon usage for them. Certainly not to the degree that "[all] people" understand them the same way. It's all too common to run into a touchscreen-based interface that you haven't seen before and simply not realize you were meant to drag that one element, tap another, or long-press something. Discoverability can be useful, but that quickly loses its value when operating a vehicle -- at least beyond its entertainment system.
Buttons, knobs, wheels, sliders, and levers all have physical characteristics that signal some use. Keep in mind that those can also be (ab)used incorrectly! For example, imagine a knob that you shouldn't turn but must push or pull only. Or perhaps a button that you must twist.
I can understand (without being particularly happy about) politicians having their own agenda that does not align with the majority of voters, but why is it that vendors producing widgets are so strong-willed about certain details? Why won't any car manufacturer make a car with no touchscreens except perhaps for a satnav that has no data link to the rest of the car electronics at all, or any laptop manufacturer make a laptop with non-chiclet keys (in the style of pre-x230 thinkpads)? Surely there would be a deeply underserved customer base to capture in both cases; one could really get the sense that corporations feel that satisfying those customers would be downright immoral.
Also, I think the original intention behind the touch screen was that you would be in auto pilot while using it.
Though I found it struggles with non-native names, when I try to make calls. But starting navigation, turning off seat heating etc works very well.
Not to mention that there’s a 20% chance it misunderstands me with simple commands like “lights on” (so I get random Spotify songs instead).
I am also working on a small personal prototype of this - anyone know if there is a more serious project or company that is getting into this?
Phones aren't 2T vehicles you need to control at speed or you'll kill someone.
If you want a paralel form the consumer tech space, look at game consoles. They all use primarily highly tactile physical buttons and switches instead of large touchscreens, because that's best for accurate control using your muscle memory while keeping your eyes focused on the TV where the action happens, instead of looking at the control surfaces.
Muscle memory is a very important thing in safe vehicle control of any kind, not just cars. Look at crane or excavator operators. They're also looking out the window at what the hook or scoop is doing instead of at the levers they're pulling.