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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

The design in the pic looks reasonable. Big screen for nav, setup, rarely used functions. Then a set buttons with a knob for volume (or other rotary control when in setup mode on the screen) and buttons around it to provide just the minimum functions you need while driving such as defrosters and climate control.

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.

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Ah, the sweet spot between a cockpit and a calculator. You're spot on; we're not trying to relaunch Apollo 13 here. Sure, give us a touchscreen for the tech savvy, but let's not forget the tactile satisfaction of a good ol' button. And yeah, a universal button pad is like the Swiss Army knife of car controls – versatile, yet uncomplicated. Let's keep the touchscreens for Candy Crush and leave driving to the buttons.

I'm tech savvy but I take physical buttons over touchscreen all the times. I switch radio channels with a wheel on a stick on the steering wheel, change volume with two buttons there. I don't dare using the touchpad for anything complex while driving.

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?

> I'm tech savvy but I take physical buttons over touchscreen all the times.

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.

Yes, but I play with settings when my car is parked. Everything I do while driving is with buttons and wheels.

> we can't use a phone while driving but we can use the touchscreen of the car, which is basically the same thing

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.

You sound like ChatGPT.

> you don't need [...] 9 buttons for favorite radio stations.

It certainly is nice being able to switch to one of a handful of stations with just one press, though. Why not have that?

I think that's one of pretty few things that a touch screen does pretty well. You have a list of items and you click the item. You lose the tactile but you get a huge button that says "Jazz classics 101.2 FM" instead. It's a tradeoff that's totally worth it I think especially if you already have real buttons for up/down on the steering wheel. Making 10 buttons and hooking them to specific (and unknown!) radio stations seems like a waste of space.

They should just copy Mazda's design, a screen that's not touch enabled and do not need to be put within arm's reach (so it can be put further away, and thus closer to driver's point of view when driving, that driver just need to glance slightly to the side to see the screen).

Then physical buttons/controls for common things (volume, wiper, etc.), and a general knob for navigating things on the screen.

Agreed, the VW approach here looks pretty good. It might even have fewer physical controls than the id.4?

A single cable.... can we at least get dedicated emergency flasher wiring?

From what I understand, even ICE cars have more wiring than ever.

I think it's a reference to something Elon Musk recently said about the 48 volt system in the Cybertruck. Apparently switching to 48v allows them to use ethernet in the car and save 77% on wiring.

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.

Thanks for the explainer, the 1989 comment threw me off.

48V isn't what enables Ethernet, it does however make it more useful. 48V enables high power things to be scattered around the car - voltage loss from the front to the back of a car at 12V is an issue, and cars spend a lot of money on large wires to work around that.

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.

The 12V loss is something that really sunk in working on older cars. You wouldn't think a cable that read 0 on the ohmeter could still not sufficiently carry power, but it happens. Starter systems especially - My old van I remember wouldn't start once and all I had to do was clean the terminals on the battery with a wire brush.

48V is a common POE standard. But Musk is again blowing a bunch of smoke.

BMW started using fiber optic cables in their cars in 2003 (with the introduction of 5 series E60) for CAN comms between modules, the reason was that in case of side crash the repair costs were super high to reconnect a baseball bat width worth of copper routed front to back. It's not new.

PoE (power over ethernet) spec specifies 48 volts, so if you want to use off-the-shelf stuff, you need to use 48 volts.

48v and the ethernet are not totally related, you could have a 48v car with the same wiring as before (just thinner wires which is the big saving for 48v). Ethernet allows even more saving on wire as you don't need point to point wiring for many specific features, you can just put a node which connects to the network and does the function you need. Old school wiring looms had a lot of point to point wiring on them. My suspicion is that future ones will be really simple as they will need only power and comms, with all the complexity offloaded to the network devices, as it were.

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