Comment by metafunctor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by metafunctor | Hacker News Reader

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I've been driving a new Tesla for the past months, and the on-screen climate and media controls actually don't bother me much at all. Granted, it's not actually a cascaded menu, so maybe I'm not really responding to your argument at all. Which car does have climate controls hidden in a cascaded menu, and not available more easily?

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.

> However, I've encountered some challenges with the blinker controls, particularly when the yoke isn't upright.

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?

> 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.

Hah, that is definitely not the short term result.

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 :)

I guess this only affects you if want to signal after you’re already in a turn?

Like when exiting a roundabout? I have at least one almost everywhere I go…

Must be very tight roundabouts to induce a large rotation of the wheel! I’m used to roundabouts where you only have to turn the wheel slightly, but maybe your locale differs.

It is like everything else with Tesla. They add the wrong part of the solution first.

Hey, we have this new vision based TACC! But first... we remove the radar, then later we'll make that actually work. Get used to phantom braking and limited features in the mean time.

The CT drive by wire approach should solve your problems, but it remains to be seen if it actually works well. The reviewers so far haven't really gone in depth on its feel.

For others reading, most Teslas have traditional stalks still; the yoke issues mentioned are in Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck.

And maybe less of an issue in Cybertruck with steer by wire.

On a Tesla S, the media controls are not in a predictable place, and the climate controls need a menu for anything other than a temperature change.

This is, in my experience, incorrect.

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.

I don’t know about recent ones, but in old ones you need to long press the wheel to get a menu to select what it controls, then select a mode, then adjust the temp.

And the media controls are a mess that changes periodically with updates.

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