Comment by Stratoscope | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Stratoscope | Hacker News Reader

My Kia EV6 has a great example of bad design, specifically #2, "Match between System and the Real World".

The gear selector (which just selects forward or reverse) is a rotary knob.

You twist it to the right to go forward, or twist it to the left to back up.

There are a couple of photos in this review:

https://www.jdpower.com/cars/expert-reviews/2023-kia-ev6-rev...

Even though I've had this car for a few months now, I still get this mixed up once in a while.

There is at least one report on the EV6 forum about a a crash while parking that was almost certainly due to this UI blunder:

https://www.kiaevforums.com/threads/unexpected-acceleration-...

What pains me is that there is a simple solution Kia could have used: a little paddle that you push forward to go forward, pull back to back up.

Then there would never be any confusion over which way to turn the knob. You would have a direct mapping between your action and the car's motion.

I love this car otherwise; it's by far the best one I've ever had. But I don't understand why Kia decided to use a rotary knob to select forward and reverse.

I'm driving a Subaru Solterra right now, and it has the same kind of knob. I find it awkward as well. But I suspect that safety is the reason for using a rotary knob. I think a simple forward/reverse lever is too easy to accidentally hit. It's far harder to accidentally twist the knob while driving.

Of course, a forward/reverse lever could be done with a button to push to unlock it, just like automatic transmissions had for decades. That would be ideal for me.

The 'simple' solution you propose is the opposite of what almost all cars with electronic shifters actually do, and no better really than the rotary control.

The gear selector in some BMW is a switch - moving it forward puts the car in reverse and moving it backward puts the car in forward gear.

The paddle system you describe is the exact one that killed Anton Yelchin and forced Jeep to do a massive recall.

No, that Jeep issue was from the paddle returning to a neutral position and not giving good feedback. I think what's described here would have the paddle maintain the physical position.

https://youtu.be/AC6Uldx1mi8

In fact, Kia's rotary knob works more like the first one in that video (before the recall). It is spring-loaded in both directions and returns to the center position after you twist it.

The knob itself gives no indication of which direction you've set it to; only the R/N/D lights in front of the knob show that.

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