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Comment by oidar | Hacker News Reader

If I was buying a new car in the US today, which automakers are doing a better job wrt physical controls?

I really like Mazda's setup. Honda CRV setup is pretty good too. It seems like a lot of manufacturers are moving towards at least restoring physical controls for climate.

I have a 2021 Toyota Highlander and always fail to relate to these threads. Everything that matters is a physical control.

Mazda, and there is no close second.

Another vote for Mazda here. But I’m not sure about 2023/2024 models

I have a Mazda 2020 CX30. The display is not a touch screen and using CarPlay with the physical selector drives me nuts (it's also dangerous).

I like physical controls for everything else, but please make displays for e.g. CarPlay touch screens.

In my 2016 Mazda 3 the physical selector is superb - rotating it scrolls through on-screen CarPlay buttons, pressing it activates the highlighted item. Way less dangerous IMO than reaching to the screen, trying to touch it with some degree of precision.

Yea, I generally agree with that. At least in my '14 model, it also has some weird internal gate where it won't let you scroll through more than 5-10 items in a list while you're going more than 5 MPH. And if you're stopped, and scrolling further than that, it resets you to the start of the list if you start moving. It's infuriating when I'm just trying to play an album that doesn't start with A-D.

I can understand disabling touchscreen scrolling while driving, but at least save my place in the list.

Mazda have taken physical controls as a core part of their design philosophy. I don’t see them going away any time soon.

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