Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

Cost. They put them in to save money. It’s not a mystery at all. Plumbing wires for a bunch of analog switches is more expensive than one databus, and then there is the simplicity of turning your hardware problem into a software one.

View on HN

Cost is a big thing, but also configurability. While you can assign different functionality to different buttons, it's easier to add features after the fact to a touch screen. While this can be both a blessing and a curse, I own a new model vehicle from a startup car company, and the interface has improved significantly in the past 2 years with OTA updates.

Sure but there’s a handful of things people actually want physical controls for (shockingly all of the exact same things cars from 20 years ago have physical controls for) and I think having Eg AC controls and basic music controls with hard buttons and the rest with a screen is the logical result here.

There is truth to that, but it’s also true that cars simply have way more functionality than they did 20 years ago and it’s effectively impossible to assign a button to every thing.

I think the added complexity is in areas where it doesn't really matter. The stuff the driver actually cares about is still the same as it was then. You can just put the rest in a bluetooth phone app. If it is more complicated than a button press, people probably shouldn't be messing with it while driving anyway.

I definitely don't want my car controls tied to a phone app. No matter what I should be able to configure my car's functions long after the company stops distributing their app. But there's no reason why we can't have a "best of both worlds" sort of deal. I have a modern Mazda with a touch screen that comes with a center control knob and has physical controls for a good chunk of the settings you'd ever want to change while driving. So I don't have to go through menus to change my air conditioning from low to high, but I also don't have to use a tiny character led display and a "push 3 times, then hold for 5 seconds then pull twice and rotate 37.8 degrees" multi function button to find and access settings outside of those physical controls. In fact, the touch screen disables touch input at speed, so the control cluster MUST be able to access any functionality without relying on the touch display. It works pretty darn well. In fact the only thing I'd argue it could do better is be more responsive and have a decent set of distinct tones for navigating the screens without sight. It's not often I want a setting in the menus while driving, but it would be a lot nicer if each menu screen had a distinct set of sounds so that by ear I could know where I am and memorize those controls if I needed to.

> long after the company stops distributing their app

There is a cool idea called open source, but I suppose something as radical as giving users ownership of software for their car isn't something companies would be willing to consider. Much better when you get to charge a subscription for heated seats.

Even if its open source, I don't want to spend my own time or depend on other people deciding to keep the software working and building on newer devices just to configure car settings. There's no reason in the world to eschew a touch screen or other control interface in a car and instead put all the control in a phone app.

I would say safety is a big one. It's a lot easier for users to justify fiddling with a touch screen interface when it's a part of the car vs on their phone screen. Sometimes you want to make unsafe things harder to do.

If fiddling with the touch screen while driving is the issue, you can solve that with software lock-outs. The Mazda's touch screen stops responding to touches at faster than 5 MPH, and if necessary you could also lock out option and setting controls entirely while the car is in motion so that even the control knob couldn't be used to fiddle while driving. Moving control out of the already on board computer and control system and onto some external device is just plain over-engineering a worse solution.

The vast majority of these settings are unavailable to even browse on my cars while the car is in motion. No need to go with putting it in a separate app. Which putting it in an app doesn't even prevent it, the driver could still just be messing with their phone anyways.

Even if we achieve that, there are still closed-gardens to open

Do cars really have that much more functionality that it requires everything to be thrown into a touch screen?

I have a 2017 Chevy Sonic with a built in touchscreen and I basically never have to touch it other than to input an address into Android auto.

I haven't found any pieces of the car functionality I cannot access through a button somewhere on the dash or steering wheel

I doubt a 2024 car has that much more functionality than my 2017

Both of my cars from different makers have a ton of things which don't have a physical button. Configuring the colors of the lights in the interior, setting restrictions on secondary keys, changing the doorpad settings, configuring navigation quick saves, configuring auto lock on walk away, whether the car moves the seats back for easier getting in and out, how much it moves the seats for that, toggling liftgate gestures, setting the default settings for ADAS systems, configuring if the mirrors automatically tuck in or not, configuring the puddle lights, configuring charging settings, configuring stereo equalizer and other deeper settings, rear occupant alert systems, configuring how long it waits to have the lights on, defaults for auto-high beam and its sensitivity, configuring remote start options, deeper setting options for drive modes, configuring cross traffic alerting, deeper route planning, etc. Probably still a hundred more options I haven't listed here.

And so you can have physical buttons (left, right, up, down, enter) and a screen with a menu for all those options.

How is that better? Press press press press press press press press press press press press press press press cool just set one setting. Versus tap settings, flick scroll, tap to set.

It’s not. I think the people in this thread already have their minds made up.

In terms of doing it while driving, I'll take the buttons instead of a touch screen. I can press a button without looking at a screen.

One shouldn't be adjusting practically any of those things listed while driving. That makes having it as a physical control moot. And having physical buttons to navigate a selector on the screen is still a terrible thing to do when driving anyways.

My rule of thumb is if it's on the center console I shouldn't be messing with it when the car is in motion. If I'm supposed to mess with it while moving it's on the wheel or immediately around it.

And tbh between my car with a zillion buttons I shouldn't be pressing while driving and a small screen and the car where most of those functions I shouldn't mess with while driving are on the screen I prefer the screen. Far bigger screen to quickly glance at the maps when driving instead of a smaller one that's harder to see. Less space to actually see the media collection when I'm stopped and can safely navigate it.

That's not always the case, some things on the center console include skipping songs, flipping between audio sources, etc. If you need to switch to an emergency radio station from bluetooth, its drastically more complicated because there's no physical buttons anymore.

> skipping songs

That's on the steering wheel on practically every car I've had for over 20 years of model years.

You probably shouldn't be flipping between audio sources while driving. But even then, I've had change audio source as an option on steering wheels before. Generally, you shouldn't be fiddling with the radio when the vehicle is moving, you should be driving. Keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road, not on the stereo in the center console.

FWIW, in pretty much every car I've had since a 2012 model year I've been able to press a button on the wheel and say "tune to am 1510" and it'll tune that without having to take my hands or eyes off the wheel. Far preferrable than trying to look over at the radio to find the AM button again and figure out which knob is the tuning dial and then look to see I'm tuning to the right station.

> I've been able to press a button on the wheel and say "tune to am 1510" and it'll tune that without having to take my hands or eyes

Every time I try to talk to the voice assistant its the most horrible driving experience. It hijacks everything, and definitely sets me to where I have to pull over, or just stop trying to talk to it to get anything done. It does not understand me whatsoever.

> left, right, up, down, enter

Every UI using "simple" menu button navigation has been horrific in my experience. Remote controls, handsets, TV configuration menus, yadda yadda.

Discoverability is also an issue touch screens can help with - I enjoy that in the settings app on iPhone (I believe android is the same) one can search for a setting, rather than try to guess where a given setting has been placed.

But I don't want discoverability when my windshield suddenly fogs up and I can't see anything. I want to be able to just reach out and adjust the airflow without even thinking about it when I start noticing the fog in the first place.

Last time I had something useful was in my Volvo 740. After that it has been getting worse and worse. Even physical nobs can be bad, just round and smooth, without any physical notch that snows what direction it points.

In regards to dealing with windows fogging, I prefer the system in my car that automatically detects conditions where it might fog and adjusts itself accordingly. On top of that the car has a physical max defog button close to the actual driver controls.

Oh, I completely agree - everything important should be accessible and intuitive - typically that does mean a well-placed physical control.

But there are so many settings on a contemporary car that it would be impractical to have a switch for all of them, and even if they were, if it's something you'd like to change once in a blue-moon being able to search for that setting is really useful.

I don't know if this makes great sense as an example, but, say you're travelling from the UK to France (or USA to Mexico?) and want to have your speedometer show km/h rather than miles/hour. That's not a setting which should have a switch, but may be something useful.

>I don't know if this makes great sense as an example, but, say you're travelling from the UK to France (or USA to Mexico?) and want to have your speedometer show km/h rather than miles/hour. That's not a setting which should have a switch, but may be something useful.

Three presses in a Mercedes on its speedometer screen.

> Three presses in a Mercedes on its speedometer screen

> speedometer screen

> screen

So a setting behind a screen instead of a dedicated hardware button/switch/toggle for it.

You use the dedicated hardware buttons for controlling car options on the steering wheel.

I don't see why in God's name would you ever need that as a hardware switch.

Many here argue there should be no screens in cars. The screen has some state you'll need to at least look at to get a bearing for where in the menu you'll need to navigate to. But most people aren't going to memorize the menu layouts for settings they rarely use, meaning they'll be looking at the screen when they interact with it.

The discussion is not about buttons for everything. Ofcourse I can't have a 737 cockpit from 1980 with buttons all over the place. Even planes get smart controls for the less used things. But the fan, the air direction and other very important and time sensitive controls HAVE to be physical in a car.

Surely none of that requires a touchscreen though? Just basic generic navigation and selection buttons will work fine.

It doesn't require it to be a touchscreen, sure, but it practically requires it to be a screen. But I'd much rather just quickly tap a checkbox instead of press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press navigating the giant array of settings.

And then on top of that people want AA/CarPlay which is designed around touch inputs first, so you're going to have that screen be touch anyways.

None of that should really be changed by the driver when the car is in motion, and you'd have to manage the deep navigation of a bunch of button presses on a screen anyways so arguing you'd be less distracted is a moot point.

Speaking of things not supposed to be done while driving: We tested the Android car GPS thing this summer. The passenger is usually in charge of the GPS so the driver can concentrate on driving. But this darn thing says something like "touch input disabled while driving". So we still have to stop the car to do adjustments on the GPS. Very handy on the Autobahn, you can't just pull over and park... Who does things like this?

Sadly all other GPS navigators we used to use has gone downhill to the state of unusable so this is what we turned out using all vacation.

Get osmand on a phone and be done with it :D

Will try it again, was a while ago. Maybe it actually works on my new phone, thanks :-)

If in a VAG car you can just disable the driving detection via VCDS like any normal person would and have everything work fine again:-)

> But I'd much rather just quickly tap a checkbox instead of press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press, press navigating the giant array of settings.

If I was making such an interface, that would be a dial or knob instead of buttons.

Ok, so click click click click click click click click click press click click click press click click. In the end I'm still having to pay attention to the screen anyways, and once again the screen is probably going to be touchscreen anyways so it's extra hardware just to have a more complicated input system than just pressing the screen, taking up space in the cabin to have this redundant control scheme. Once again just to change settings I shouldn't be changing while driving anyways like how far back the seat should go when the car is off and I open the door or if the passenger side mirror should tilt down when reversing to help aiding in parallel parking. So critical to operate that with physical controls so one can change those settings while driving!

I've had far more rotary encoders fail than I've had capacitive screens fail, so even an argument of higher reliability is pretty moot. Most damage that would break the capacitive touch is going to damage the rest of the screen anyways.

Finally, if it's so I can change those settings while wearing gloves, wow I'm going to increase the complexity of the car and take up more space so I can change the settings on the secondary keys without taking off my gloves when it's really cold outside someday. So much stuff just so I can do that thing I rarely do anyways slightly easier for a few days of the year, assuming I'm changing those settings while also getting in and out of the car a lot so I wouldn't want to take off my gloves for a minute.

Just put the settings behind a touchscreen. It's fine.

> Ok, so click click click click click click click click click press click click click press click click.

That doesn't sound like a dial/knob. You'd give it a single big twist or scroll to get the cursor around the right spot first. Same as old-fashioned radios.

So a knob that doesn't even have the feedback of knowing when you've gotten to the next selection at all, you have to actually stare at it as it goes through the different choices. That doesn't seem better to me at all. Personally, in this idea of a dial I'd like one that can actually give some haptic feedback. Or even better yet just be able to actually tap on the option instead of needing to turn a dial to move a selector on the screen to choose it.

At least with an old-fashioned radio knob you got the feedback of if you were tuning into the station by hearing it. But moving a selector on a screen?

It's like you're arguing for the MacBook Wheel, as if a knob is the most optimal way to input arbitrary choices on a computer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA

The commodore 64 had 4 large Function keys on the right. I think 10 strokes per second was normal (I was among 12-14 year olds tho) Menus were structured like

   [F1] FOO
   [F3] BAR
   [F5] BAZ
   [F7] BAL

Small enough to instantly absorb in the wetware. Depending on how frequent the choice was used one would push options further down the sub menus. Say, something like this for HN (I made a tree, they would normally be separate pages)

    [F1] Index
    [F3] Threads
    [F5] Comments
    [F7] More [F1] Ask
              [F3] Show
              [F5] Jobs
              [F7] More [F1] Profile [F1] View
                                     [F3] Submissions
                                     [F5] Logout
                        [F3] New
                        [F5] Past
                        [F7] Submit

After you've submitted 2-3 things you just know you have to bash [F7] three times. To view jobs you hammer the bottom button then the one above. The hands will learn how to use the menus really quickly. I was often surprised that my hands knew how to take me places before really reading anything. Every time one used such menu it went slightly faster and it kept going faster. Pointing a mouse or using a touch screen is really slow. Could say it gets slower every time by comparison.

(The use of odd numbers wasn't even optimal)

You're really going to memorize the menu layouts to adjust the different settings for the seat moving when you turn off the car and open the door? You change that setting enough you're going to get a lot of muscle memory for that setting? Really?

Yes, the lever to move the chair would be like a top level menu entry (It does only one thing)

It seems you're not getting what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the normal seat adjustment that you probably fiddle with a bit especially if you don't have profiles and change drivers a lot. I'm talking about the feature where your seat will go further back than normal to give you more space to get in and out of the car. It's often called something like "Easy Entry/Exit". Then when you start the car it goes back to where either the seat was last or whatever profile it was set to.

On this feature (which itself can be enabled/disabled), sometimes you can choose how far back it'll move the seat automatically for you.

Its this setting that you're suggesting you're going to mess with enough to have decent muscle memory to change without looking. That you'd want as a top-level feature setting option, practically a dedicated button to change it.

The video below shows what I'm talking about. Note in a lot of cars it's just a basic toggle. Sometimes you can set how far back you want the seat to go, if you want the steering wheel to move, how far you want the steering wheel to move, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhM-gJ5cIHA

But that's stuff you don't need to touch while driving.

We only need knobs for crucial things like fog lights, turn signals and skipping podcast ads.

The standard I was replying to was:

> I haven't found any pieces of the car functionality

Any functionality.

I agree though. Any critical driving function should be physical. Like the podcast ad skip button on the steering wheel, one of the most important control components in a modern car.

Do people actually use most of this stuff or is it just cruft? My guess is it is junk that almost no one ever looks at nevermind actually uses or changes with any frequency

I'm talking about important, everyday functions of a vehicle, like the radio, GPS, heating, cruise control, etc

I agree, controls drivers should be expected to use when the car is in motion should be physical and on/immediately around the steering wheel.

GPS? As in you're going to have like a whole QWERTY keyboard as physical keys or something for punching in addresses? I've got no problem with practically everything about the navigation be on a touchscreen, I shouldn't be messing with it while the car is moving. Just make it big.

Radio/stereo should have physical controls on the steering wheel. You shouldn't really be messing with the center console while driving. It's not like you should be swapping CD's or navigating folders on the USB drive or whatever. Anything past next/previous and volume is probably too much.

Cruise control should be on the steering wheel or stalks as well.

It's 2024. Thermostats have been a thing for a long time. Cars can make us comfortable without having to mess with the settings every five minutes. Every time I'm in a car that doesn't have auto climate I hate it, have to constantly futz with it to make it actually comfortable. Meanwhile even my 2000 Accord had a decent auto climate that I practically never had to touch. But whatever, put the basic AC controls and what not as physical controls. The only one I care to absolutely be physical is max defrost.

But my point is, there are a ton of controls you're possibly going to use sometimes, even if only to originally set up the car how you want it. It's asinine thinking every function of a modern car can have some physical switch and toggle to it. Loads of cars would look like the controls on the Space Shuttle if you forced every feature available to be assigned to a physical switch.

How many settings does a typical TV have these days? You can modify all of those with a d-pad. What is happening in your car that actually needs touch?

I see your point, but I wouldn’t exactly uphold TV menu navigation as a model of good user design.

Smart TV's effectively have touch-style interfaces as well now, where the remote is like using a mouse in free space versus the traditional D pad. The LG Freespace and Sony One Flick come to mind.

> more functionality

The functionality you refer to is probably the creature comforts (ie, multi zone A/C, memory settings for front seats, …). But the essentials of a car (ie, transmission, wheels, structural integrity, windshield wipers) haven’t changed for decades.

What has changed though is:

- increasing size of vehicles due to increasing insecurity of American buyers

- a large majority of class C holders largely unprepared for the size of these vehicles

- this gives manufacturers the opportunity to stuff as much tech junk into these vehicles to give these less qualified drivers more assistance

- coincidentally, all of this tech junk comes with a very high premium for manufacturers and dealerships

Fear sells in this country. 9/11 changed the game.

> increasing size of vehicles due to increasing insecurity of American buyers

I understand the average vehicle size increased to exploit a loophole in emission reduction requirements.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24139147/suvs-trucks-popu...

People still choose to buy them.

>But the essentials of a car (ie, transmission, wheels, structural integrity, windshield wipers) haven’t changed for decades.

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/models/en_us/GUID-E9B387D...

Many of those essentials of a car have changed a good bit in the last few decades. Hybrid drive trains have become far better and far more common. Electric vehicle drive units are far better than they were before. Transmissions these days are far more complicated and achieve much better mileage than older transmissions and allow people to select gears electronically despite otherwise being an "automatic".

Designs for structural integrity are also different. Look at a 1997 Honda Accord and how big its windows are and how skinny those pillars are. Look at a modern Accord and see how big its pillars are. Look at a crash test of a 2000s Town and Country and compare that to a modern Pacifica. Radically different.

I don't mind having the extra functionality on the touch screen, just let me use the basic ones that already existed before touchscreens (A/C control, volume, etc.) on physical buttons.

Exactly. They've just gone too far.

The touchscreen is in the same space the buttons were.

Right, it makes sense to have the long tail of your functionality on the touchscreen, unless you want your car to look like an airliner's cockpit. Which would actually be cool but it would be a pain to learn and, presumably, quite expensive.

> it makes sense to have the long tail of your functionality on the touchscreen, unless you want your car to look like an airliner's cockpit.

AFAIK, an airliner cockpit also hides the "long tail" of functionality behind multi-function screens (though AFAIK they use physical multi-function buttons and keyboards, instead of touch screens); only the essential functions have physical buttons (but there are a lot of essential functions on an airplane).

I sure wish they wouldn't build so much functionality into the cars.

I'm not sure I buy this. My 2020 Civic has physical knobs and buttons for most† of the climate functions, media/radio controls, answer/hangup a call, lights, wipers, cruise control (including speed limiter and follow distance), driver's display, brake hold, eco mode, stop/start on/off, dampers, gears (though it's a manual so goes without saying), windows, mirror folding, and then a few down by my knee that I never need to touch like collision detection, traction control etc. I've edited this post four times already because I keep remembering more buttons it has.

With the regrettable exception of the couple of climate controls I detail below, the only functionality on the touch screen is stuff I shouldn't be fiddling with while in motion anyway: GPS, car settings, and anything that CarPlay displays. I know a Civic isn't a prime example of a "high tech" car, but it's a well-specced one and I'm struggling to think of much that substantially fancier cars have that would blow past a reasonable limit for physical controls.

† on/off, temp, screen blower, seat heaters, and defrosters all have physical controls. The manual fan speed and direction controls are on the touch screen. I wish they weren't, and I believe the newer 11th gen has restored these as physical knobs and buttons.

I was at a Honda dealership in late 2021 looking for a car, and I mentioned to the car salesmen how I don't like how touchscreen-dependent cars have become. Then ten minutes later he's showing me the touchscreen climate controls in a 10th gen Civic and talking about how cool they are.

I wound up getting a new 11th gen Civic since used cars were ridiculously expensive at the time, and I was very pleased to find that the touchscreen is only used for iOS/Android and some settings. The climate control knobs are imperfect though: for some reason they decided that the user should select which vents are active with an infinitely scrolling knob, so you can't utilize muscle memory, and you have to look at it while you're turning it. An improvement over the previous generation, but a step down from my dad's 1992 Civic.

Toyota has also swung back into the button direction. Only the CarPlay and a few of the backup camera controls use the touch interface (and the button I use most for the camera is a physical button). I’m sitting in my car right now waiting, and so just counted all the buttons I can reach while driving from the drivers seat and got to 95 including things like left toggle right toggle for the mirrors adjustment being two buttons, so being as liberal as possible in my definitions of a button or knob. There’s then a touch screen a little bigger than an iPad in the center console that has the Toyota infotainment stuff (which I disabled and opted out of the master data agreement so it does nothing) and CarPlay.

The thing is I intuitively know about 50 of them since I’ve been driving the vehicle about six months now.

2020 Audi A4 here: all AC controls, lights, wipers, cruise control, volume, speedometer display options etc. are phyiscal. Thank God. Of course being Audi it's a bit goofy at parts, but manageable. I cannot imagine having to touch a screen to skip a track or, God forbid, change the gear into reverse.

Of course it still has a touch screen display for all the usual carplay/android auto shenanigans.

Slightly older Audis (up through 2017-2019 depending on model) had a clickable wheel interface instead of a touchscreen. It's vastly superior, and I deliberately bought a used 2017 A4 to get it.

Yes, nothing will ever beat the old MMI when it comes to ease of use (especially once you got a hang of it and could do stuff "blind" without looking at the screen). Just wanted to say that this one still has more than enough in physical form; I also drive a 2022 A3 every now and again and I'd curse, for life, the person who figured out CAPACITIVE skip/volume/power on buttons are a good idea if I could.

I don’t think that’s what people want either. But there is a dozen or two features so commonly used that an analog control is the obvious choice.

One of my newer cars has only one physical control and that’s for volume. I never realized it before owning this car but I change the AC much more frequently than I change my audio volume.

> Airplanes have entered the chat.

And, really, wouldn't a car that had controls like a plane be awesome? Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but I'd adore a set of metal physical switches just above the windscreen. Add a HUD while you're at it...

It’s effectively impossible to assign a button to every thing.

My 95B.2 Macan: "Hold my bier and watch this..."

(Naturally, many of the 90+ buttons were gone with the next facelift, which is why the old one is still in my garage.)

"it’s effectively impossible to assign a button to every thing." - maybe not? see: any commercial airplane.

Soft keys don't require any significant wire plumbing, the keys are less than an inch from the screen. And they've been used for decades in ATMs and gas pumps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_key

Couldn't you still run a digital bus all the way and then have some conversion to/from analog controls at the end? Keep the computer but lose the screen?

The interface is the problem, not the underlying information representation or communication.

That's a good idea, but I think at least part of the reason it's more complicated is that you have to design and fabricate a new face plate for the dashboard, and get a new set of controls every time you want to change something on it. Say you wanted to add a new button on a particular trim level only, because it has a feature that the other levels don't. You'd need to either redesign that whole part of the console for just that trim level, or else sell everyone at a lower trim level a console with an extra button that does nothing. Multiply that by N, for every tiny feature you want to sell on the higher trim levels. If you've got a digital display, of course, you can just go crazy and add all the UI elements (and features) you want.

This actually makes sense.

If you want the car to be fully customer configurable, you basically need a custom dashboard for every single car. You also need to think about what happens when the customer does an upgrade.

Somebody could invent a device that creates plastic boards with custom-designed shapes.

I have a couple 15-20 year old base trim level cars and they use the exact same dashboards as their premium siblings. The unused button spots are still there they just haven’t been punched out yet

> You'd need to either redesign that whole part of the console for just that trim level, or else sell everyone at a lower trim level a console with an extra button that does nothing.

Not necessarily. Sony has joysticks that can snap in and out of the advanced controllers. It wouldn't be hard at all to design a backing circuit board that supports this behind the trim. Switches aren't exactly delicate parts either so it's conceivable that a cheaper system could use auto shops to solder in a new switch into the board.

You could also have a simple multiplexed interface board near the head unit and the switches could use simple two wire connections back to that board. Or the head unit could just have this built into it. Or you could design and use a HID like protocol so different interface adapters with different capabilities could be plugged and unplugged from the system.

Is this worth the cost? Short term probably not but long term you might be able to make these accessories much more generic and so reusing them in newer designs might actually lead to good savings. Plus you'd spawn an active third party market for these parts.

These buttons are usually located so close to each other, that one PCB can hold many of them. Then you need just one set of wires which connects the ECU to the controller on the PCB.

You can connect a bunch of analog switches to one LINbus microcontroller; then you only need one databus.

I would think, however, that a lot of these car companies already had assemblies for analog switches. I don't know the cost analysis, but maybe switching from analog to touchscreen and now back to analog is more expensive than if they just stuck with analog.

Also this is a safety problem. IMO, this should be regulated. In the US we kind of do - we require a physical button for the hazard lights. That's why in modern Teslas that's the only physical button.

Cost and durability as well. Physical knobs wear out because of friction and dust.

In well over five decades of experience with automobiles I have never once had a physical nob wear out. In my own vehicle, or those of anyone I've encountered.

I'm not saying it never happens, but it would be an exceptional outlier circumstance.

My old head unit was all buttons and slipped into the dashboard in one piece with one plug too. In the custom stereo world having a touch screen interface always carried a premium over good old buttons. I’m not sure why that should change. Screens are much larger and full color on touch screen cars too compared to basic lcd alphanumeric screens.

This is it. I don't know why so many people think touch controls are a misguided attempt to be better. They are a definite attempt to be cheaper, that's all. This is why most electronics made in China these days have touch buttons. They are cheaper and they are almost always worse.

It’s cost for sure, but they were also able to sell the tech packages so it was also fulfilling a demand too.

Ya, cheaper design/production costs plus a tech feel for being new, but I bet in the future you’ll be able to buy analog buttons as a premium upgrade.

A touchscreen with an entire software engineering department behind its software is cheaper than buttons?

Evidence suggests that their engineering teams are either not that big or not that good given how garbage most vehicle UI/software is, and it's a price you pay (mostly) once per touchscreen software design, which will span several models, where as the component + install cost needs to be paid for every vehicle in perpetuity.

It's a little deeper than this, software for each module is typically provided by a tier 1 or tier 2 supplier according to a spec provided by the OEM. Sometimes the tier 1 or tier 2 supplier is also subbing out the software or stuck with some system on chip that sucks.

So for a made-up example, GM wants to build a smart dash in the latest SUV, maybe Bosch or Continental has one with a SoC inside and their own software hell. OEM works with supplier to integrate, bugfix, skin, and customize. But they don't write it from scratch.

Yes, and suppliers outsource the actual development and testing to cut costs even further.

AFAIK, car manufacturers want to bring more software in house as a core competency, which is probably good because the "Tier 1"s are generally even worse at software than them and have worse aligned incentives.

If you haven't been there, you cannot imagine how bad most car manufacturer's software departments are. They are big, expensive, and crawling with bad practices. Management usually doesn't have a clue about software, so there's a lot of maneuvering with goals being anything but producing good software quickly and cheaply.

Yep symptom of an org that sees software as a very expensive cost centre rather than a key engineering asset.

The fact that software is bad is not evidence that it was built by a small team or had a low budget. A depressing amount of high-budget, large-team software is awful.

This is absolutely true, but if you scratch the surface of teams like that what you'll usually find is terrible management more interested in shuffling paperwork and CYA than in quality and excellence.

Given economies of scale, yes

The hardware buttons need a system, microcontroller with software or whatever, to manage its state just like the screen.

If there are enough buttons, yes.

Toyota makes 10 million cars a year.

Another angle is that you can add/remove/relabel software buttons later. Hardware decisions are much more final.

When I worked at Toyota (well, NUMMI) in the '90s, the engineers from Toyota Japan that told me: "I'd kill my mother to save $1 on each car produced." Yes, at Toyota's scale, $1/car is a lot of money.

Remember that someone needs to manufacture those buttons, install them in the factory, stock them for replacement and keep them around several countries in the world in warehouses for when they break.

Now replace all that with a single screen and suddenly costs savings everywhere \o/

Let's not forget you can charge a mint to replace the half-assed Ipad you have jammed into the dashboard when it goes bad.

Why do people think this?

Can you find any annual report from a car manufacturer that shows parts sales contributing significantly to profit?

Yes, dealerships make money from servicing and parts: "the service and parts department, which accounts for the other 49.6% of the dealership's gross profits".

But a car manufacturer doesn't capture that, so a manufacturer has no financial incentive to increase profits for dealerships.

Well, I hope to god AC Delco makes at least some profit from selling parts.

  ACDelco is an American automotive parts brand owned by General Motors

It isn't clear that AC Delco would have any incentive to supply bad parts so that AC Delco could sell replacements and profit.

FYI Toyota owns an equivalent parts supplier called Denso.

Yes.

The buttons still need to be programmed to do something so the cost savings isn't really on the software team.

Having a standard touchscreen that you can slap into any of your cars, and update OTA is huge.

You make the software button once and it's there for the many millions of cars. You have to actually manufacture and stick in the many millions of buttons otherwise. Besides the actual action was going to be software on the bus anyways. Your window switch hasn't been directly connected to a motor in decades. It's sending a "window down" message to the bus that goes to the window actuator unit that then drives the motor. You're still paying someone to make it computerized anyways, you were going to pay a team of designers to draw it up and make the plans for the physical switch as well.

The screen was going to be there anyways due to backup camera requirements and because consumers want AA/Carplay.

> The screen was going to be there anyways due to backup camera requirements

This. Backup camera requires a large screen leaving little room for buttons.

My car has buttons and a big enough screen for back up camera.

>This. Backup camera requires a large screen leaving little room for buttons.

?????? A Chrysler Town & Country has a 6-ish inch screen and still easily runs a backup camera feed which is more than clear enough for anybody.

This makes the incorrect assumption that the infotainment system would be removed, reducing the cost of the engineering.

Adding a virtual button in an infotainment system is much cheaper than a physical button. Especially since the most cost effective routing of those physical buttons would be to the infotainment system that is going to be there regardless.

If that is the deciding factor, you can put the buttons and knobs on a face plate mounted on top of a touch screen, with the unpowered buttons just acting as fingers. But I don't think manufacturing cost is the real issue.

That isn’t really true when you factor in the cost of engineering new parts/systems compared to just doing it like you’ve always done.

I know a guy who worked at GM and apparently they got bit by the “digital transformation” bug and decided that the army of iPhone app developers and ex Silicon Valley folks was what they needed to stay relevant. Hence the omnipresent touch screen.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com