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Comment by bhauer | Hacker News Reader

> Yes I do prefer analog controls. Dials for heat. Open close flaps for vents. On off switches.

Dials and switches can be fully digital (e.g., dials can be free-spinning, without locks at each end of a setting). So preferring dials and switches seems reasonable. But flaps for vents are very difficult to automate. Returning to manual flaps in cars would mean losing modern cars' ability to associate and restore HVAC vent preferences with driver profiles. It would mean returning to the time when it was actually necessary to adjust the HVAC vents every time you swapped drivers. While setting vent preferences on the screen may take a second or two longer than manually setting them, thanks to the setting being associated with my driver profile, it's a set-once-and-forget-forever setting. The net time and annoyance savings is large.

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Surely climate controls change far more based on the weather at the current moment than on the preference of the individual drivers? My wife and I have polar opposite preferences for cabin temperature and airflow, but even if the car remembered our preferred settings we would both be changing them frequently anyway.

I would much rather retain the ability to quickly change temp or re-orient a blower without taking my eyes off the road than for the car to remember that I like it cool and breezy and she likes it like a furnace.

Thanks for explaining something I've never understood. I still think it is silly, tho - it makes sense only if each driver always wants vents pointing at the same place. my preferences change by season, by day, by hour, so needing to go through a screen is a time-loss and annoyance generator, not vice-versa.

Just tell (use voice) the car which direction you want your air...

For me there's no set-and-forget-forever setting. Depending on the weather, how I'm dressed, how many other people in the car, whether there's a smelly diesel truck ahead, etc., that's a setting I need to change all the time.

I guess everyone is different, but what you described absolutely doesn't resonate with me. I never have adjusted my HVAC vents after their initial configuration. Winter, summer, whatever. I always want the air to flow the same way.

I practically never even adjust the AC. I set the thermostat and it handles itself regardless of if it's 110F or 10F outside.

Same. That's the beauty of automatic thermostats. They target the temperature you specify automatically. So you specify your favorite temperature once and never interact with them again.

> But flaps for vents are very difficult to automate.

Why? If I'm correctly understanding what you're saying here:

> While setting vent preferences on the screen may take a second or two longer than manually setting them, thanks to the setting being associated with my driver profile, it's a set-once-and-forget-forever setting.

it sounds like vent position is already computer-controlled. Do I misunderstand?

So, take the "move the vent up, down, left, right, more open, more shut" controls that you indicate exist on the touchscreen and wire them up to sensibly-positioned freewheeling/non-stop/whatever wheels that have lights embedded in them to indicate the actual position of the controlled aspect of the vent. [EDIT: For bonus points, you could use force-feedback motors in the wheels to indicate when you've hit the edge of travel for the controlled vent aspect. (Assuming that Sony doesn't hold a PS5-era bad patent on force-feedback tech.)]

What am I missing?

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