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Comment by Pxtl | Hacker News Reader

Touch-screens in cars still feels like an impressively bad idea.

Systems with excessively complex interfaces of any kind in cars are bad. I drove a Sync-equipped Ford last year. The infotainment system and several functions directly related to vehicle control were operated with buttons on the steering wheel, but several things that were single-function in most older cars and aftermarket sound systems required looking at a screen or memorizing a sequence of several button presses.

Particularly bothersome, the option to disable traction control was buried four levels deep in a menu system.

That was the second biggest reason I didn't pull the trigger on a Ford Fusion Energi a couple months ago (first one being Microsoft Software running critical car systems)

While Microsoft has a well-deserved reputation for making unstable and insecure consumer software, think about any software you've used made by companies whose primary business was not software and ask yourself if Ford would have likely done a better job in-house.

Touchscreens in particular are bad because you can't operate them 'blind' the way you can with tactile interfaces composed of knobs and dials.

I rent cars a lot when I have to travel, and I've grown to hate anything "touch" in a car. Several manufacturers have adopted touch-based controls, even outside of a touch screen. For example, I had a Toyota Avalon rental a couple of months ago, and I was constantly, accidentally pressing buttons because I brushed them with my hand. When a car is in motion, it's hard to steady your hand. With touch controls, I find that I have to plant a finger somewhere as an "anchor", then engage the touch inputs with another digit. What a horrible mode of interaction.

I agree, especially when the touchscreen replaces physical controls. I really like that in my current car I can adjust fan speed, temperature, stereo volume, etc all without needing to take my eyes off the road, but if I bought a new car with those controls moved to the touchscreen that would no longer be possible.

Also, most touchscreens are not that well suited for use in cars. The interface is slow is usually slow, clunky, and modal, the screen is hard to read in certain light and/or blinding at night, animations are often distracting, the touch sensor is resistive and ignores input if you don't push firmly enough/hold your finger long enough, etc.

It's disappointing that touchscreen interfaces are aggressively being pushed downmarket, to the point where it's very difficult to find a decent car without one nowadays.

totally agree, especially when they're not tilted towards the driver and badly polarized to interfere with sunglasses.

drove my buddy's 2013 Subaru WRX, the "Limited" edition that has this touchscreen as a standard feature (as in, it cannot be opted out of) - a truly terrible experience. Just seeking radios stations is an exercise in anger management. Since you cannot feel where anything is, i found myself much more distracted from driving with hitting the correct place on the screen. Having a large screen adds to the frustration since you cannot even have good reference points while you hunt for what you're looking for. Any visual buttons that are not on the very edges of the display are just worthless to use (and there are lots of them). There's no muscle memory, every time it's like driving a different car.

I assume that if/when Glass takes off, Google will follow-up with an integrated car-version. Glass is meant to provide non-distracting visual info at a glance and operated hands-free, so it's an obvious platform for cars.

edit: I'm always surprised how little the consumer electronics industry learns from the gaming industry. Games have refined the modern gamepad into something impressive - they force developers to shoehorn their games into the given controls, and adapt those controls to the correct context, and give the user good non-distracting HUD feedback.

Meanwhile, you look at a TV remote or car stereo controls and we're transported back to the bad mistakes of the '80s. Rip out half the controls and just give me some good text-to-speech to tell me the context of what menu I have currently selected.

...and so we'll get more of "standard feature (as in, it cannot be opted out of)" - smart glasses!

As another related point, let me remind you that we're having the idea of wearing smart glasses to have a convenient display in front of our eyes. In cars we already have car's glass placed permanently in front of our eyes.

I don't literally mean having a glass on your face while you drive. I mean integrating the technology that Google has built for Google Glass into your car - the new text-to-speech system and whatnot. Attach the physical display to the rear-view-mirror or project it onto the windshield or something.

I rent a lot of cars and I've seen some really bad touchscreens. But the Toyota Camry has a great one (as does the Prius) so it's possible for them not to suck. Hopefully all the car companies will get there soon :)

Off topic, I'm always extremely amused to see cars branded as "limited". "Ooh, this car has more limitations! Sign me up!"

pretty sure the implication behind 'limited' is that it is a limited production vehicle version and is thus more valuable because it has certain features that will not be provided in the standard.

I used to work for Panasonic Automotive. These things are universally awful because their tooling is still geared towards hardware-type systems. They can use linux all they want, but if it still takes two weeks to turn around issues brought up in testing, badly, then the result will be invariably awful.

The technology exists to create feelable/texturized buttons on a touchscreen. Even though the screen is flat your finger feels a small bump that would allow you to navigate the screen without looking at it. Alpine has used this on a few of their head units. Not sure why factory touchscreens aren't making use of it. Patents maybe?

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