This is much more reasonable than I assumed. Unlike seemingly most people here I have no problem whatsoever with fan controls or audio controls or whatever on the touchscreen, as long as it is responsive (of course the vast majority of car touchscreens are not, but some are). However, the absence of a physical speed control for the windshield wipers is the single worst design flaw of Teslas. Or at least it was, until they removed the physical turn signal controls. I'm very much in favor of requiring safety critical controls that must be used frequently or urgently to be physical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_S._McCain_and_Alnic_M...

On a more serious note, there's a big difference between a vehicle like a car that is operated by one person, and a ship with a large crew with dedicated tasks.

Morning briefing by the Captain: “John, you’ll supervise and operate the bottom left corner of the Touchscreen. Adam, as a left handed sailor, you’ll stand right to John and operate the bottom right corner of the Touchscreen with your left hand so there are no collisions in case of emergency”

Aye, captain

A/C is automatic and I don't need to touch it the vast majority of the time. While driving the most I might want to do is adjust the temperature, and since it's not safety critical I can choose a convenient time. It's at the bottom of the screen so it is easy to do by grabbing behind the bezel and only requires a quick glance to align your thumb. In practice I glance at physical A/C controls when adjusting them too, so I don't see a big difference here.

If you really need to adjust the temperature so often and can't stand the thought of using the touchscreen, you can assign that function to the left scroll wheel.

I drive about a dozen different modern electric cars on a regular basis (carsharing) and all of them have at least a few of the above flaws (if not for AC then for something else that needs adjusting while driving).

This goes for tech in general and not just cars btw :)

It's like those scooters you can hire and leave (almost) anywhere, the benefit with a car is, if you park it idiotically, they can check that you were the last driver and forward the parking ticket to you.

There are some other carsharing services in the US in some major cities (e.g. gig car share in sf/seattle), but I would argue overall there's less carsharing now compared to 8-9 years ago. Partly the age demographics have changed, ridesharing (uber/lyft) rose in popularity, and carsharing in the us has had its share of profitability issues.

Peak carsharing in the US to me was around 2017-2018 (car2go, reachnow, limepod, maven, ...)

Of course those smart cars didn't really help either. They were great for parking and stuff but damn did it feel like driving a gocart. My foot was either at full throttle or no throttle.

...I do miss it though.

I liked carsharing from the stance that even if it didn't make me want to get rid of car ownership, it made me feel less inclined to invest as much into car ownership (i.e. keep an old used car with cheap insurance, use carsharing if my car needs maintenance or going on a trip where i dont want to worry about breaking down or if taking another mode of transit back.)

This line of thought kinda gets into the predicament of carsharing (and arguably rideshare/robotaxi) services owned by automotive companies - they're fairly deep in the business of selling cars much more than attempting a service business.

There are also a handful of "peer-peer" carsharing systems where you let other people use your car and I have no idea how insurance would work there.

I'm not sure how much I agree that temperature is not safety critical. It's relative for sure, less safety critical than breaks or transmission, but it can still impact safety in certain situations. In the city when you have a lot of red lights and stop signs, it's not a big deal to wait for the next stop. But on a free-way when you've got a ways to go before you can make a stop then uncomfortable temperature can create a distracted or nervous driver situation. I suppose you could pull over on the shoulder if it were that big of a deal, but even that isn't the safest thing to do on freeways and it's recommended to only do that if you're making an emergency stop.

In my opinion this shouldn't even have to be a big deal. The only reason we're even discussing it is because car manufacturers are moving from tactile buttons to touch screens. People are accustomed to working these types of auxiliary systems without stopping and historically have been able to do so without taking their eyes off of the road. People aren't going to stop doing those things because now they have to use a touch-screen.

Can you imagine actually pulling over off the interstate to change your AC? Absurd. Totally absurd and disconnected from reality. Nobody would do it, they would take their eyes off the road and then it doesn't matter AT ALL whether the function they're trying to perform has to do with safety or even operating the vehicle -- it's a distraction, and that's sufficiently bad.

Can we stop putting distractions in front of drivers, in general? Please?

I'll forgive Android Auto and Apple's thing because people won't stop looking at their phones otherwise but the driver should be able to control the vehicle and everything they might want to do in it without looking away from the road.

And quick changes of T or RH needing the user to crank up the heat, turn on the AC and direct the air to the windshield at full speed are very possible depending on where you are.

Imagine crossing a miles long tunnel under a mountain separating two weather zones.

Hands off my HVAC controls.

In my car, I basically never change the A/C. My dad used to have a same-vintage car for a while, but a different make, and it absolutely needed adjustment depending on whether the sun was shining on you or not, and possibly other parameters. They both had "automatic" A/C.

Now these cars are ~20 years old, maybe things have improved. I haven't ridden in my dad's ~2yo car for any long stretch during the summer to compare.

I just want a gentle breeze of slightly warmer or slightly colder air, damn it!

Yes, they can reassign buttons. But the core problem is distraction, which causes users to go to the touchscreen, which creates even further distraction by capturing their visual attention.

That is good reasoning, but are you sure a high number of drivers are also waiting with adjustments, instead of fumbling on the screen while continuing to drive?

1. Physical controls that you can interact with without the need to take your eyes off the road

2. Touch screen that you need to look almost every time, much of the time while actually interacting with it. But you can mitigate that by using it more responsibly, waiting until you are at a stop, our out of range of anything you might need to react to (which might not happen for 10 minutes or even longer)

Then #1 is clearly the winner. Because 2 is more dangerous for everyone on the road (not just you with your own behavior, but everyone else that might act irresponsibly and hit you). We specifically craft laws to make people interact with their phones less (hands free only, etc) because "people must act more responsibly" is not a reliable solution.

And it's different if I drive with the top down depending on weather. I don't need to look at the buttons to do that now.

so, physical control.

Yes you can. My last three cars have had a volume knob under the left thumb. My current car has a second volume knob behind the gearstick, and the A/C is the only analog dial along the center console. I can easily adjust both without looking away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8

I don't understand how so many people have come across cars with seemingly terrible auto AC systems. Even my old 2000 Honda Accord had a competent auto AC system. I haven't had manual AC on any of my cars in decades. Whenever I rent a car it's always infuriating having to constantly muck with the AC system.

> Whenever I rent a car it's always infuriating having to constantly muck with the AC system.

Am I missing something or do these not make sense together?

If the AC controls are on a touchscreen, chances are they're auto. If they're auto, you probably shouldn't have to mess with them at all while moving.

Basic thermostat is somewhere in center console, which doesn't help much if your chest is blasted with sun. Also temperature you feel is different depending on humidity.

Both of my cars have glass roofs. Previously they had sunroofs. Lots of sunlight in the cabin.

I haven't had issues with automatic AC in decades in cars that aren't exactly luxury cars. It is a solved problem for at least every brand of car I've owned.

I'm still not adjusting the overall temp or vent activation or compressor on or off, I'm just setting it to max defrost and turning that off when it's done. Even when I drive to places where its below freezing every day, I'm still just leaving it on auto AC other than defrosting. Why would I need to adjust the AC while I drive when its snowing outside of defrosting? The AC can automatically adjust itself.

People say auto AC can't possibly work when its hot and sunny. People say auto AC can't possibly work when its cold out. And yet every car I've had for over 20 years of model years with auto AC has worked perfectly fine at 0F and at 110F.

Works on my machine implies it's something special about that one device. My experience has been auto AC has worked fine with several different car models from several different makers across the last 24 years of car manufacturing.

My car can only turn AC on and off. What about me then?

I'm mostly arguing having AC controls on a screen aren't that big of a deal, because chances are if they're on a touchscreen they're auto, and if they're auto you really shouldn't need to ever really mess with them while moving. The only real exception to this would be defrosters, but I do agree there should be a least a physical defrost toggle button.

Functionality that might be needed when you drive (fogging up, change audio src, increase temp) should have physical interface.

So if you have auto AC it could go behind the screen.

But what I am afraid is that cars are sold with premium features as upgrades. So features that are fine behind screen would suck in cheaper models. And when looking at what BS automotive industry is pushing now (subscription services for physical features that are present), I am not hopeful this would be addressed.

I generally agree. Safety critical features need physical control options close to the driver's normal inputs.

> But I feel like we already had it with early screens and infotainment.

I have two cars. One with a big screen and few physical buttons, and one with a small screen with lots of physical buttons.

Because of all the physical buttons, the screen had to be a lot smaller. The vast majority of those buttons relate to actions I really shouldn't be messing with when driving or are connected to the auto AC system which as mentioned doesn't really get used. So it is a ton of wasted space on the center console.

On the other car, the screen is very large. There's still important physical controls related to driving and defogging and adjusting media and what not, but they're all immediately around the driver's area not the center console. This allows for the maps for navigation to be very large and easier to glance at. The interface for changing media a lot easier to use when stopped and wanting to actually look at what choices I have or have my passenger make changes.

At least to me, I'd much rather have the center console be filled with the map and actually used input surface rather than just have it filled with tons of buttons which generally still shouldn't be used when driving.

“Hey Google, set the driver’s side heated seat to one”

“Hey Google, turn off the steering wheel heater”

Experiences with this sort of thing are subjective, but I’ve never had any problems with Google Assistant in the car.

"Hey Google, lower the volume"

"Calling $NAME_OF_DECEASED_PERSON_OR_RANDOM_RESTAURANT"

It would have been ~20x faster to just let me type it.

At least I had told him the general area, so we were getting there even while I kept repeating the address and maps was getting it wrong.

"I'm sorry, could you please repeat your query?"

"I'm sorry, I did not understand that request"

"You said 'Heated Seat', calling closest contact 'Holly Smith'..."

I own a Model S Plaid, and the horn button’s location on the yoke can generally only be reached by the driver’s right hand. Even more dangerous, its position in space changes dramatically any time you are in the middle of a turn. The horn button is not easy to press in an emergency.

Same story with the turn signals.

If you are in the middle of a turn and you have rotated the yoke 180-degrees, your turn signal buttons are now upside-down, and on the other side of the yoke. I have owned my car for a year and a half, and there are still times when I have to look at the yoke mid-turn to figure out which turn signal button is which.

So stupid.

I got used to the turn signals and the wipers because I use them a lot. But I still haven't gotten used to the horn and the lights because these functionalities are used very infrequently, so there is no muscle memory for them at all. I've had this car for over a year now.

The only annoying part is that the left button pad on the wheel is the absolute worst. It's essentially a d-pad with a center press, but it's one single button cover. Which leads to a lot of wrong clicks.

You are legally required to have and use the turn signals. You are legally required to have and use the windshield wipers (because you need to be able to see the road when it's raining). Same is true for the horn and hazard lights - those are safety-critical features, with their use at least partially regulated by law.

While I agree that volume control should be a physical button due to my personal taste, I would not go so far as to mandate it legally to be a physical button, with the reason being that it is not a safety-critical feature. The market can figure this out by itself. But for safety-critical features whose swift and correct use is mandated and regulated by law, I would absolutely mandate them to be provided to the user in a way that supports the swift and uninterrupting use expected from the driver, and that means: physical controls, placed reasonably reachable.

A while ago I worked on a military vehicle intercom system (communication between different station in tanks and armored vehicles). It had a number of pragmatic requirements, learned through experience. One of them was that each station had a 3.5mm jack that mixed its signal into what the headset was hearing. They had learned that whatever you did, soldiers were going to listen to music when they got bored. If you gave them a jack then at least they'd still have their headset on, and would hear instructions (and you could override the music if necessary...). Without the jack they'd just take their headset off.

You have to accept the reality of the world you're designing for not the world you'd LIKE to be designing for.

[Another pragmatic requirements anecdote from the same system: the comms bus had to be able to cope with random disconnects. Why? Because on a tank, the comms bus went to the commander in the turret via a contact ring and when the main gun fired, sometimes that contact ring would disconnect. But then we were allowed 1.5s to reconnect. That's a surprisingly long time - how come? Because that's how long it takes the tank commander's hearing to recover after firing!]

Sir Issac Newton wrote down the laws about piloting a couple of ton of steel some time ago. Very unlikely to be repealed.

Every control that will be used by the driver for any purpose whilst the vehicle is in motion is safety critical.

You need to draw a line, otherwise really anything in your car can be safety-critical, you just need to imagine the right circumstances.

I would draw the line at the controls that are mandated by law. Every control mandated by law should not only be mandated to exist, but also be mandated to exist as a physical, easily reachable button.

> Every control that will be used by the driver for any purpose whilst the vehicle is in motion is safety critical.

Okay, that's at least limiting it somewhat. However, what about the setting for Bluetooth connectivity of the radio? It technically can be used while driving, and there's probably a non-zero count of people who have already used such a setting while driving to pair their phone or whatever. What about the time/date setting of the clock in your car? Same thing. Physical buttons for all of that?

You're being intentionally obtuse. Like everything else, this is a question of what options we have to make things safer. "Not allowing children in cars" isn't reasonable, because there isn't a simple alternative. Using controls that require less attention focus is reasonable.

Case: seat belts. First introduced in 1949, three-point seat belt invented in 1955, Saab made them standard in all their cars in 1958, Volvo in 1959 after being shown studies with fatalities. The first compulsory seat belt law was in 1970 (Victoria, Australia), and only began in the US in the 1980's (with great opposition).

Case: ABS. Patented anti-locks in 1930-ish, the modern ABS in 1971, the system was slowly introduced first in high-end models, soon in every model. The US only mandates ABS in cars since 2012, Europe since 2004 (for new cars). Read: all cars were already being sold with ABS in those dates, except for the cheaper and shittiest ones.

Case: Airbags. I skip the history there, because airbags are still not mandated anywhere. They are subject to some regulations, but you can technically build and sell a car without a single airbag in it.

My conclusion: we should not wait or even hope mandates do anything. In the car market we should do our own research and trust (to a point) car brand safety records and voluntary tests like NCAP, IIHS or NHTSA. If a brand doesn't give a shit about safety unless under a government mandate, don't buy that brand, because they are decades behind safety standards.

Mandates are not the bare minimum in safety, they are well below that. Take for example one of the lowest scores in the current NCAP: Lancia Ypsilon 2015, two stars. Still, they have (not mandated): two front airbags, two side head airbag, belt pretensioner, belt load limiter, belt reminder and ESC. Fear no more, even if we find today that kids in the back raises the death rate in a collision by 20%, we won't see it mandated until 2080 if ever, way after car makers figure out a solution by themselves.

and Euro NCAP chooses the cars indepently: https://www.euroncap.com/en/about-euro-ncap/the-car-selectio...

Or is it possible that you mix up the US regulation on a thread about EURO NCAP?

About the NCAP, I don't understand your message. Maybe you understood that brands send their cars to NCAP voluntarely? What I meant was that NCAP is a voluntary non-profit organization, and they can't do much even if your car is a cofin with wheels other than giving it zero stars. It's not like they can ban your car from the market under safety motives, like a government could do if they want.

This way they can't manipulate the vehicles being tested. The easiest way for your new 4954 model to get excellent NCAP scores is to make the actual 4954's people can buy from a dealer all good enough for excellent NCAP scores, the NCAP will just buy one and test it and it should score well because it's a 4954.

If you want physical controls that actually are significantly safer to use than touchscreens, you need to lay down some ground rules for them as well (reachability, size of buttons, tactile difference from surroundings,...). And that rules out a "blacklist" approach (banning some particular undesired solution) and instead requires a "whitelist" approach (requiring a solution within a defined set of guidelines that constitute what's considered an acceptable solution).

It'll be exploited a lot, so the standards must be high enough, and implementations also must be continually scrutinized by independent neutral bodies.

And we know what comes of it; the industry consortium implementations pass the test with flying colors and it'll look like hugely unpalatable dinosaurs, while new entrants like Tesla struggle to even interpret the spec to follow. The consortium may also explicitly or implicitly ban Chromium based everything.

But at least it'll be safe.

The question isn't whether or not the interface needs to be interacted with at times when it would be a safety issue. The question is whether or not the interface _will_ be interacted with in a way that would be a safety issue. And how much of a safety issue that is to _other_ people. And what better options there are to prevent those issues.

"People can use it responsibly" is not a viable strategy here, when the (many) bad actors injure and kill 3rd parties.

What really kills me is my wife's Civic has no pause button at all, physical or otherwise. And it autoplays media on your phone when you get in. Don't want your phone to play whatever random YouTube video you happened to click on hours ago? Gotta pick up your phone to pause it there. And this doesn't happen right away, oh no, it takes at least a minute into your drive for the Bluetooth to wake up.

Instead you have to either use a weird capacitive DPad to navigate the Android Auto interface, or click the screen. It's terrible for UX.

Fan controls are important to remove fog on the windows. I should be able to enable it without looking away the road.

Far better to have a dedicated defrost button next to the driver's normal controls that does it all as a single toggle rather than have the driver make multiple adjustments. Which is what I have on both of my cars, one of which people complain about how it's just a giant touchscreen.

This doesn't save the wiper situation, though, because that requires navigating menus. Clearly far worse than a physical control in that case.

You presumably typed this out on a keyboard of some sort.

Which one can you do more confidently and reliably without looking:

— hitting the "u" key on a physical keyboard without looking — hitting the "u" key on a touchscreen keyboard on your most used mobile device?

The keys have bumps to let you know when your hands are in the right place.

Similar affordances exist in many cars. Even where they don't; the much smaller amount of them makes remembering things like "the third button from the left mutes the audio" and finding it by touch entirely possible.

Look, I'm not trying to argue that touchscreens are useless or whatever — if you like your touchscreen, fine, whatever, your problem.

But claiming that they're _as easy_ to use without looking as button is just not believable.

But but... in a car your hands always start on the wheel...

When you try to use a touch screen, you look at it all the time. I've just tested: to unlock my phone I have to push a physical button on the right side, swipe up and then make an easy pattern. I can grab the mobile, orient it correctly and push the side button without looking or even thinking. But just to make the up swipe I look at the screen (I can force my self to not do it, with effort). But I'm unable to make the pattern without looking all the time I trace it. It's like the brain don't want or can create muscle memory for touch screens.

Edit: I had a car that used a touch screen feature to activate the heated windscreen - it was perfectly responsive, easy to find but I still hated it. Current car has a single physical button to turn on all relevant features with one press and I love it.

If I get into a car and it's -20F out, last thing I want to be doing is removing my gloves to operate a fucking touch screen to turn on heater/defroster/defogger/wipers, etc. And I absolutely, definitely, without a doubt, do not want to have to be removing/putting gloves back on while actually driving to adjust anything.

> Tesla is probably at greatest risk here, having recently ditched physical stalks that instead move the turn signal functions to haptic buttons on the steering wheel.

God the future is turning out so lame...

They may have left some blinking icon on on the screen, but you're watching the road and don't see it.

They may have left that confirmation 'click' sound on, but you can't hear it because you can't adjust the music volume :)

I think the easiest way to understand the difference is to ask 2 questions: "can I put my finger on that button and not immediately trigger it" and "can I can physically tell that I am triggering it (ideally some physical travel)?" If the answers are "yes", then it's probably the kind of button people look for when talking about wanting "real buttons".

However, I think that such buttons are far more expensive than a physically activated button, even if the latter is engineered to last a lifetime of heavy use.

This was the little (to no) feedback of a press I was mentioning. Simulating the absolute bare minimum of travel. With the pressure sensors and the piezoelectric actuators it becomes a super-expensive, overengineered button simulator that works almost as well as the real thing.

Even Apple dropped the fancier 3D touch completely, and the less fancy Force touch is just for trackpads. Everything else is the cheaper Haptic touch doing away with pressure sensors entirely. It was fine for my iPhone 8 home button and old watch.

But a car is different. A hazard light button has ~5mm of travel. Blinker or wiper stalks have centimeters of travel. Same for rotary knobs. They're also well spaced from each other with hard to confuse actuation methods. In noisy and vibration prone environments, with time sensitive requirements, you want to have very clear and distinct ways to act and receive feedback that actions were performed, especially if critical for safety.

Still, as blinker controls they don’t have tactile markings and a stalk would be much better.

You're correct. But I was addressing GP's wording (emphasis mine):

> those 'haptic' buttons are real buttons

I was making the point that it's not a "real button" if, as you also say, it just "almost like" a real button. Knowing the M3 buttons, that "almost" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Press a classic hazard lights button, and a Tesla signal button and see if they really feel similar. No need to go to the vastly different stalk.

For any normal person a button involves not only the application of pressure but also the consistent feedback of travel. Things like Apple's taptic engine and similar techniques simulate already bad buttons with microscopic travel.

The turn signals wasn’t removed, they moved them to the steering wheel as physical buttons. Which ofc isn’t optimal, because you turn it…

Way too often I see people signaling as they turn, not because they are trying to communicate with other road users but because it’s the law. Indicate your intent first and then take the indicated action.

But, as a sibling comment already mentioned: roundabouts! One of the most important indicator engagements is made crazy awkward for people who keep "walking" their hands to neutral position while the wheel is turned instead of wrestling it like some animal.

Which does make me wonder: has any carmaker started engaging turn signals from navigation? I'd imagine that this could be an amazingly subtle user interface for following a route: just don't press the veto button when the car decides to engage indicators and steer as if the indicator decision had been your own. No more following robot voice orders. An established pattern I don't know about? Tried, but turned out to be terrible? Legal uncertainty (or legal negative certainty)?

Seems annoying if you want to do a turn when in a turn?

And crossroads that aren't at 90 degrees. Like, you know, old cities that weren't built on a grid.

The one time i test drove a Tesla I abandoned a left turn because all the roads involved were curvy enough I couldn't get the turn signal to stay on ;)

Mind, it was just a test drive. I guess that if I practiced for years I could master the wisdom of Tesla controls.

I'm not sure I've seen a less substantive comment on hacker news that wasn't flagged.

You're supposed to indicate before you turn, to be fair.

I want at the least a physical recirculate/bring air from outside button.

The use case is coming up behind a vintage truck that was made before they even thought of pollution standards on a winding mountain road where you can't overtake and you need to pay attention to the road. And you also need to set the a/c to recirculate before you suffocate.

For audio... with radio dying or dead I guess you can just run Spotify the whole trip. I'd still like volume and mute buttons.

Also this: https://youtube.com/shorts/3eKcDOHVZWc?si=-jL4o4Bhu-2y0ibj

Doesn't cover the left multi function button feature after short pressing the wiper button.

(Model 3, 2022, Australia).

Yes, they added this relatively recently. For the first few years I owned the car this was not possible. Also, guess what, it still sucks! More steps than a physical control, fiddly because of the short timeout, and still requires an extra step of looking at the touchscreen because you can't know which way to push the wheel without finding out the current setting. Is it on "Auto" or "Off"? They're at opposite ends of the menu. Acceptable for something less important like setting the A/C temperature; definitively not acceptable for something safety critical like wipers.

My point: just having physical controls doesn't mean it is easy or safe to use, if the layout sucks.

I switch between Indonesia and EU fairly often and most cars I've driven followed that pattern as far as I can remember (maybe I just never noticed though)

The safest solution is to have properly working automatic wipers (UNLIKE current Tesla, where wipers are complete dogshit) so you just don't care. The same for lights.

Imagine that someone rents a car and is tired + every manufacturer has their own konami code, or secret button to start the wipers. That's how accidents happen.

Granted, that guy that posted it was from Australia so that they probably don't have that sort of downpour problem over there (the same goes for places in the US like California or Texas).

I don't wan't a touchscreen keyboard on my laptop, and the travel is already small enough - i say bring back tactility! The dead cold glass orb has destroyed so much.

The fog lights are much worse

My only concern with the wipers would be for an emergency, ie the street washers drive by and suddenly I have no visibility, but for those situations I have the button on the left stalk that fires the wipers on demand.

Half of the time it says it doesn't understand me, or it does something completely different "turn or rear window defrost" -> turn heat to high!. Fog lights it does understand, but it's "not yet implemented", whatever that means.

> pull or push and a quick light menu comes up - 2 clicks

Yeah, so I have to flash someone in front of me to turn on my fog lights, great. And don't forget to turn off automatic lights because it will turn off the fog together with the other lights but not turn them back on.

Apart from that I really like the car, just put a few more functions on the stalks and it would be a great car.

What is with this obsession?

It was -27f/-33c this morning when I started my car. At those temperatures ALL touchscreens generally become slow and unresponsive, especially when wearing mittens. I want the defrost/fan/temperature controls on a physical switch. I also don't want a screen that isn't happy unless it is getting a full 12v/14v. Not all car batteries will give that when cold. Frankly, I'd be happy with a series of valves ... anything other than a touchscreen.

Fyi, automatic wipers are a nightmare in winter. It is very easy for them to break if caked in snow. Standard procedure being to start the car first and let it warm up as you remove the snow and ice. So you need them to be on a physical switch to ensure they are off prior to turning the car on.

Carmakers haven't stopped doing electric variants of ICE models because it's oh so difficult to put batteries where an engine, tank and gearbox used to be (it's not), they switched to dedicated BEV designs to have an opportunity to do a "cost reset" about their approach to all those little nice to have things they introduced in the late ICE era to maximise the price buyers were willing to pay for a given vehicle class. The BEV-specific base architecture certainly helps, but it's as much about the expectations reset. This certainly does not mean that they switch their rain sensor to the Tesla approach, they might actually end up cheaper cost-optimizing what they have and know, but BEV does mean looking at costs in a very different way than in the ICE era.

Why? What's the difference? You fiddle with these as well while you're driving, and they're also dangerous and distracting.

My 2015 Model S has a stalk with a rotary switch for wiper control that includes several automatic and manual modes and speeds.

But I was loaned a Model 3 when my Model S was being repaired and I hated it because most of the stalks had been removed making things like cruise control and the radio much more awkward to use.

Stupid, arrogant moves nobody asked for pushed down the throats of unsuspecting users. A colleague's model 3 died during rain (apparently its such a solidly built car that a bit more than normal amount of rain can kill it for good, got replaced without questions which indicates this is a well known issue). Newer version didn't have physical turn signals. He was almost crying, an early adopter with a lot of love for the company that evaporated in an instance. Its not every day that car manufacturer actively tries to increase chances of people getting killed and acts like all is fine.

Then again, it also boggles my mind how car makers in the US continue to use flashing red lights as the turn signal instead of yellow lights. You can barely see the red light in sunlight and it's harder to tell the red light from brake lights. Furthermore, the same car will have yellow signal lights in the front and side. So yellow signal lights in front and side, red in the back. Just make it all yellow for turn signal!

It is likely that neither safety nor ease of use were part of the automaker's "thought process".

It is much more likely that a first misguided "designer" created the first touch panel control and somehow sold it to "management" as being "futuristic" and/or "ahead of the competition". And once the first car model arrived with one, the rest, like firefox to chrome, felt the need to play the imitation game for fear of being seen as not as "trendy" or "futuristic" as that other guy. I.e., purely the "fashion trend" aspect.

Then, as they proliferated, the reduced BOM costs from removing every other previous mechanical control was reverse justified as the reason for continuing to add them to ever more car models.

There are other reasons of course - planned obsolesence is a big one. Why would they want cars to work after the primary owner is done with it? With software-everything they can lock the car to the first 3 or 4 owners, and then remotely kill it.

It doesn't even have to be actively disabled, just stop providing the replacement head unit as a part because "we don't have that software anymore".

Car manufacturers want to be able to change cars after they are sold. This can be in the positive via OTA updates that fix firmware issues or in the negative by providing "subscription" features that provide a passive income beyond the initial sale. Tesla has been paving a path here with its grandiose claims of "full self-driving" and industrial manufacturers like John Deere have been experimenting with bringing smartphone-style DRM and rent-seeking to motor vehicles. Replacing as many "hardcoded" physical controls with flexible and fungible virtual controls is a logical part of the transition.

Why bother producing five different physical "editions" if you can just produce one and then downgrade it in four different ways by gimping the firmware or disabling controls in the UI? This way you can also upsell the features later or put them in a subscription model.

Technology Connections channel had a video about that a while back:

https://youtu.be/O1lZ9n2bxWA?si=xKRgMFK1DFBrB3i0

Flashing yellow = car is pointed towards you

It's the same reason why headlights are white and taillights are not (unless reversing, in which case the tail becomes the head temporarily, and thus white reversing lights.)

Why is it a problem? How is a red blinker actually measurably worse than an amber one?

I have never had any sort of issue interpreting a blinking red taillight as turning? With red, you can more easily tell the direction of travel and the aesthetics of a single color are far nicer. I frankly don’t see the problem.

Commenter a couple levels up says you can’t see red blinkers in the sunlight? I don’t think that’s true on any measurable level, amber is a far closer match in hue to sunlight than red.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_lighting#Turn_signa...

The cited document for that “up to 28%” actually states that a first analysis found amber lights leading to a reduction in being struck “between 3 and 28%” Quite a range of uncertainty.

The very same document also states that in their second analysis they found no correlation between signal color and odds of being struck.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120712231313/http://www.nhtsa....

Another one of the cited documents goes so far as to say

> Richard Van Iderstine: We have studied the crash involvement of vehicles having yellow rear turn signal lights versus red ones. With our data, we have found it challenging to prove that yellow is better than red.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37484-2004No...

And yet another of the cited sources states

> Analyses revealed that there were no statistically significant differences in rear-end accident rates between the red and amber turn-signal systems.

https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/81...

—-

Based on the actual text of the citations I’m inclined to believe there’s very little difference.

And I don’t see how there could be. The only practical difference I see between a red signal and amber signal is that the signal might ever so briefly interpreted as a brake light activating before the first cycle completes. The course of action of the driver behind in either case is to slow down, so it’s a distinction without a difference in action.

Does anyone actually think that though? Or was it considered “good enough” in light of its other benefits like reducing costs, reducing BOM, eliminating part design work, reducing wiring complexity, adding flexibility and customizability, (potentially) increased reliability, making it easier to jam the multitudes of controls and options a modern car has into a more usable and understandable interface, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, when I bought a new car, one of the selling points was the manufacturer was one of the few to still offer physical control and navigation of the touch screens (in fact the touch functionality is completely disabled at any speed faster than 5 mph). But I don’t think “safer and easier to use while driving” has ever been the driver for touch interfaces in cars.

I mainly gripe about losing physical buttons for main functions such as temperature control, radio/music control, lights, windshield wipers, etc.

Also makes it easier to change things later in the design if you do not have a bunch of physical controls to move.

But if any car makers had done any proper UX testing, they'd quickly find out that physical buttons in a car is a non-negotiable.

I'm also starting to see really thin - single narrow LED strip - turn signals that are barely visible next to the much larger headlight nearby.

I walked out and just continued driving the corolla I had (still have it to this day). When I needed a minivan I purchased an older honda odyssey and fixed it up.

As do Subaru BRZ/Toyota 86/Toyota GR86.

This is probably a US government regulation thing. Because those same cars sold elsewhere in the world does have flashing yellow lights as indicators.

I can't say that I've ever had trouble seeing the red turn signals in the sun. Being able to see them in the sun from a few hundred feet away is legally required in most, if not all, states.

Do you have trouble seeing brake lights too?

Zero-force, zero-feedback, zero-travel controls should be illegal for such functions.

My guess ones that use mechanical dials (i.e. Lexus until ~ year ago) cause more distraction than touchscreen by simply being harder to use and taking more time to solve your problem.

Given how well chatgpt's voice recognition works - why not just put it on all cars!

The only thing that annoys me about Commander Knob + Android Auto is that AA still forces attention breaks as you scroll through big lists (e.g. Spotify playlists) which is really stupid because you're not usually looking at the screen if you know you need to scroll say 75% down. You're just looking occasionally to see how far you've made it. By making the task take longer, it's reducing safety.

The biggest safety issue by far with Mazda+AA is Google's baffling regression in handling voice input for common tasks while driving.

This is probably Spotify's fault, but when you're in a song search, the "next song" button goes to the start of the currently playing song, instead of the next song. The "next song" button works correctly for all other Spotify list-ish things AFAIK, just not search. And search is obviously the place you need a skip button the most.

Is it just me or is Google Maps voice input in AA completely busted now? I used to be able to press the "Search" bar on the touch screen in the app, say the search term and it would just show the results. Likewise for adding stops along the way. Now for the former I need to explicitly say "navigate to X" (or it says that it doesn't have a screen and refuses to do anything???) and for the latter I have to say something like "add a navigation stop at X", the assistant lists our the result (??????) and asks me which one I want to choose. Of course I don't see anything on the map in either case.

I can't imagine how bad it is when you

Because saying "roll down the left window" is still a fucking nuisance compared to a click of a button.

I would love to see some data to see how dangerous it is to operate Maps and Media apps on a touch screen while operating a moving vehicle. This is data modern automakers should have access to. I suspect the answer is that it does reduce safety.

And that doesn't get into the more subtle cases, e.g. a crash that happens later due to an earlier loss of situational awarenesses.

It's also hard to quantify the opposite. E.g. I sometimes have to manipulate the map while driving, and resent the distraction. But afterwards I'm more likely to be in the right lane earlier, not be distracted because I'm trying to read a traffic sign in the 1-2 second window I might have etc.

EDIT: A decent statistical analysis will also uncover if using the touch screen is negatively correlated with accidents -- if people that use maps in general are less likely to get into an accident. This again won't prove causation but would be of interest to the general public and regulators.

It's amazing that accessibility is such an afterthought that having a physical wheel that tabs forward and backward through a UI as the primary means of using it is unfathomable until it's actually implemented.

Yes, being able to operate it without looking at it and capable of navigating arbitrary 3rd party apps. And because the tab position is stateful you can perform complex actions incrementally. Touch screens win for phones but you would hate one as your laptop keyboard. It's not a better or worse situation as much as a fit-for-purpose situation.

He tried it, and it's even worse than Siri in terms of reliability. Absolute unmitigated disaster.

(Siri is actually pretty great at accurately recognising words, it’s just not always so good at doing something useful with them…)

Even Tesla’s is really bad: “Turn off the wipers” frequently gets interpreted as “turn off the wife please” or other similar nonsense.

Market opportunity?