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European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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The most annoying thing is that carmakers didn't move to touchscreen-only because people want it, they're doing it because it saves them money to ditch physical controls.
"Hey the touchscreen is already here, may as well just put everything on it!"
Yeah how about don't. It's such a pain having to fumble for things like climate control that used to just be a knob.
The ideal situation is having both.
Eh, I wouldn't say that. They definitely wanted it at first, or at least, they wanted the "new shiny tech" in their cars. Then they had to live with using the touch screen all the time and quickly realized that maybe the latest isn't always the greatest in every situation, and there was a damn good reason for doing things the old way.
I'd say people overall want the touchscreens still, they just don't want them to control every single thing in the car.
They first added screens for things that are appropriate to show on screens, like GPS maps. But that's not going "touchscreen-only." Touchscreen-only -- putting everything on the touchscreen, whether it was an appropriate interface for it or not -- was purely a cost-cutting move.
I disagree. I knew touchscreen controls on a vehicle sucked as soon as I encountered them. Sticking my hand out to reach for the heater slider/knob that was always in the same place, always there, and gave immediate real feedback of the real world is better.
It feels dangerous to use lcd touchscreens while the car is moving.
Yeah. There are two kinds of 'want' to consider really - one being what sells cars, and the other being what people actually enjoy using.
Nice clean interiors with huge full-console touchscreens look modern and have that wow-factor that impresses in the showroom, and that's what matters as far as getting a purchase.
So yeah, you're right that people do want it, but only until they've had to live with it for a while.
I think because most buyers have never been in this position before, they aren't considering what the driving experience would be of not having those controls. They assume and trust that the manufacturers will make sensible design decisions and that the car will first and foremost function well and intuitively as a vehicle, because that's the whole point of a car, right?
We have lived through many decades of car controls getting better and more intuitive all the time, so people would naturally assume the manufacturers know what they are doing. And then only now suddenly get slapped in the face by changes that make the experience actually worse for the driver.
having touchscreen and physical options is the best solution?
My Peugeot e208 has both of them parallel to each other and that was the main reason i decided for that car instead of something like a tesla.
There is no way i'll be tapping through some iOS like app interface to change the temperature while going 150km/h on the highway...
With a Tesla, you wouldn't have any problem like that. Just tap while going 220 km/h, problem solved.
You mean if I crashed it wouldnt matter anyway?
I just wanted to be helpful and suggest how to avoid tapping on a touch screen while going 150 km/h on the highway. Crashing is an option too, but I was told it has certain side effects.
By the way, I H A T E Tesla and touch screens in cars.
More options are always the optimal solution for the consumer, though in this particular case I'd say they don't necessarily need to have exactly one physical button and one touch screen button for each thing. Mostly just the things that a driver is most likely to toggle on the road.
It's not unusual for cars to have a couple different ways to control things. Like how the volume control on the sound system can be on the dash but also behind the steering wheel.
But again, doubles of every single function is probably overkill.
No, that's not true. Too much choice creates decision fatigue and can be exploited to create a confusopoly.
You do need enough options to ensure a competitive market, but beyond that, at some point the marginal utility of adding another option ad infinitum becomes negative.
Having doubles of the controls is a terrible idea. It's more expensive, unnecessary, and a failure point. Why put a command tree for the climate control in the infotainment control if there is a knob next to the screen?
Exactly. Touchscreen can be a positive because you get dynamic and contextual menus, and the sort of rich user interface that people expect from modern devices.
But for the most common functions, nothing beats the tactile muscle memory of physical controls that are always immediately present when you need them, and can use with your eyes still on the road.
So the best is to have both.
I would argue that maybe with the exception of GPS or music -- and that's a very dubious "maybe" -- anything complicated enough to need dynamic and contextual menus doesn't belong in a car in the first place.
There are lots of functions that can benefit, just not ones you want to do while in motion.
I like touchscreen - I just don't like it at the expense of losing physical controls for the things that matter.
The first three are covered under "GPS or music."
I concede your point on the fourth and fifth. I did consider mentioning that sort of thing, but I was thinking more of reading trouble codes without needing to plug a computer into the OBD2 port as a convenience and figured it was too niche.
As for the sixth, I'd suggest that a clock nowadays ought to set itself via GPS, NTP, or radio signal; kmh/mph should be a non-issue because the speedometer should be analog and have tick marks for both, I'm not sure lane keep warnings need to be configurable, etc.
Of course lane keep warnings need to be configurable. Personally, I disable most of them in any vehicle I drive.
They give me notification fatigue and pull my attention more often to misinterpreted information than to an an issue that requires my attention. For instance, in construction zones where lines shift or there is a hazard on the shoulder so I hug the center line more. Or even worse, just because the computer lost track of the lanes for a bit.
Of modern driver aids, the only one I am a big fan of (when done well) is adaptive cruise control. The Subarus I've driven have been smooth in handling cars pulling in front of my when on cruise, but the last Honda I drove was very harsh in using regenerative braking.
I'm the kind of guy that doesn't want so much as an automatic transmission, let alone any fancy electronic nannies, but I admit I'd love to have adaptive cruise control too.
It's surprising that people buy those cars
Our newest company car has volume touch-buttons.
Lovely if you need to quickly silence the radio/media while driving 120kph on the highway =).
But god forbid looking at the phone while standing still at a red light with a running/activated motor.
Radio is fine for touch control imo
Hazards and climate control should be physical buttons though.
A radio needs to be able to do two things: Rotate for volume and press for muting.
A dial button is not that hard to implement.
Plus it can work as a on/off switch.
Easy: We just reuse the big rotary control already present in every car. Just press the Mode button on your steering wheel twice select Volume control accept with both brake and acceleration pedal being pressed for four seconds. Then steer left to increase volume and right to decrease volume. Press and hold the horn for mute.
I think even more annoying are touch buttons on the steering wheel. It's easy to just accidentally activate something with a light touch while steering. And when you do want to push it, it doesn't work consistently. Mine even has different inputs depending on how long you touch it. I've heard that VW has the learned the lesson and will introduce real buttons again but apparently it takes a few years to change this simple thing in a car production even though they've been doing it in the past for many years.