Having a touchscreen to operate your car with is a safety hazard compared to having buttons and knobs.
My Mazda had a nice combination of touch screen which disabled itself when the vehicle was in motion and you could then use the rotary control instead. Was really nice and intuitive with entirely separate AC, heated seats etc controls.
I had a rental Mazda and I have to say, that rotary control is the worst combination of tactile and touch interface I have seen to date. Maybe that gets better after using it for 6 months, but I can more or less memorize touch interface control positions in that same timeframe and without the distraction of figuring out which element the rotary dial highlight moved to this time.
I would rather have had full touch than that monstrosity.
I have a Mazda like this. I absolutely hate it.
I have a small built-in touchscreen on the top of the dashboard which is visible in my peripheral vision while driving. But it turns off touch controls while the car is moving. And the physical controls are in the center console behind my manual stick, on the passenger's side. So I have to blindly feel around for my knobs and buttons while driving, or take my eyes completely off the road to look down at my center console.
It would be safer if I could just tap the screen quick while keeping my eyes facing the road, versus trying to search for knobs down next to my passenger's thigh.
I also hate that this newer model removed the mute button from my steering wheel. I used to be able to immediately mute my radio by pressing that button on my 2010 Mazda. But in my new 2017 Mazda, I need to find the tiny volume knob by my passenger's thigh and slap that knob. I still have volume buttons on my steering wheel, but I can't immediately mute by holding the down volume button. So I need to go searching for that knob, which is more time I'm not looking at the road.
What cooks my god damn goose isn't the stupid screen I'm going to break one day. It's that they run buses for other systems through the radio so you can't replace it with what you want.
I had a 1988 Pontiac 6000. I took out the radio/tape unit and replaced it with a CD player. My goddam cruise control was disabled after that. They've been running other systems through the radio forever.
Can we add 'cars with spare tires' to the list?
Having to call a damned tow-truck just to get a flat tire fixed is not a winning move if you're trying to sell how much your car benefits the environment.
Wait, new cars don't have spare tires? Wtf has the world come to?
First they switched to the mini-spares. Then they got rid of them altogether.
If you're lucky, there are little filler canisters and a cigarette lighter-powered air compressor to let you get slowly to a tire shop. Sometimes, not even that. If there's a nail or a blowout, tow-truck city. Just hope it's not out in the middle of nowhere in the dark or in bad weather.
Many new cars have "run-flats," which can be used even if they get a puncture/go flat.
However, they are more expensive, they don't function under certain kinds of flats (e.g., sidewall damage), they have limited range, and limited speed.
The tiny "donut" spares on some cars are also not intended for high speeds, but I'd much prefer that to a punctured run-flat. (You should probably place the donut on the rear of your car is front wheel drive, though.)
I can press any button I like on the console without looking, while knowing what button is.
I will never prefer anything else.
If you're pulled over for using an iPad while you're driving you'll get a ticket. But if you build the iPad into the car it's somehow okay.
Nah, see, when you turn on the car's iPad, it shows a pop-up telling you not to use it while driving, so it's totally different.
There's a middle ground. Give me a decent-sized [touch]screen for Android Auto with physical HVAC & media controls.
Honda is one automaker that has separate climate controls, and it is a great balance with things that are nice on a screen like navigation. Heck, even though the music is through the touchscreen it still has a volume knob to quickly adjust or turn off no matter what the screen is showing.
Being able to feel controls instead of having to look at them while driving is key, but some of you take this to Luddite levels.
Welcome to lemmy. AI bad. Cloud bad. Screens bad. Tesla terrible. Ad-based monetization the literal devil. Paywalls, the devil's brother.
love how looking at phone screens is (rightfully) considered bad while driving, but then they just put a big fucking tablet on cars.
I hate how they don't give you a choice in the matter.. Just give me basic controls, then sell a bespoke android tablet that mounts in the car. I thought car companies love to push extras?
But if it just mounts in the car they can't tell you that you will need a new car because your built-in tablet doesn't get updates anymore.
Reject smart cars because they're collecting your data and it will be used to increase your insurance rates.
My major problems with this design trend, in my own (biased) experience:
Volkswagen in the 70s and 80s had three horizontal control levers for the heating on the center of the middle panel which you could push with one speedy gesture to the very right, and then the front window would get max heat and max air flow to defrost/to demoist very fast.
Was so intuitive and fast you didn't think about it and never had to take your eyes from the road for. That was peak design in my eyes.
I'm really thankful that Audi rolled back whatever they were doing and gave me knobs and switched to deal with. Like in fucking planes and space shuttles !
And fingers crossed all this common sense gets enshrined in law soonish.
Leave me a phone sized screen for CarPlay and everything else can go back. I agree with the giant touch screen only stuff being nonsense, but CarPlay is life changing to my driving experience.
The crazy thing for me is that apart from physical buttons, if car manufacturers actually just released models of 20-30 years ago as new launches, complete exterior and interior, they’d so well!
Edit - with just Bluetooth added but I’m cool with using a cassette adaptor of some sort. Also assuming the engines would be up to today’s emission standards. I mean just the shape and looks.
All I want or need is Bluetooth
If only they were capable of offering phone stands. No, I don’t need your 4 foot, 500 gigalumen screen, just give me a place to put mine.
Why not have both
Our family car radio ig? The screen looks like that due to how hot is it outside (I reside in a desert country)
Is that huge touchscreen real?? looks it up
It is! Ugh, I hate it!
And if it breaks, good luck doing anything in your car such as changing temperature, fan speed, audio settings etc 🙃
Everyone insists to have HVAC controls as physical buttons. How often do you mess with them?
I set up my previous car to 20C when I bought it and it was at 20C when I sold it. Same with the current one, which has touch screen control. It heats the cabin in winter and cools it down in summer. If it's very cold or very hot, it automatically blasts on max.
What am I missing?
I don't know. Maybe you live in a place with low teperature variations. When I get into my car on a hot summer day, I like to turn the temperature down bellow regular comfort temperature to cool down quicker. When I'm stumbling into the car after shoveling snow and scraping ice from the windshield, I like to turn it a bit higher. On long drives, I sometimes get warm after spending several hours in the leather seat, so I turn the temperature down. My girlfriend likes the temperature a bit higher, so when she uses the car, it's turned up.
It's a comfort thing, and it's definitely something I change a lot with my mechanical dials.
When I realize the car or truck ahead of me is emitting something I don't want to breathe (either because I see it coming out the tailpipe, or because I start to smell it), I want to switch to recirculation RIGHT NOW, not after I navigate through a maze of menus that require me to take my attention away from driving.
Also, I want temperature regulation based on how hot or cold I feel, not what some thermometer says (and often have different opinions about where the air should be blowing depending on how I feel).
Everything should have physical buttons because touchscreens don't have haptic feedback and therefore demand more attention, which should be focused on the road. Physical buttons can be controlled via muscle memory much more quickly.
For HVAC, not all automatic systems are created equal and some people just prefer to adjust temps and fans manually.
Directing hot or cold air around the cabin and on to the windows when you come in from the rain and everything fogs up.
Ah, the old "How hard do you want it, how hot do you want it and where do you want it?" climate controls.
There were and are the best.
I recently had the brief joy of driving a small car without power steering. I never realized how much nicer the feedback is. You'd think that it would be a nightmare to park but the size of the car meant that it was still easier on the whole.
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
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