Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls • Hacker News Board

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#521

Post by mcsb4 » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:25 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #435

squarefoot wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Touch screens add multiple points of failure to a device that, if properly built, would last decades. A single glitch in a software driving a screen could render useless all touch inputs displayed on it, information loss aside. I'm all for mechanical switches everywhere. As for potentiometers, sliders etc, we already have optical and mechanical encoders that hardly fail, or if/when they do, it happens gracefully leav…

Multiple physical knobs and buttons add multiple points of failure: moving parts fail and even worse, they often fail intermittently. We all have that experience. Even optical encoders fail (I’ve had one fail on an engine, and obviously consumer mice, or the connectors fail). A modern touch screen is superbly reliable because it has no moving parts, and it can be tested. The (consumer grade) iPad touchscreen is very…

I had a smartphone that at some point started to randomly create touch events. Kind of like if you put it in your pocket while the screen is unlocked.

I don't remember any physical light switch that ever switch on or off by itself.

In an aircraft flying through turbulences I'd feel a lot more comfortable knowing that all switches are pyhsical. Try to use your smartphone while jogging...

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#522

Post by nthnclrk » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:25 PM UTC

From the article, “ Honda has done what no other car maker is doing”.

False, Mazda started this with the Mazda 3 in 2019 (https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...).

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#523

Post by viklove » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

hnarn wrote: post #138

Look at the cockpit of any modern airliner and you will see screens, but they are never interactive. There are hardware buttons, dials and lights all over the place. A tactile interface is both more obvious, sturdy and more stable, and therefore safer. The problem that touch interfaces solve, ever since the advent of the first smart phone, is that the interface is now dynamic. You can change it without having to repl…

I think you're missing something pretty major -- a touchscreen can support multiple UIs, menus, and controls, with minimal hardware. If I have 20 user adjustable inputs, I would need 20 dials/buttons scattered around the cockpit. On the other hand, with a screen, I can display 5 on each page and allow the user to swap between pages.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#524

Post by jasondclinton » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:27 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #335

jasondclinton wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is off-topic: the article is about physical buttons for non-safety-critical systems. E.g. the article explicitly mentions climate control.

Climate control is something you will want to adjust while driving, so it should be as eyes-free as possible once the basics have been acquired. I can’t think of a car I’ve driven where the climate control was not physical though, that seems pretty insane.

All Tesla climate is non-physical. All newer Volvos are except for the defrost controls, as well.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#525

Post by boznz » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

CivBase wrote: post #162

hnarn wrote: post #138

Look at the cockpit of any modern airliner and you will see screens, but they are never interactive. There are hardware buttons, dials and lights all over the place. A tactile interface is both more obvious, sturdy and more stable, and therefore safer. The problem that touch interfaces solve, ever since the advent of the first smart phone, is that the interface is now dynamic. You can change it without having to repl…

I work for an avionics manufacturer and I can assure you most of our upcoming comercial systems (and even a healthy portion of government ones) feature touch screen inputs.

and all SCADA systems

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#526

Post by saagarjha » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:39 PM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #512

Dahoon wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My car has onboard voice controls, but, unlike Siri via the car's audio system, they suck Using Siri is more dangerous than driving and texting: "Undistracted drivers typically showed a one-second reaction time. Those who used the voice-controlled Apple CarPlay saw a 36% increase in their reaction time, which rose to 57% when they used the touch interface." https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/03/20/new-study-shows-…

Yeah, well, people are selective in their concerns. How much does it affect reaction time to have passengers in the car who you may talk to, or may be doing all sorts of things that distract you?

Aren't passengers much better to have in your car, because they can "copilot" for you?

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#527

Post by robocat » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

joyj2nd wrote: post #421

mc32 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s too bad. Imagine unresponsive touchscreen due to dry skin or wearing gloves, or hands are too sweaty.... or the controller goes out, etc. Flight plans is one thing but controls are all together a different sort of thing. Why ask for trouble?

Touchpads can't even be operated by a cat https://ask.metafilter.com/91541/Why-cant-Godfrey-work-the-t...

Actually the thread showed they can.

The theory I thought was reasonable for why the OP had troubles, was that Mac touch pads are sensitive enough to treat the separate pads of the paws as multitouch.

Testable: try with individual pad of paw on a Mac touchpad.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#528

Post by woobar » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

kenhwang wrote: post #426

woobar wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since peaking in 2015 Mazda is not growing. They are steadily losing market share over the last 10 years. They make attractive cars, but they bet on pretending that they are a "premium" brand and priced themselves out. https://carsalesbase.com/us-mazda/ https://www.autonews.com/sales/mazdas-complicated-journey-pr...

In terms of sales volume in the US, you are correct: Mazda is not selling more cars. If you look at their financial reporting, they're making more money from car sales. Looks like ~60% more. Anyone with a lick of business sense would happily trade -10% sales volume for +60% profit from higher margins. They didn't price themselves out, they just decided to not play the loss-leader volume game Ford/Honda/Toyota is play…

Looks like ~60% loss to me. (From $1.1B net in 2015 to $572M net in 2019)

https://money.cnn.com/quote/financials/financials.html?symb=...

EDIT: $1.1B in 2016. In 2015 net income was $1.45B :-(

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#529

Post by freeopinion » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

BrandonMarc wrote: post #374

cmckn wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My partner is a first officer, and frequently describes his job as being a glorified babysitter outside of takeoff and landing. Worth noting that a significant amount of the information pilots use in the cockpit (at major US carriers, at least), things like flight plans, are on an iPad.

... until something goes wrong. Then a touch screen is the last thing you want. An airliner moving uncontrollably is no time to try touching just the right spot of the screen, and avoid touching the wrong spot.

Kinda like trying to flip just the right toggle switch and avoid flipping the wrong one?

Just because it's on a touchscreen doesn't mean it has to be tiny and hard to touch. A 17" touchscreen could have fewer controls than the same hardware panel. And the controls could be bigger on the touchscreen.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#530

Post by im3w1l » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

vel0city wrote: post #371

squarefoot wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Touch screens add multiple points of failure to a device that, if properly built, would last decades. A single glitch in a software driving a screen could render useless all touch inputs displayed on it, information loss aside. I'm all for mechanical switches everywhere. As for potentiometers, sliders etc, we already have optical and mechanical encoders that hardly fail, or if/when they do, it happens gracefully leav…

In many of the newer systems, all those physical dials and switches are just inputs to the computer system which ultimately decides to do what the user is requesting. A bug which would prevent inputs from working right on a touchscreen could also happen on reading inputs on other systems. Not that I'm arguing for touchscreen controls, just that these days having a physical knob does not mean you're directly manipulat…

> In many of the newer systems, all those physical dials and switches are just inputs to the computer system which ultimately decides to do what the user is requesting.

Even so, a program for processing a switch or dial can be really short and simple. You can print it out on a sheet and check and double check every line of code for to make sure it's correct and all possibilities are accounted for.

A program handling a touchscreen will be complicated. Millions of lines of code. Maybe even billions. The best you can hope for is empirically verifying it's mostly correct most of the time.