Live data from Hacker News

Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

theautopian.com

191–200 of 392 posts

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#191
post #72

I'm not looking forward to buying another car, since I've been hearing of a lot of criminally negligent human factors engineering for at least a decade, combined with increasingly invasive spying on people in their own cars. Is there any decent automotive company remaining?

Mazda is all _out_ on touchscreens... There are knobs and buttons for controlling things. You still get all the standard bells and whistles (radar cruise, lanekeeping, heads-up display), and, at least in Australia, no phoning home or built-in connectivity beyond a GPS receiver and radio.

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#192

This is a gem (emphasis mine): "The touch-screen-actuated glove box is terrible because it’s one of those examples where carmakers have found that they have the technology to do something, so they do it, without considering literally anything about what they’ve done . Did anybody want this? At all? It takes something that has never been a problem, opening a glove box, and added cost and complexity to the construction…

Remember curved TVs? Remember 3D for TVs? That was essentially technology bullet-point features, but since they flopped hard you can no longer buy curved TVs or 3D TVs. Turns out if people really don't want shit, it disappears again, no matter how hard various corporations push the shit.

That's not necessarily true. For example, Apple is the king of both additive and subtractive bullet point features, and they sell like hotcakes.

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#193
post #54

one tangentially related extremely irritating “feature” of Teslas is automatic updates, which not only disable the car while they’re going on, but often rearrange the UI so you have to figure out where the buttons are all over again. it’s a flat out disgrace. you get into your extremely expensive car, ready to go, but no the car isn’t available because some dev team somewhere a few thousand miles away decided to push…

Honestly, then why buy it? This has been the case for years (a decade?).

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whisker controls are even better. No need to take hands off the wheel.

> whisker controls Tried a quick search and couldn't find it. Is it like the scoll wheel on a mouse? Would be nice to have those on the steering wheel instead of up/down buttons.

Aye my skoda has a touch screen but I rarely use it (2016 model with touch screen and proper buttons, not the horrific current design of xbox style touch buttons) because I have 2 scroll wheels (volume and screen between the rev counter and speedo control), buttons to skip back and forward music, button for voice assistant, and a phone button. Its the best design out there I'm convinced.

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in a car crash as a child. Two cars caught fire, although I didn't realise it until I got out. My door was blocked by another vehicle, as was my dad's. He was busy trying to get my sister to open her front passenger door, so he could clamber out after her. The other rear door was damaged, and I had to pull the latch and then kick it to open it. (Not sure how that would work with one of these small manual releas…

How does this work in a plain-old car with child locks set on the rear doors? My children had opened the doors while the car was moving at least once before I had to use the child locks; now, as far as I can tell, nobody is getting out of the back doors unless they're opened from the outside.

Maybe they disable if an airbag is triggered? Could also be the child lock requires constant current, so that it’s off by default?

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this work in a plain-old car with child locks set on the rear doors? My children had opened the doors while the car was moving at least once before I had to use the child locks; now, as far as I can tell, nobody is getting out of the back doors unless they're opened from the outside.

Uninjured children can probably climb through to the front and use those doors, even if the driver is injured. I would think a 5 year old should manage that? But they would be familiar with how the doors normally open, and probably not an emergency release handle. (I was 11.)

I was thinking more of the scenario of the front doors are blocked so the adults need to climb in the back to get out.

My children are only 1yo and 3yo so younger than your story. I don't imagine needing the child locks when they're that age.

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#197

I understand that this is a rant about a niche feature but you know what we really should stop doing right now? We should stop producing giant piles of metal with four weels weighting more than 2 or 3 tons. No matter what stupid options they have, SUVs and big cars and trucks are a total nonsense. Sadly they are slowly becoming the norm. We should keep our vehicles under a ton so that we stop wasting so much of our p…

Sure. You're right, but I don't see how that's a relevant comment for this article.

Even saying this person is right is being generous to them.

The attitude that there is no use case for a truck or suv is quite the privileged city dweller point of view.

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#198
post #89

GM also has electronic primary door release mechanisms in their vehicles. So if the car has no power, you can’t open the doors from inside. Granted, because of regulatory requirements there is STILL A MANUAL RELEASE… on the floor, near the chassis sill (and might be driver-seat only). So you save money going to electronic releases, but still have to put a manual one in anyways. The glovebox is merely annoying (though…

I am very surprised the regulations are not more stringent than that. Requiring a manual door release on every door should be the bare minimum.

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#199
From (the) experience(s of many, many people), I've learned that GM makes mechanically terrible cars. Digitizing a handle that doesn't even require a lock tells me that they're simply bad at design and build across many domains. So my misunderstanding is, why does anyone with enough money to finance a new car, ever, buy GM? What do people see in their cars?

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#200
post #13

Reminds me of an aggravating feature (or really lack thereof) in my new Prius. It has wireless charging, but requires a cable connection for CarPlay. I hope I never meet a Toyota engineer in person, because it would be hard not to do something criminal to them.

Keep in my that a manager made that decision, not one of the engineers doing the hands-on work.

That's a cop out. The engineers can say no. Many managers are former engineers anyway.
Post reply on HN