The voice commands on my Tesla are pretty handy and I prefer to use them over the touch screen when possible. 'Set wipers to auto', 'Set temperature to ', and 'Open glovebox' are my go-tos. Main downside is that it requires cellular/internet connectivity.
European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls
531–540 of 660 posts
Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
But even then, how do you find the A/C or volume control on a touch screen without taking your eyes off the road, without accidentally touching something else? You just can't feel your way to the volume knob. Sure, you are a responsible driver and would only do that at a traffic light or other completely safe situation, but I don't know how many accidents touch controls in cars already caused with less responsible dr…
Volume is on the steering wheel. 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 c…
My mother-in-law has had a Mercedes for four years. It has a self-parking feature. She still doesn't know how to use it and probably never will. She couldn't possibly assign a function to the left scroll wheel either. And she's Mercedes Benz's target market.
Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls
#533Earlier quoted context omitted.
I ultimately decided against an MEB based model because the (steering wheel) UX felt almost unusable during my test drive. I partcularily struggeled with the cruise control swipe-click and hilariously the window switch. The car i ultimately settled on has worse overall infotainment software but physical controls which can be operated blindely and reliably. No wonder VW is already in the process of correcting this dis…
And how much cheaper can this stuff really be than real buttons?
We're talking a few dollars per unit for the various capacitive buttons, if that. Steering wheel controls already connect over CAN bus so it's not like you're saving a great length of wire, for example. They still connect to controllers, etc. Even tiny savings add up, but the cost of non-capacitive buttons is something they could recoup with almost zero effort.
Instead, it's almost certainly a design choice: they're easier to design around and 'feel' futuristic. Or that's what the designers and marketers think, anyhow.
The bigger cost-savings are in the touchscreen infotainment systems, where they get to eliminate the physical cost of a ton of buttons while simplifying manufacturing and parts inventory (no having to deal with a bunch of different trim parts to accommodate buttons for various options, etc.). That's probably the biggest reason why consumer pushback against touchscreens has taken so damn long to barely start having an effect.
Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're looking at this from the wrong angle. We don't really want to mandate physical volume controls, because they're necessary. We want to ban touchscreen volume controls, because they're unsafe. If Tesla want to deal with this by having no volume control, that's fine! Good luck to them.
Touchscreens are not exactly the only way to construct a control in a way that's problematic to use when driving. You can just as well place a physical control in a hideous spot in the car, which you can't reach easily, hence making you as the driver bend over and search for the control. Also, physical controls don't necessarily mean that you can recognize them safely without looking at them - buttons can be physical…
Just make it like 90-second rule for aircraft escape chutes. The manufacturer has to prove the stock interface is reasonably safe.
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.
Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
Volume is on the steering wheel. 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 c…
It may depend on the car. 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…
Automatic climate control is one of those things that sounds good and is nice when it works but never works properly in all situations. I much prefer manual controls.
Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You just can't feel your way to the volume knob 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.
I have volume controls and similar on my steering while, and I never use them.... because I can never remember which is where. I prefer my stereo controls to be in the stereo controls area, my climate controls to be in the climate control area, etc. Spreading them out makes it more annoying to deal with.
Yeah I really dislike controls of any kind on the steering wheel. Should not have more than a horn button in the center.
Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure Tesla ever launched this abomination, but: https://www.theverge.com/22348668/tesla-prnd-drive-mode-park...
Yes, I have it. It's great. I much prefer a quick swipe on the side of the touchscreen to having a giant physical gear selector wasting a ton of space. I honestly love just about everything about the UI of the refreshed Model S, from the yoke to the turn signal buttons to the on screen gear selector. Only thing I don't like is the horn button for the two times a year that I honk it.
Wasting what space? Sure, the gear selectors on a lot of cars are in the center console, and maybe I’d rather store something there. But I have never, in my entire history of driving cars, wanted to put anything right behind the steering wheel — first, it’s really awkward to get anything else there and second, any dangly thing there could tangle with the wheel, thus killing me.
So no, please keep the critical driving controls in fixed locations that are easy to access without looking away from the road or looking away. IMO that includes the horn, the turn signals, the wiper control, cruise control settings, and turn signals. And things I might want to adjust in a moderate hurry while driving should have fixed, tactile locations; climate control and sound volume are in this category.
My first car nailed all of this. Recent cars, not so much.
Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls
#538But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn Are there really cars where the horn is not a physical button/ring on the steering wheel? IMHO the driving UX peaked in the 1960s, and was largely unchanged into the 2000s, until touch screens started taking over. Compare: https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads... https://images-stag.…
Except for radios. It's very annoying that every radio had a different UX, likely in the name of innovation and differentiation. I think that's a safety issue for e.g. rental cars.
The two-knob radio was a standard for a long time, and it looks like they're still made.
Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can people please stop implementing ideas that were intended as satire?
Or as social criticism! A lot of tech giants seem to be trying to bring about the techno-future of scifi and completely missing the point that a lot of it is a dystopian hellscape serving as a thin veil over commentary on contemporary society.
The sense that you're being asked, or coerced, to participate in realizing someone's shallow, misunderstood, but aggressively peddled reading of a dystopian social commentary fantasy scenario is very near to the heart of what makes tech bro culture so obnoxious for everyone else.
Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Pretty much every car since the late 80s has electronic throttle control and there are no mechanical linkages from pedal to throttle body. All 90s cars I've had or worked on had a real cable from gas pedal to throttle body.
Even fuel injected ones?
Yes, the throttle cable operates the opening of the throttle. Downstream of that is the airflow meter which is an input to the fuel injection computer so it knows how much air is going in.