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Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

ben.stolovitz.com

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Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#41

Post by aiisjustanif »

gumby271 wrote: post #35
citelao wrote: post #2

OP here: I always disliked touchscreens in cars, so I didn't understand why automakers kept shoving them in. I always assumed I was weird in some way, and that most consumers preferred touchscreens or something (Reddit seems to argue this in circles all the time). I planned to keep buying Mazdas, with their lovely buttons and stuff. But when Mazda unveiled their button-lite 2026 CX-5 about a year ago, I started inves…

I love the click-wheel on my Mazda3 and I love that it allows the screen to sit out of arms length up on the dashboard. Its a very nice interior. What I don't love is how Android Auto is slowly breaking since it assumes more and more that you have a touchscreen. It used to be that it would focus buttons in notifications, making it easy to interact with. Now the focus doesn't seem to change at all (or only sometimes)…

I cried when Mercedes go rid of the click wheel. Research in this article be damned, I’d argue that rotary knobs with directional shifting like Mercedes paired with great software are the best car infotainment interface in recent history for screens in cars.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#44

Post by urbsgpw »

I gotta say, the one redeeming feature of Ferrari Luce, for me at least, was the interior. I don't dislike screens, I just hate the tesla-esque obsession (where, for them with FSD - for all the hate they get about it up here - it might actually make sense since u are gonna have a FSD+Grok car) with no buttons. I know buttons add cost, but going back to the Luce example again: you have a healthy sized screen (so u don't go to the pre-tesla days), but you also have wonderful buttons across the board.

Now, I know it's not a very representative car. But nobody said the buttons need to be as flashy or as numerous.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#45

Post by advisedwang »

I have heard (but have no insider knowledge) that it's not just the cost of parts, but what parts do to the development lifecycle.

With physical parts, the development process is highly sequential. Pick the look, design how it fits, engineer what parts are used, manufacture tooling etc etc in a waterfall. If a revision needs to be made, the whole process needs to be re-started adding a huge amount of delays.

With a touchscreen, the physical touchscreen and the software that runs on it are parallel threads. You can make most UI changes without impacting the manufacturing/design pipeline at all. You don't even need to have planned what the interface looks like before you finalize the parts needed.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#46

Post by hatefulheart »

vel0city wrote: post #29
hatefulheart wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, wait until the whole thing is unresponsive due to heat or a bug, you’ll be wishing only your volume button was affected. The fact you can rip open the dashboard and fix something is great and what I call a feature, not a bug.

> wait until the whole thing is unresponsive due to heat or a bug Chances are if the whole thing is unresponsive due to heat or a bug the volume knob isn't going to actually change the volume as well. Its not like the knob is the actual pot directly changing the circuitry in the amp these days, its a digital input.

Not convinced that is true.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#47

Post by wilg »

urbsgpw wrote: post #44

I gotta say, the one redeeming feature of Ferrari Luce, for me at least, was the interior. I don't dislike screens, I just hate the tesla-esque obsession (where, for them with FSD - for all the hate they get about it up here - it might actually make sense since u are gonna have a FSD+Grok car) with no buttons. I know buttons add cost, but going back to the Luce example again: you have a healthy sized screen (so u don…

Tesla arguably has better, more useful, and more obvious physical buttons than most cars. Most car manufacturers spray confusing physical buttons everywhere with esoteric icons and insane UX. Everything you'd want to do as a driver in a Tesla has a physical button or a set it and forget it "auto" mode.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#49

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sedatk wrote: post #34

More importantly, car touchscreens are dangerous. It’s impossible to operate a touchscreen without moving your attention from the road to the touchscreen itself. That’s why I think it must be a legal requirement for any car with touchscreen controls to operate car functions must have driver assistance features enabled, no exceptions.

> car touchscreens are dangerous. It’s impossible to operate a touchscreen without moving your attention from the road to the touchscreen itself

They're dangerous for controls the driver would reasonably need to operate while driving the car. They're fine for more-complex at-rest configuration, or stuff a passener would care about.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#50

Post by jasonjayr »

prmoustache wrote: post #24
citelao wrote: post #2

OP here: I always disliked touchscreens in cars, so I didn't understand why automakers kept shoving them in. I always assumed I was weird in some way, and that most consumers preferred touchscreens or something (Reddit seems to argue this in circles all the time). I planned to keep buying Mazdas, with their lovely buttons and stuff. But when Mazda unveiled their button-lite 2026 CX-5 about a year ago, I started inves…

The reality is they want to serve us ads in the future. But they first need adoption.

(a) cars have forward-facing cameras/computer vision for lane tracking

(b) infotainment systems have always-on cellular internet connections

(c) billboard impression counts can be tied to the vehicle

IIRC infotainment systems are already showing ads in some form. And location + driving performance is being captured + monetized and shared with insurance companies.

Unless this results in an EV car that I can rent for less than $100/mo, this really needs to be stopped.

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