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Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

drive.com.au

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Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Already happening, best example is worldwide grounding of Boeing 737 MAX. It was China who triggered it, not US authorities (protecting US corporation). Similar thing with batteries on airplanes, tube trains, ferries and underground garages. China cares about fire hazard, other countries care about ideology.

China, famous for never putting ideology over policy.

unless you're going back to the cultural revolution, modern China is extremely pragmatic. It's a nominally socialist country that runs deregulated special economic zones with tens of millions of people and more economic competition than anywhere else.

The equivalent would be if the US started to run a socialist planned city of 15 million people somewhere, just for the sake of it. There's pretty much no other place that in the last 30-40 years has as much of a spread of policy experimentation as China has had.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#302

I hope Elon Musk can take a lesson from Mercedes. Tesla went in the other direction: there are barely any physical buttons to remove, so they removed the stalks for signaling and even for changing gear! You have to use the touch screen to shift gears!

They have enough physical buttons.

Removing indicator stalks without steer by wire was a mistake. They fixed that by bringing back the stalks.

Touch screen for great shifting works better than you think. It actually works better than traditional gear shifters especially when you enable auto shift. It changes gears as needed. It's ok to want to stick to the past; but don't drag others back who want to move towards the future.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#303
post #258

Last time it was VW bringing it back, then Mazda bringing it back, and so on. Also luxury cars will not use touch controls, thats only for cheap cars . It appears wishful thinking that physical buttons are coming back. This would be an idea whose time has gone. It does not even matter companies that physical buttons are better, or they can offer as choice (at higher price) if someone wanted. Like remote working, offi…

But VW are bringing them back? The ID.Polo (seems like they dropped the Playstation style incrementing number for the old brand names) is the first of their new electric range with physical buttons for windows, climate, etc.

Basically the door and centre console have them back. Along with a touchscreen of course.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#304
post #188

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They are all like TVs. The native interface sucks, you plug Apple in and it's suddenly good. I have never used the native UI of my Samsung Frame. I haven't used any car's own navigation or music app in at least a decade.

Yep, except on my TV I don't have to leave Apple TV to adjust my climate control every time. (Mk8 GTI)

I drove such a VW. Once. I still get annoyed when I'm reminded of it!

I couldn't help myself and just watched a video demo of it https://www.evshift.com/242850/how-to-adjust-the-heating-and...

The actual rage it induces LOL!

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#306
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airplanes have had fully manual flush door/hatch handles for decades, and a handful of cars have imitated them. The electric retracting handles are pure gimmick.

1990 Citroën AX Sport - https://assets.dyler.com/uploads/cars/406167/9080414/medium_... Look at that door handle. Fully flush, NACA profile scoop in the bodywork to insert your finger behind the trailing edge of the door and flick the little lever up to unlatch it. Give me that, please. I wish I'd never sold my 1991 Citroën AX GT, it was so quick and quiet. Hardly any wind noise, so it must have been very aerodynamic…

1969 Pontiac Grand Prix - maybe not actually aerodynamic, but it does have flush door handles:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/1969_Pon...

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think Porsche has a responsive excellent design with their infotainment / button combination though recent SUV / sedan models have moved to capacitive buttons and more touch screen controls and worsened the experience. To be fair, it is outsourced to Harmon/Kardon.

Last month I spoke to a woman driving a Porsche SUV. I was appalled to hear that she is trading it in for a Tesla model Y. I drive a Tesla, and I love it, but it is nowhere near the level of a Porsche. She claims that the model Y is quieter then the Porsche and she loves the self-driving. I advised her to take the Tesla for a long test drive before selling her Porshe, she said that her son in law has one.

It is true though. The level of porche is in the brand only; there isn't a single porche that is better than a juniper for a daily driver. She's making an excellent choice.

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last month I spoke to a woman driving a Porsche SUV. I was appalled to hear that she is trading it in for a Tesla model Y. I drive a Tesla, and I love it, but it is nowhere near the level of a Porsche. She claims that the model Y is quieter then the Porsche and she loves the self-driving. I advised her to take the Tesla for a long test drive before selling her Porshe, she said that her son in law has one.

Marketing beats quality, also a valid approach. Also a reason why suvs and their more ridiculous variants picked up so well. People don't need cars that are worse to drive, but sure as hell they want one because others have them.

So you want me to put my big luggage, 3 carry ons and a big stroller in a sedan trunk?

Re: Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons

#310
post #275

I think they should distinguish between controls and settings. Settings are great on a touchscreen. A wide variety of options, easily navigated to and explained. They suck on physical buttons, it ends up being like setting the time on a VCR. Controls on the other hand deserve physical buttons. Or levers. or dials/knobs/spinners. It should depend on muscle memory, and the type of control. I also thing driving status s…

I used to drive a 2001 S-class ... easily counted nearly 100 physical buttons within reach of the driver. In theory you could use the 10-digit keypad like an old flip phone to enter a physical address into the navigation, but is that really what people want to go back to?

I missed navigation.

I think it is a natural fit for the touchscreen. Tesla navigation is not perfect, but it is very good. You can pan/zoom the map with swipes which is LOTS better than buttons. You can also search for an address in specific or general terms and are not forced into some highly structured address format.

For example a ford I used had this weird out-of-order way of "enter street number" or "enter zipcode" and "enter street name" with a weird type-ahead/completion that was just... bad.

With tesla, you have a search field. You can type "123 main street, anytown" to find a specific address, or "home depot anytown". But you can just type "home depot" and choose from the list which puts recent on top, then closest to furthest. They also show up as pins all over the map and you can just choose one.

I guess you could also use voice nav. I kind of hate voice nav that is uploaded to the cloud (and they lie) I have an offline garmin car gps that lets me talk to it.

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