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Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

motorauthority.com

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Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#741

Post by JangoSteve »

laughinghan wrote: post #682
JangoSteve wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this is untrue with touchscreens. They also have wires and connectors and must be certified.

They have 2. One for power and one for data. Usually they're replacing a lot more than 2 buttons/knobs.

> They have 2. One for power and one for data.

I don't think I've ever seen a touch screen with only two wires. For one thing, even power requires two wires, not one. Data for a touch screen typically requires more than one wire as well, especially considering there are two completely distinct types of data a touchscreen must transmit, those being display output and touch input.

Most touch screens I'm aware of have wire connections more like this:

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-2-4-color-tft-touchscree...

> Usually they're replacing a lot more than 2 buttons/knobs.

Not usually. Other than the Tesla, most cars retain almost all of their knobs/buttons in addition to the touch screen. In fact, the linked article in the OP says they're basically replacing the touch screen input with a single volume knob that lets you additional tilt and push it. Other cars, like BMW with the iDrive, usually have a single knob that lets you rotate and scroll through menus and push to select. Granted, it's not a simple knob, since it requires multiple degrees of input, but even a plastic knob that allows rotating, tilting, and pushing is probably cheaper than a touch screen when shared across models and mass produced.

I still think the bigger savings is probably the software updates required to constantly support and make your vehicle's physical input compatible with every new update of Android Auto and Apple Car Play, which the auto-makers have no control over and can only ever play catch-up. At least with a touch screen, they know that's where the Android and Apple engineers spend their own time making compatible.

The other place it probably saves is designing and laying out the interior, since it's easier to design an interior with fewer purpose-focused inputs. I'm not sure though if the touch screen would actually be easier though, since it can't be broken up across different small areas, and the entire thing has to be within both reach and active field of view. Especially the screens on top of the dash, since those often are designed to retract, which means the space they retract into needs to be designed around the HVAC and electrical systems between the firewall and dash.

Either way, both of these savings though would be on the design and engineering side, not the bill of materials.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#742

Post by filoleg »

725686 wrote: post #709
filoleg wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not up for debate; we have evidence that it's dangerous. Just like talking to other people in the car or doing anything else other than driving. I know that I will take a driver getting their messages read out to them over a driver who takes their eyes off the road and glances at the phone. Good is the enemy of the perfect, and I would rather take an attainable good over an unattainable perfect.

... perfect is the enemy of good

Thanks for correcting, I actually appreciate it, no sarcasm. I mentioned it before in one of my HN comments on a thread about language learning, but as a non-native english speaker, it helps me a lot when people correct my mistakes. No matter how small or insignificant the mistakes are, because little by little, they add up.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#743

Post by JangoSteve »

whyenot wrote: post #739
JangoSteve wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument doesn't make a ton of sense to me. It seems like an inconsistent comparison to compare a single touchscreen to many customized knobs/buttons/etc., when you could also compare a single set of knobs/buttons/etc. to different screen sizes across models. Car companies don't tend to custom-design knobs/buttons/etc. for each model. They tend to reuse the same ones across many models to save on development and…

Especially with how high-resolution touchscreens in cars are becoming in new models, I doubt they're cheaper than a handful of plastic knobs and buttons. Every modern car is going to have an infotainment system with a screen. A better question would be whether it is cheaper to have a touch version of that screen or to have buttons for the interface. I suspect that touch would be cheaper than buttons.

Yeah, that's a good point. The question here isn't whether or not to have an infotainment system that integrates with Android Auto and Apple Car Play, it's whether to interface with it via a touch screen or physical input (or both).

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#744

Post by MereInterest »

gerbilly wrote: post #662
filoleg wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not up for debate; we have evidence that it's dangerous. Just like talking to other people in the car or doing anything else other than driving. I know that I will take a driver getting their messages read out to them over a driver who takes their eyes off the road and glances at the phone. Good is the enemy of the perfect, and I would rather take an attainable good over an unattainable perfect.

> Just like talking to other people in the car No that's not true, talking to other people int he car is not associated with reduced safety. Probably because the other people in the car are also partially watching the road.

Exactly. If I am in the passenger seat talking to the driver, I know when to shut up and let them drive. If I am on the phone talking to a driver, there is no indication of them, say, approaching a difficult merge.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#745

Post by igrekel »

steelframe wrote: post #736
xedeon wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do agree, though, that touchscreens beyond phone interfaces should be used very sparingly. The Tesla's all-touchscreen situation in particular seems like a terrible idea. Most of us are used to being able to adjust the AC without looking, and that's only possible because there are physical controls we can feel. This is a very common misconception. You CAN adjust the A/C via the steering wheel buttons, turn it off…

> You CAN adjust the A/C via the steering wheel buttons, turn it off, control the fan speed etc. It's very intuitive. I've owned a Tesla for nearly 3 years, and I have no idea how to do that via the steering wheel controls. I'll dork around with the interface when I get back in my car after work today to try to figure that out. But evidently at least for me, feature discovery is half the challenge, no matter how easy…

Same here. That being said, I never felt it was difficult to switch on off the AC since if you just press the fan for about a second, it shuts it down. This is the sort of stuff I would have liked to be voice activated.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#746

Post by ahartmetz »

bestouff wrote: post #655
celticmusic wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm speaking with someone in the car and I detect a potentially dangerous situation, I immediately stop talking to focus. It's hard to explain, but I would say my attention is unfocused and broad. I don't know if this is ultimately safe, but I've never had an issue with it.

In fact the passenger will also detect the potentially dangerous situation and stop taking focus from you. The person in the phone will not, and may continue to distract you involuntarily.

A coworker once told me that that is what makes the difference, based on some study. I immediately believed it because it seemed so reasonable, so not citation...

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#747

Post by black6 »

judge2020 wrote: post #458
gerbilly wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is carplay even a thing? Geez, can't people stop fiddling with their phones? They've become like a kind of soother, a techno nanny that people can't do without. The sooner people put those things down, the better off we'll be.

So you can use your preferred maps app in your car, so you can choose music using your favorite music app, so you can send and receive text messages without taking your eyes off the road. Without it, people would just be looking at their phones anyways. Guess we should go back to paper maps and listening to AM radio.

> Guess we should go back to paper maps

Knowing where you’re going before you take off is generally a good idea. A paper map may not be the solution—pulling up an online map and figuring out your route before getting in your vehicle is one way and what I tend to do.

I routinely see locals plug local destinations into their navigator-of-choice, though, so expecting people to know the lay of the land these days may be a bridge too far. God forbid there is construction or an accident and you have to improvise!

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#748

Post by viraptor »

gerbilly wrote: post #662
filoleg wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not up for debate; we have evidence that it's dangerous. Just like talking to other people in the car or doing anything else other than driving. I know that I will take a driver getting their messages read out to them over a driver who takes their eyes off the road and glances at the phone. Good is the enemy of the perfect, and I would rather take an attainable good over an unattainable perfect.

> Just like talking to other people in the car No that's not true, talking to other people int he car is not associated with reduced safety. Probably because the other people in the car are also partially watching the road.

Apparent yes, it is. https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2018/03/10/Talking-while-dri...

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#749

Post by CamperBob2 »

justinpombrio wrote: post #634
bitwalker wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point is that you are neither reading or writing them, they are read _to_ you, and you dictate messages if you feel the need to reply while driving, but both can be done with hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. I suppose it is up for debate whether just the act of listening or speaking is distracting enough to be considered a bad thing.

It's not up for debate; we have evidence that it's dangerous. The NHTSA says: "The available research indicates that cell phone use while driving, whether it is a hands-free or hand-held device, degrades a driver’s performance. The driver is more likely to miss key visual and audio cues needed to avoid a crash. Hand-held devices may be slightly worse, but hands-free devices are not risk-free." Though it doesn't link…

Too bad. People are going to do it anyway, and yes, they want touchscreens to make it happen, not just voice.

Mazda will walk this decision back as soon as they realize how much money it will cost them... which is a lot.

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