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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

#871

Post by toyg »

potta_coffee wrote: post #852
toyg wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm European, I didn't even know automatic transmission existed before I was 30 :) The gearstick is one control with a very limited set of never-changing options that you have to use all the time, basically the best you can get as muscle-memory goes. Despite all this, it's not used where hyper-attention on the road is really necessary, i.e. in racing. And where do we get gearshift controls in racing? On the wheel.

There are plenty of racing cars with stick shifts in them. Or are you thinking of a specific type of racing?

Wherever the car is built only for racing, like LeMans or Formula*, it typically doesn’t feature a stick.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#872

Post by metaphor »

jdietrich wrote: post #792
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.

Have you ever seen behind the dashboard of a modern car? It's a monstrous tangle of wiring, with inch-thick cabling bundles and dozens or hundreds of connectors. A touchscreen-centric interface like the Tesla Model 3 could easily save several kilos of cables and connectors. There's a huge amount of labour involved in installing all that wiring and a huge number of opportunities for failure. I support Mazda's efforts…

Do tell us all about the huge labor savings Tesla is running away with[1].

It blows my mind away how you can even begin to compare the predicted reliability of a complex touchscreen interface stuffed with active electronics to dumb buttons and wires with a straight face, let alone what fielded production units only a few years in have clearly demonstrated.

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#875

Post by sumedh »

rco8786 wrote: post #416
sumedh wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just another device you interact with in various ways and it also happens to be able to get you from point A to point B. just another device which can kill you and others in a split second if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

yes. what's your point

The point was you comparing a car to a phone does not make any sense right now. That elusive future where a car just becomes a device is not going to be here in the next few years, we can talk about it when it comes but right now cars kill people if you dont pay attention.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#876

Post by lostjohnny »

tom_ wrote: post #791
lostjohnny wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing that might not be obvious - this controller is just below the steering wheel and you press it from the back side. It's almost invisible and it feels very natural. True. Another thing that might not be obvious is that they are fixed on the steering wheel, so they are always in the same position relative the your hands, just like the gear levers in a modern Formula 1 car.

I am 99% sure my Clio had it attached to the steering column, so the controls were always in the same place regardless of the steering wheel angle. I actually found this made them easier to find, as they're always in the same place relative to the rest of you. Controls on the steering wheel by contrast (as found in, e.g., my current car) move as the wheel rotates, and for some reason I can never quite keep track of w…

You're completely right, I remembered wrong, in my first Clio they were below the steering wheel, just like in this picture

http://www.burdigala-encheres.com/upload/biens/7186/191833.j...

> The Clio also had the horn button on the indicator stalk. The in-car UX was super on point

Yes, that was the Renault trademark :)

> Good quality stereo, too.

Probably one of the best for the price tag.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#877

Post by Piskvorrr »

namdnay wrote: post #856
petre wrote: post #848

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish they did that in the EU. Reversing cameras are massively useful, especially in vehicles with low visibility such as the Toyota CH-R.

Really? As much as I like the comfort of the rear radars for big vehicles, I’ve always found the camera a bit useless

The sensors are nice, but sensors+camera improve on that by an order of magnitude - you do not see behind your car, no matter how much you think you do. Especially small people aka children are completely hidden from the driver's point of view by the rear of the car - which is exactly in the camera's center of field.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#880

Post by JVIDEL »

They're right but their solution is cumbersome and counter intuitive.

What we need is to put all the controls both within sign and within reach of the driver, that means in and around the steering wheel, just like it was done in sport cars where driver focus is essential.

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