Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

ben.stolovitz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 147 posts

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#91

Post by kube-system »

ninalanyon wrote: post #84
kube-system wrote: post #73

My biggest issue with touchscreen controls is that they are not ergonomic. 1. Usually they are high on the dash, higher than where conventional controls would be 2. You cannot rest your hand on the surrounding panel to press them, because this will cause unintentional presses on other buttons Resulting in two problems: 1. Because of the above, you must activate more muscles to steady your hand and arm in a moving car…

Neither of those are a problem in my 2015 Tesla Model S for the buttons that control the climate control or media player. It seems to me that many of the problems that people report related to touch controls are more to do with how they are laid out than the fact that they are touch controls.

They're at the bottom of a portrait screen (and IIRC there's a bit of a bezel to rest your hand on), which makes it a little better.

Floating screens make this harder, especially as they get larger and further from the driver

Tesla has also been guilty of some particularly awful designs on later models, like requiring the driver to navigate to a submenu to turn on the wipers (which I know they changed in an update, but still should have never done to begin with)

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#92

Post by scottyah »

hatefulheart wrote: post #46
vel0city wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It'd be easy to check. It was true on my 1998 Mercury Mountaineer, I can't imagine car manufacturers would go back just for funsies.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#93

Post by wvenable »

This is a timely article for me because I test drove a 2026 Mazda CX-5 and then ultimately purchased a 2025 instead. Disliking the giant touchscreen wasn't the only reason but it certainly was one of the reasons. The screen actually makes the entire experience feel cheaper compared to the extremely nice feeling buttons on the older model. They even cheapened-out on the steering wheel buttons on a car where those are now the only buttons!

It was an incredibly frustrating drive -- I could barely successfully navigate the radio using the screen or the wheel buttons. I'm sure I would have gotten more used to it but it just wasn't what I was looking for. I'm a software developer, I deal with this technology every day, and I just didn't want that to be front and center on my drive as well.

Now that being said, the commander knob on the older Mazda cars is also a terrible user experience. Turning and pressing physical knobs to change the climate control, volume, or radio stations is very satisfying and user-friendly. But the commander knob is a joy-stick for controlling an on screen cursor -- so you both have to be constantly looking at the screen and you have to translate knob motions to the movement of that cursor. It should be unsurprising that simply reaching up and pressing an icon on the screen is significantly easier and less distracting.

Luckily I'm almost always in Carplay / Android Auto so it's best of both worlds -- you can press physical buttons to do most of the major tasks (open music, open maps, select favorites, volume, climate control, etc) but then press the screen when that makes sense.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#94

Post by [deleted] »

scottyah wrote: post #70
iamdamian wrote: post #31

There has been more pushback on car screens over the past couple of years, and the optimist in me hopes this leads to change. With enough pushback, manufacturers will have to listen to the market, cost savings be damned. A concrete step I take to push this along: I mention physical buttons as a dealbreaker to car dealerships when I shop. Of course, I'm only speaking to dealer reps and not the decision makers at $CAR_…

I could not imagine having to go back to buttons for anything I actually want to control. Once you get used to a well-designed touchscreen, buttons are just so clunky and unintuitive for most functions. Dials are probably my most favorite physical control, but other than volume there's not much it's useful for in a well-designed, modern car anymore. It was great for radio stations, but is terrible for Spotify. Settin…

[deleted]

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#95

Post by scottyah »

hatefulheart wrote: post #7
logancbrown wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The volume button (dial) broke on my Ford Maverick in summer. Moving to a touchscreen car felt like a sigh of relief that I no longer had to worry about buttons and dials breaking when I need to use them, and don't have to worry about a trip to a dealer or tearing apart a dash to replace them. I will say a button "feels" nicer, but the added risk to me wasn't worth it. To each their own

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.

you're just describing another thing that can go wrong. Most likely when you "rip open the dashboard" there's a few different PCBs that can all go bad, then a bunch of fuses, small LEDs, other things that need to be fixed. People act like anyone with a touchscreen hasn't had a car before that had all those things. I replaced sensors, wires, and my oil temp gauge still didn't work. Two LEDs on the display had some kind of bad voltage or something because I had to replace them every few years. It's so cool having spare fuses and being able to identify the blown one and replace it until you get a touchscreen and you never have to.

A lot of people have their self-worth tied up in being the guy that can fix things, so it hurts when you just no longer have to.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#96

Post by jazzyjackson »

bs7280 wrote: post #67
jmward01 wrote: post #51

I realize the article is pro buttons. I think a huge thing missing from the button discussion (well, maybe lightly touched on in the article) is that physical buttons and controls help guide without looking. Other buttons give feedback that your hand is in the right place. Sure, at first contact that (very bad) reference radio is worse than the touch screen but within a few days of using that I would not need to look…

A while ago I was driving a loaner car - a brand new top tier Accura rdx and the infotainment system was truly the worst and most dangerously designed I had ever witnessed. It was essentially a lenovo thinkpad type touchpad by the cup holder, and the screen was far away. The first time I tried to use it, it was so distracting that I would of crashed the car if it weren't for the safety features. My car is a 2018 with…

I test rode an electric pedal assist bicycle yesterday that has a little operating system by the throttle, basically just a speedometer + toggle the level of power assist from eco to turbo. Even it has a "avoid distracted driving" popup that I had to fiddle with to dismiss while riding this bike for the first time.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#97

Post by scottyah »

recursive wrote: post #40
_flux wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could use array microphone to detect that the sound originates from the driver's seat (in addition to using it for filtering out not-from-driver's-seat sounds).

I mean that's cool, if it actually works reliably . Automation tech enthusiasts are willing to be impressed by 99% reliability. To get buy-in from regular people, it needs to just work better. To be clear, I don't know how reliable this actually is now, but I'd be willing to bet that it's not reliable enough.

Then it seems like we should work on making it better instead of just trashing the idea?

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#98

Post by havblue »

I have a Mazda that uses the knob implementation of Android Auto... It's just okay. The first problem is that the screen cracks under heat, which is cheap to fix diy, expensive otherwise. Second is the firmware is difficult to update. Again, it's free diy, but you'll brick your infotainment if you screw up. The old firmware is bad: frequent disconnects and screen blackouts. Dealers don't seem to care much about patching it though. I know a mechanic that refused to touch the infotainment as well. You kind of need to flex your nerd abilities or go aftermarket if you want to keep a decent android auto experience.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#99

Post by jazzyjackson »

scottyah wrote: post #70
iamdamian wrote: post #31

There has been more pushback on car screens over the past couple of years, and the optimist in me hopes this leads to change. With enough pushback, manufacturers will have to listen to the market, cost savings be damned. A concrete step I take to push this along: I mention physical buttons as a dealbreaker to car dealerships when I shop. Of course, I'm only speaking to dealer reps and not the decision makers at $CAR_…

I could not imagine having to go back to buttons for anything I actually want to control. Once you get used to a well-designed touchscreen, buttons are just so clunky and unintuitive for most functions. Dials are probably my most favorite physical control, but other than volume there's not much it's useful for in a well-designed, modern car anymore. It was great for radio stations, but is terrible for Spotify. Settin…

I cannot relate to this at all. Controlling the AC with three knobs is not a challenge. Did you grow up using an iPad perhaps?

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#100

Post by nicce »

citelao wrote: post #69
nicce wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm pretty convinced that touchscreens today are primarily a cost-saving measure, and every other justification is secondary. I hope I can convince you, too! I thought this is a pretty well-known thing already? For almost decade.

OP: Perhaps it is, but this article honestly took me 12 months to research & write. I really struggled to find trustworthy sources. Do you know of any others I should look at? Also, I rather like the idea that blogging can simply be stating the obvious: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/blogging-stating-the-obvio... . Hopefully my argument is helpful to someone!

> Also, I rather like the idea that blogging can simply be stating the obvious

I thought about this before posting my reply, that should I. But if you really spent time for researching this blog, you would know that your conclusion is not rare nor the first one. It is widely discussed and appears in HN regularly. But regardless, the tone in the post or here in comments felt to me that you try to somehow own this idea. Thought, you even cited the Ferrari CEO who said exactly the same.

Post reply on HN