Good. This should be forced via regulations. Touchscreen controls are provably more dangerous than buttons due to the distraction.
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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Haptic feedback like knob clicks or button presses are much easier to use without taking eyes off the road as often.
Shhh, don't call it "haptic feedback" or they might make them flat, unmoving buttons that have a vibration motor behind them.
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I’m sure Trump and his new auto industry advisor, Elon Musk, will get right on that. 😔
Oh, yeah!
That's going to be a whole thing soon. Yay.
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Congratulations on taking a fucking DECADE to realize what should've been FUCKING OBVIOUS from the start.
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Honestly. I'd be fine with a touchscreen for things you wouldn't likely be adjusting on the go anyways - but basic stuff like the radio and AC/Fans should always be easy to distinguish, don't need to look away from the road to operate buttons. Making basic stuff require touchscreen is inconvenient at best and outright dangerous at worst.
Give me a manageable handful of physical buttons with defaults but that I can customize. The pendulum swung too far. There is a Place for touch screens and buttons in cars. They can live in Harmony. Personally, I never want to see a climate control physical button except maybe for my passengers microclimates. I set a setpoint and set the fan to auto like I do in my house. Let the car adjust to the preferred setpoint. Heated seats / heated steering wheel? Programmed parameters. Stereo controls? Hell yeah, let's get tactile - don't make me look at anything for that. I don't mind the idea of voice controls too, but I've never met one in a car that wasn't frustrating AF. Prefer to leave that out until the tech improves.
Conversely, I want the ac controls on physical buttons because when I'm in driving and am in direct sunlight, or when I've just jumped in the car after doing some heavy work, I want ice cold Antarctic air blowing on my face. The ambient temperature of the general cabin is irrelevant to me. I do not want to be hunting around through menus to find the ac fan control slider.
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My wife's Ford Edge has the worst of both worlds. It has buttons for the stereo and AC but they're all flat capacitive buttons so they barely work when you touch them and you still have to take your eyes off the road to find them.
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First good news I've heard in a while.
Goddamn right!!
The only thing I need on a screen is the GPS, everything else is an annoyance.
Personally I don't even need that, just give me aux and usb ports for my phone. It'll be multitudes better than whatever hardware they use for the "infotainment" system.
I would rather have just a dumb display with an open standard that will mirror my phone and send touches back. Android auto is great but it's a proprietary protocol that support could be dropped at any time. Same with apple. Everything that is not infotainment should be physical buttons so if I want to swap out my display for something else it won't neuter my hvac
There should be the mandatory inclusion of a set of open APIs that pass info like:
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display and audio signal (duh)
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microphone audio (to pass voice commands)
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whether the headlights are on (to offer auto dark mode switching on the display)
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whether the handbrake is engaged (so things like video playback can be a parked-only feature)
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crash sensor activation (so that a phone could, if the user desires, automatically alert emergency services)
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For EVs, battery SoC (so that navigation software can include charging stops seamlessly)
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whether the car is left-hand-drive or right-hand-drive (so on-screen buttons can always be close to the driver, not on the wrong side)
From there on, there can be actual competition in the space. You're not just limited to Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. Any app would be able to use this API data.
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After rolling to CarPlay and Android auto for a while, I’d rather not use a tiny handheld UI when I drive. iOS and Android’s auto UIs have bigger buttons and are more glanceable. If I’m using a screen while driving, I’d rather the screen that was designed for peripheral vision and less precise button targeting.
As someone who needs GPS a lot for work, having it on the large display is very nice. I think the sweet spot is around 7 inches; big enough for maps, but leave enough space for everything else.
The best is when they display the "next step" right on the dash. Too bad my work vehicle doesn't do that.
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More importantly, they are dangerous.
I just put on full self driving while I mess with the touchscreen. I've only hit 4 toddlers max in the last couple weeks.
Ah, the mythical Democrat 4th trimester abortion.
The bathrooms in hell all have automatic sinks where you can't tell where the sensor is and an inconsistent delay.
I was in an airport bathroom and somehow the auto soap dispenser managed to squirt soap into my open cup of coffee. Fuck those things.
I have questions about why you'd take an open cup of coffee into a public bathroom.
Because the people at the coffee stand complained when I tried taking a shit there.
Tbf they only complain about the removing your pants part. Keep your pants up, and you can take a shit there before they complain about the smell.
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this is disgusting I'd rather have soap in my coffee then take an open cup into the bathroom. I'd say that the dispenser is justified in its actions
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They aren't just annoying, they're dangerous and can't be operated without looking at them
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Not having touch anything is a selling point for me. Bonus points if I can roll up the window too.
Personally I prefer a mixture of both. Touch screen for anything you don't need to operate while driving and physical for everything else.
Android Auto navigation, car system/audio settings, clock and system management, etc should all be a touch screen so you aren't navigating through turning knobs and pressing up and down buttons to go through various menus like your programming a microwave.
Knobs and dials and buttons for anything to do with audio volume, skip/reverse tracks, etc. and air conditioning.
Automakers will read this comment and think that everyone wants voice control instead of touchscreens or buttons.
Just to be completely clear then (and I'm sorry for yelling):
WE DON'T WANT VOICE CONTROL IN OUR CARS. AND IF YOU ADD AI WE'LL BURN YOU TO THE FUCKING GROUND.
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Hyundai Design North America Vice President Ha Hak-soo said that people "get stressed, annoyed and steamed when they want to control something in a pinch but are unable to do so."
How many years it took them to figure it out?
Probably 10 minutes, but by that point they had to double down for the shareholders and as long as everyone copied, they were good.
I have a pre-touchscreen era (for its model anyway) 2012 car. I'm hoping by the time I have to get a new car this touchscreen fad will have come and gone. How are you supposed to use those things in the winter when you have gloves on?
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Absolutely my creed. In my industrial niche, touch screen never took hold - when your action is actually (or at least perceived) important, nobody wants to rely on touch screens.
a screen is good for navigation and music, basically it
Pretty much. Give me a screen for Android Auto so I can interact with my preferred navigation and media apps, and then just let me control the car.
Like, if you want to add a menu for low-level tweaking of stuff I don't need(or shouldn't change) while driving, sure(like suspension settings). But for everything else, AC, seat warmers, forward/reverse, windshield wipers, headlights, etc, I want a button or knob.
I once rented a Mini Countryman and was pleasantly surprised by the highly tactile switches they use. They felt like aircraft switches in that they had weight and springy resistance to them. Much better than all this touchscreen nonsense.
Good. Can every other company please do this too??
Got a Tucson to test for a few weeks. I was delighted to give it back. It was infuriating to use, the glass slab caught every light and felt like it was at 103% of the perfect distance everywhere I needed to touch.
The worst thing about modern cars though, outside of the sim card live locations and data scraping, is the safety message on start up that needs confirmation and the fucking safety pause on android auto. I hate it.
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Pffft they're doing it because the EU is going to force this in a year or two, I bet
To me it's about balance and design. I've been in cars with too many physical buttons and those can be a distraction too.
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My current car has a fairly large screen for media, gps, and some other in depth settings that don't need to be addressed while driving.
The rest is physical buttons and I honestly really like that hybrid approach to this.
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I drive a 2023 Sonata N-Line. I feel like Hyundai got this one absolutely perfect as far as balancing physical buttons versus touch screen buttons. Every single important driving control has a physical button that is easy to reach and feel while keeping your eyes on the road. The only exception might be the control to turn the highway driving assist feature on and off. The touch screen is large and extremely responsive and has a multitude settings, but nothing that you would need immediately while driving. Absolutely love this car
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