• gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    Fucking THANK YOU. It’s like all the automotive interior designers just hotboxed themselves for a decade with all the unnecessary and less useful touch interfaces and are finally coming back down to earth.

    • Ohmmy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      I’m not sure it was the designers but the executives. Touchscreens are insanely cheap compared to buttons and all the wiring involved. Like the main reason that Tesla does everything on a touch screen is that software is soooo much cheaper than hardware.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        It’s like everyone collectively forgot about precisely how much effort has been put into physical human interface design over the years. In models from less than a decade ago, Mercedes was calibrating dashboard push buttons to require precisely one Newton of force to actuate… and now we have this “slap the screen in the vicinity of what is maybe a button a few times to maybe get the thing you want to happen”. I know, it’s cheaper, but… come on.

        • Ohmmy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 months ago

          Because execs gauge by the stock market and Tesla’s stock valuation was more than Toyota’s for some reason. Number must go up, always and cutting costs makes number go up.

      • barsquid@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        The screen is necessary for the backup camera, which is a legal requirement in the US. Why make a usable dashboard when you can save money by adding all functions in the screen?

    • where_am_i@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Please explain a non-touch design that allows all following functions: bluetooth pairing, equalizer adjustment, controlling volume of parking sensors, displaying oil levels, tire pressure, breaks wear, and other nice sensors your modern car is equipped with. How about adjusting the heat level of the seat heating? How about disabling mirror auto-adjustment when you shift into reverse?

      A modern car needs a touch screen.

      It also desperately needs hardware buttons for core features, e.g. volume, AC, lighting.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Most of the things you listed can - and have - been done with physical controls at one point or another. It was nice, because you could do it by feel and memory after you got used to your car.

        The modern perception of “car” is so, so different from the one I grew up with, and I’m not that old - I learned to drive in the early naughties

      • howrar@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        I think what you’re missing is that no touch screen does not mean no screen whatsoever.

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        My Honda from the transition years has a nice big screen that is touch-capable, but it also has a nice knob in the middle that can spin to scroll through lists, but also rocks up/down/left/right and pushes in for select. When I describe it in text it sounds complicated but it’s really quite intuitive and can be used without looking for all the basics.

  • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    I like a hybrid, tbh. My car has a sizeable touchscreen that android auto connects to, and I use it a lot for media and navigation.

    But things like climate control have physical buttons. Works really well for me and I like the combination approach.

    • Thatuserguy@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Yeah I don’t mind the combo as long as the important stuff you interact with regularly is still physical. If I have to go into a menu to change climate controls, you have officially fucked up.

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        You always must look at a touch screen to press a button. There’s no reason to use a touchscreen interface for anything a driver might want to do while driving.

        I have the same gripe with TV remotes.

          • kusttra@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Wait… But what buttons are missing that you actually use?! Maybe I’ve just gotten too used to my remote, but I don’t think I’ve ever wanted for another button on the remote, aside from maybe a source button.

            • eco_game@discuss.tchncs.de
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              3 months ago

              Source, Settings and Quick Settings are buttons I find myself using quite often. Also the numbers do come in handy every now and again, as someone who still occasionally watches live TV.

              Now the Samsung remote does have an “Extra” button, but last time I tried using that on a friends TV it told me “this functionality is unavailable”. After 3 minutes of searching, I finally gave up on setting the TV to Game Mode and instead just lived with the input lag.

        • radicalautonomy@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          The touchscreen in my 2016 Jeep Renegade is big enough for me to be able to read everything I need to without having to squint, and small enough that I don’t have to stare at it all the way until the button press (I can eyeball it, get my eyes back on the road, and press the screen in the correct spot 95% of the time). Screens like this I like. One’s like those in Tesla’s are criminally unsafe.

      • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        The worst I’ve ever seen was needing to interact with the touchscreen to open the glove box. Absolutely ridiculous.

          • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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            3 months ago

            It is, I’ve seen it on a car review recently but I can’t remember which.

            One of the worst ones is the new BMW 7 series that uses capacitive screens to change the air vent positions, as does opening the car door. MKBHD accidentally opened the door while trying to use the vents (about 5mins 40 seconds, not sure how to share the link in the correct time position from the app)

          • proudblond@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            My Model 3 is like this. (Please don’t judge, I’ve had it for six years.) Thankfully I don’t need to get into the glovebox very often but on the other hand that means I can never remember how to do it. It sucks balls.

    • BigDaddySlim@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Same with mine. That was something I was looking for when I bought this car actually. I wanted physical buttons and knobs for everything that wasn’t infotainment system related. The steering wheel has buttons to control things like volume and tack/station skipping as well. Even having a physical shifter was a necessity for me because these button or weird electronic shifters are a pain in my ass and can potentially be dangerous if you’re unfamiliar.

    • Beaver@lemmy.caOP
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      3 months ago

      Right! The design for climate control and radio adjustments should just be buttons.

      The touch screen should be a display for android auto and carplay as it is an addition not a replacement.

      Hopefully as economies of scale apply more to evs there will be less justification to cut down on costs in favour of touch screens doing everything.

    • Nolvamia@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I drive a car built in 2018 and I’m really happy with the balance between buttons and screen.

      I’ve got stalks for indicators, wipers and cruise control. Physical switches for lights, windows, mirrors, climate temp, fan, air source, defrost front and rear, odometer reset, driving mode, master door unlock and opening the boot/tailgate. Vents are manually operated and the glovebox and fuel tank flap are too. The steering wheel has physical buttons for media source, track skip/radio seek, phone calls, starting the voice control mic, and scroll wheels for volume and cycling through information displays on the small screen between the large analogue gauges on the dashboard. And a 10 inch touchscreen for everything else (reverse camera, media and maps, mostly, but includes all the car settings you don’t fiddle with often, like light delays, beep volumes, summer time offset etc.).

      Basically anything I’m likely to want to use whilst driving I can find and operate with at most a quick glance, if not by touch alone, and have immediate feedback that I got it right because I felt the switch/stalk/button move under my fingertips as I expected.

      I’ve wondered what functions I’d be happy with moving from a physical control to the touchscreen or capacitive button. I haven’t come up with a single one. Yet if I were to buy the latest version of this car just about anything that is currently a physical button is now a capacitive touch button. Yeah, no thanks.

  • TooManyFoods@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    My cat’s touchscreen is broken. It wouldn’t stop registering a constant input from one corner. They told me it would be thousands to fix. Now it’s more broken and won’t accept any input. That makes it actually functional since I can use the buttons and knobs to do things that were being over ridden by the screen input.

  • Hawke@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I feel like this is a problem already well-studied and solved by industry, particularly aviation and rail.

    A hybrid interface like this one (obviously with more advanced graphics) seems so obviously the way to go.

  • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    It shouldn’t even be legal to not have buttons for everything but CarPlay/Android auto (which should still be required to have buttons/knobs for volume and skip forward/back)

  • BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world
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    3 months ago

    And for the sake of fuck, analog dials! I don’t want my volume knob to only go up or down by two when I spin it. Each click should be a change!

  • snooggums@midwest.social
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    3 months ago

    One of the reasons that my last vehicle purchase was a Honda is because they have kept the climate control buttons and the volume knob for the radio. I decided against a few brands because they had those things into a shitty touchscreen.

    Now if they could just get a more responsive touchscreen model I would be even happier!

    • eco_game@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 months ago

      The fact you have to watch out for a physical volume knob nowadays is wild. Imo the shitty implementation winner is by far Renault with the ZE50 EV. Its radio has a permanent volume touch button, which opens a new view with touch buttons for volume up and down.

      Whichever Renault engineer or executive thought that this was a good idea in any way, shape or form deserves many punches to the face. Apparently later models now have permanent touch buttons for volume up and down, which I guess is at least slightly better (although still horribly inferior to a knob).

      It’s worth noting that there are steering wheel volume buttons for the driver, but it’s still horrible and sucks for passengers.

  • Angry_Autist (he/him)@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    20 years from now someone on the internet is going to post “Remember back when we were so addicted to tablets that they replaced our car AC buttons with them?”

  • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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    3 months ago

    Unless you’re BYD, and then you got rocker switches that look like buttons, just to throw you off.