The regulation calls out 19 vehicle functions which must have physical controls inside the vehicle, with additional requirements about size and usability of the buttons.
Those functions include:
Turn signals
Hazard lights
Horn
PRND gear shifter
Driver assist function, if present
Windshield wipers
Windshield defroster
Power windows
Emergency call system
Power off switch for EVs
I went into this thinking it was a little bit silly since nobody would design a car without most of those but:
You have to shift gears with a touchscreen?? WHAT??!? I knew they were shit cars but what the actual fuck are they thinking?
Musk’s goal is to eliminate all human input - including the steering wheel. He has said “Almost all input is error. Car should do the right thing automatically.” Removing physical controls is the first step.
This is probably a mistake. But Musk is unlikely to ever admit this.
yes and no ;) i mean you can just get in and assuming you are not reversing, press the “accelerator” and go, get out at the other and walk away. No need to lock, engage park brake, change “gears” etc
When mobile dev tech bros develop a car.
Oh, it gets worse.
In theory, you weren’t even supposed to have to do that, because the car would decide for you which direction you should go. (Probably based on simple object detection – if an obstacle is directed forward, you must want to go backward, right? And if no object is detected forward, default to forward.) And the touchscreen controls were only there for the ‘rare’ occasion when you’d need to override the car’s automatic decision.
I had a friend with a tesler try to justify that to me like “yeah it usually works”. It’s just… They invented a problem that didn’t exist.
So did the 50 ways new cars decided to make stupid levers and knobs and buttons to bop it twist it pull it to shift and mess with a known interface for no reason. The automated one is another level of stupid beyond that, though.
it’s all computer…
Well… I can see getting rid of the traditional big lever in favor of something else – that big lever takes up a lot of space in the dashboard or center console that could be used for other things, and a lot of the replacements are much more compact, saving space. But manufacturers haven’t yet come to a consensus about what exactly that replacement should be, which is why you’re seeing such (potentially confusing) variety these days.
(But I’m sure that if a vehicle is your daily driver, you’d quickly get used to whatever interface it used and it would begin to feel fairly natural. The problem would come in for people who often need to change cars, like people who often find themselves driving short-term rentals. Then it would be very annoying to keep changing the interface for shifting the transmission.)
And that’s all ignoring that we’ve already had a solution for a long time that frees up dash/console space:
WTAF?!
I never drove a car that shifted gears on a fucking touchscreen. I am not going to do that.
Let’s be honest, these cars were made for rich children who can’t read or count.
theyre automatic cars, so the only time youd shift gears is to park, or switch from go to reverse or vice versa, both usually done while breaking, so its understandable to some extent. it also prevents someone from shifting gears while in motion.
had evs be “manual” then that would be dangerous
an example of bad physical design would be cars with gear shift knobs near a volume knob, which would be infinitely more dangerous
It really wouldn’t be crazy. The polestar 2 has a physical shifter and acts exactly like you’d expect from a shifter. You bump it forward to put it in reverse, and pull back on it to put it in drive. You can shift both directions while rolling slightly, which is actually really nice and useful. I think I tried shifting while it was driving and it likely has a software limit to the speed at which it let’s you shift while rolling (above 5 mph for example). I think only going from drive to reverse requires touching the brake, similar to a standard automatic.
I don’t get what was wrong with a PRNDL with big physical detents and feedback. I don’t understand what these goofy little knobs and blobs improve about the user experience.
I agree, though low in the context of an EV would be pointless until you just want the acceleration curve to be different for some reason
It’s not dangerous. They are all electronic. If it’s unsafe, it just won’t do it.
It’s really not that big of a deal. They also have no ignition/start button, which is the only sane way of have it in a EV. You just get in and drive.