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
Shame that A/C isn’t on the list, I find it so annoying trying to hit a small spot on the screen while moving.
I’m pretty stoked that the AC on the slate is manual. I just hope it’s not a POS :)
name a US-designed and built vehicle not a POS.
The Model T was pretty groundbreaking.
It’s been a long incestuous line of automotive crap. This is something new that has chance (albeit small) to be simple and durable.
The Chrysler Turbine.
Does your car not automatically turn the a/c on and off based on temperature?
Not a single car I’ve had has gotten the auto temperature control exactly right. It’s quite normal for me to set it to 16 or lower in the summer and 24 or so in the winter, but in addition to that, I’d usually have to adjust after like half an hour of driving because now suddenly the 24 is way too hot.
Climate control (not the AC button, but the system in general) is probably the one non-essential feature I touch the most in a car, with infotainment being second as I tend to just set it and forget it (radio generally).
how am I supposed to adjust the set temperature if it’s in a sub menu on a touchscreen that’s in the glare of the sun and keeps timing out before I can adjust it because I have to keep taking my eyes off the road?
inspired by true events. drove 20 minutes in a friend’s car in the heat without being able to adjust the climate controls
Oh that’s one of the biggest low severity annoyances: timeouts set to stupid short times. When I push buttons navigating to a certain area, the device can fucking wait for me to be done in that area and tell it to go elsewhere, not assume that 10 seconds of inactivity means I’ve wandered off and forgotten about it or something.
I have a toaster oven like that, though that’s not even the worst part of the UI design. It’s a great oven but clearly the interface was designed by someone who lacked either care or competence because you have to scroll through a bunch of useless presets for if you have some specific portion of chicken or want to burn a slice of pizza, and of course it has no memory, even if you stopped it while trying to pause it to check your food. It would have been better with an analog timer and a mode knob ffs. And if you hesitate too long while setting the mode, time, and temperature, like if you need to grab the box and then do the math to convert to convection toaster oven time and take more than 12 seconds, it’s off by the time you go to enter it.
Oh and I can only guess at what some of the modes are because the icons they use aren’t very descriptive. Is that the warm setting or broil?
It’s a stupid design for a toaster oven but extra fucking dumb for a car.
Assuming the car is toasty hot when I get in, I probably want to set the AC to a lower target temp than normal to get it cooling faster. This would necessitate changes later once the cabin has reached a more comfy level.
Notice how everything in the list (except for power off) is something that is/could be essential while driving?
Typically you shouldn’t adjust AC/radio while driving, do it while stopped or ask the passenger to do it for you.
So what just sweat or stop driving entirely and adjust the temp because it gets a tad warm? That’s silly
My 2007 has absolutely no touchscreen and I can adjust my AC/Heat easily. Takes only a second. Believe it or not people are actually more focused when they are at a comfortable temperature and I promise you 99.9% of people will dig through the touchscreen menu while driving to adjust these things
Traffic lights? Literally any rest stops if you are on highways?
Drivers are just so entitled they just can’t wait a short period of time to adjust your other controls a little bit later.
Or you just have a normal car with physical buttons and knobs so you don’t need to stop when you want to adjust things?? Like why are you solving a problem that touchscreens invented?
Naming things that a driver may not see for 1 hour depending on where they are
If I park outside on a hot or cold day or get back to my car after exercising, I want a very different AC setup compared to pulling out of the garage to go to work. I’m changing temps and vent directions constantly.
I have a automatic temp control and haven’t needed to touch it in 7 years.
So far car brands I’ve owned where the temperature control hasn’t been set it and forget it: Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Subaru. Oh and I had a Chrysler too at one point. And a VW Passat, but I don’t want to talk about that.
Car brands I’ve owned where the automatic temperature control actually kept me comfortable all year round or even all day round at the exact same set temperature: Quite literally none.
In the winter in particular, I’ll usually set it to at least 24C to get started and when it’s actually warm I’ll set it to 20C, because my own frozen ass needs to be thawed. In the summer I want it around 16C usually.
So I’m wondering what car do you drive that has climate control so perfect you don’t have to touch it in 7 years? Bentley? Rolls-Royce? Because not a single normal person car seems to get it right.
Tip: Set FAN to auto, but temperature to the TARGET temperature you are comfortable in.
The way AC work is it just goes in either “go hotter” or “go colder”, then stops when the target temperature is reached. Setting your temperature to 18C don’t actually make it colder faster, it’s the fan speed that adjusts the intensity of how hard the AC works.
You can just set it to 20C right at the start and it will heat it up at more or less the same speed as if you set it to 24C
Obviously that’s what I do. It doesn’t actually work for me.
Even when the interior of the car is hot as hell from sitting in the sun, dropping the target temp a few degrees makes the fan blow harder. It doesn’t usually max out unless you set it to LO. Yes, automatic control works, but it doesn’t blow freezing air at you at full intensity unless you set it as low as possible, even if it’s super hot in the car.
I wouldn’t be sure that’s the only factor, since in a lot of cars made this century there’s a refrigerant pressure valve to replace the magnetic clutch. The auto HVAC system tells the compressor how hard to pump the refrigerant depending on how cold it wants evaporator side to get.
So I’ve yet to see a car that can intuit what I want the temperature curve over time to be as I get into the car vs when I’ve been driving for a while. There would likely need to be a thermal camera or something to figure that out, in addition to a machine learning algorithm of some sort.
Fun fact: When it was hot as fuck around summer solstice a few years ago (it’s a big celebration here in Estonia) and I drove to Latvia with a mate to get cheap booze, I set the AC to 12C (actually LO, but 12C was the smallest number shown before LO) for the entire trip and that was what I considered comfy that day, because I’d been out working all day and felt completely melted. If you’re a Fahrenheit user, that’s around 53F. I’ve told a couple of people that in relation to how cold I like my car in the summer and I’ve been asked “wtf kinda car lets you put the AC on 12 degrees”. The answer is W211 MB with Thermotronic 4 zone climate control - I was lucky to own that, the base 2 zone climate control in 90% of those cars only goes down to 16C. Felt like space technology for a 2003 car lol
You’re just trolling, nobody could be this ignorant
I didn’t imply otherwise, I just called it a shame.
Yeah, if only we had physical controls that we could use without taking our eyes off the road or even thinking about it.
And I am providing a reasoning why they choose those but not AC.
Because it is not essential to driving, it could be seen as an overregulation to require that
I think being able to see out of my windshield instead of having it fog up is pretty essential to driving
Defogger is physical
This person doesn’t know about driving, because they’re clearly 12.
And if you don’t have a passenger, you probably shouldn’t be allowed to drive
People hated it when you pointed out driving cars alone is a huge waste of resources.
Very surprising reaction considering this is in a solar punk instance which should be more against inefficient transportation
Yeah wtf lol