And what if you share your car with someone who prefers different settings?

Then they change the settings, and if they're a considerate human being, they change them back. If they're not, then you get to grumble a bit, change them back yourself, and consider not sharing your car with that person again. I don't think the world has lost anything substantial here.

Just realized I might be a grumpy old man.

Maybe you always share your car with a partner that's 25 centimeters shorter than you, requiring different settings for seat & steering weel position, and also has a different body composition that makes them want different climate control settings.

It shouldn't be so controversial to claim that automatic adjustment of settings is a net UX win this this common scenario.

Since at least 1987, Cadillac is offering this with simple hardware push buttons. We have that in a VW "group" car and turning the dial in the center console allow to adjust as needed the temperature + airflow in less than 1 second.

This problem was solved over a decade ago with memorized seating positions tied to the key fob. It wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch (pun not intended!) to memorize and set the temperature alongside the other settings using the existing system.

That's literally what the tesla does. You tie a profile to a key, card, or phone.

Right - I meant that it can also be accomplished with an old-school analog system, too. It doesn't require a tablet-based system like Tesla's as a baseline.

There's no tablet involved after the initial setup you do when you buy the car. As soon as I unlock the car, everything moves into place.

And for the set up, it is analog. There's 2 trackball-like things you jigger around to move your seat, mirrors, and steering column.

Is the climate control analog, too? That's really what I'm referring to.

The climate control is tied to your key fob too so it changes based on who unlocks it. It even stores the direct of the vents for people who like air in their face vs over their head or below their feet.

Sure, but this doesn't matter much to me. You're objectively right that this fits someone's wants, but it doesn't fit my wants.

I have yet to come across a problem on an old Jeep Cherokee or Toyota Tacoma that I couldn't figure out how to fix with a little help from the internet, and I'm by no means a car expert. Sometimes the parts cost or size has shut me down, but not the complexity. An electric motor is far simpler than a gasoline engine, so it should be easier to work on, not harder. Can you fix your Tesla's A/C if it breaks? Can most mechanics fix your Tesla's A/C if it breaks?

We're arguing different things. I was responding to a criticism that implied the "remember your settings" feature has no value when compared to a vehicle where all settings are set with physical buttons.

The point you're arguing boils down to a difference of preferences and philosophy, which is of course perfectly fine. Not everyone has the same preferences.

> And what if you share your car with someone who prefers different settings?

There have been cars that change various settings depending on the key fob used ("hers and his"):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSoJPgFSDOE

Before fobs, where you actually put the key in the ignition hols, there were cars with "memory buttons".

Spending 5 seconds changing the 3 settings that matter occasionally isn't a problem I care about.

Not being able to fix my own car because you've used space age technology to solve turning a dial IS a problem I care about.

Like in any modern analog car, the knobs are free spinning and therefore remember their settings. It’s a tactile version of tapping a screen that is a better UX IMHO. When my significant other uses my car, they hit #2 on the preset settings and everything slides and turns into place. This is a well solved problem and has been for many years. Note: I am a former P85D Model S owner.

Free spinning knobs are not analog, but digital encoders.

“relating to or using signals or information represented by a continuously variable physical quantity such as spatial position, voltage, etc.” - from our friends at Oxford.

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/analog

Similar to the changing the seat or steering wheel position, except easier to dial it back.