My favorite interaction with CarPlay so far were the Mercedes models that had the little wheel in the center console that you could use to navigate. All you had to do was take a quick glance at the screen if you didn't already know how many clicks you had to turn the wheel, or if you did know you could do it without looking. In all the newer models I've driven they've replaced the wheel with a touchpad like thing which is awful.

I'm in the market for a car, and I want something new or new-ish, but I can't find any cars I like without touchscreens all over the place. I'm now looking at used cars from around 2012, before all the touchscreen nonsense became pervasive, but still with most of the modern conveniences I'm in the market for. I'm not in a rush so I might just wait and see still, but I said that a couple of years ago as well and the touchscreen craze has just gotten worse I feel like.

Car manufacturers should look to motorcycles for minimal-distraction UIs. I have a late-model BMW touring bike which has a sizeable number of features (adjustable suspension, throttle response, grip heaters, cruise control), all of which can be controlled by feel/touch from buttons on the handlebars.

That said, car drivers really should get in the habit of making playlists so they can set up music and maps before they start rolling.

I commute daily on a bike and I don't have any of these features. All I have is google assistant through my Bluetooth headset in the helmet.

As a rider, I love the lack of distraction and can focus on everything going on around me, an important skill for staying alive on a bike.

My Android Auto has limited features compared to the app, for example you cannot make a new playlist, only access existing ones.

I'm sure it can be distracting, but it is also easy to set up with minimal interaction.

Ultimately, it comes down to individual behavior.

> Ultimately, it comes down to individual behavior.

The problem with all this is that it just depends. If I check a message after stopping at a red light? No real risk. If i hit "call" whilst on an empty straight motor way for a hands free chat? No real risk.

If I try and compose an email on a country lane, or find a specific artist to play, or set a reminder whilst driving through a town centre... quite a lot of risk.

My car still has cassettes, so I have probably taken more risk changing over those (where is that bloody mixtape I want) than the limited phone use I have done

> Ultimately, it comes down to individual behavior.

If this were true cars wouldn’t have touchscreens built in.

They do have them on F1 steering wheels (3 rotating dials for each thumb - on upper and two inside) - see https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iO-QwuFqzgI/maxresdefault.jpg

My understanding is that those steering wheels are highly customized according to the preferences of each driver. Good thing they are detachable (as they must be, so the driver can get into and out of the cockpit), so the driver can use it with different cars. (Source: Ars Technica long ago?)

Mazda is currently updating all their models with the new infotainment which removes the touchscreen. Android auto and Car play still work with a rotary controller. The screen is also closer to the eyeline of the driver so you don't have to look far away from the road

Had a Mazda 3 with this, although before Android Auto sadly. That input method is by far the best possible; everything is laid out so nicely in terms of using muscle memory, and the rotary knob interface just does the job.

Their approach is far better than the all glass, cost saving Tesla one.

As others have mentioned if you have the touchscreen, (2015+) you can get carplay/android auto added on. I did and having google maps with traffic is a huge upgrade to their built-in nav. I can't speak to android auto, but for carplay, the rotary knob, while it works, isn't as intuitive or reliable as the built in-OS. I actually find myself thinking that I have become less safe of a driver when interacting with it, as the finickiness prevents muscle memory from developing.

If you still have it, most 2014+ models can have Android Auto added at the dealer, plus there is a open source diy version you can install also

Cheers, it was a 2014 Mazda 3 Astina - got rid of it to ride to work instead. I knew it was coming, but happened after I said goodbye.

It works super good with Car Play from Apple as well. Definitely worth it

It's a ballsy move from Mazda. It's a move that definitely goes against the grain for consumer tech. It's better for drivers but I'm sure they lost some potential customers for sticking to their guns.

I don't think there is any way to know but I'd be interested to see some kind of study/data around people buying or passing on a car because of the presence or lack of touch screen.

It seems like a feature that no one would really care about either way that car manufacturers just seem to think people want. It may even be because its cheaper than to R&D a user friendly tactile system with enough features vs just throwing software at it.

Is it this?

https://youtu.be/fd-ZteexmV0

Even in previous generation models (2014-2018 I think) the touchscreen is only enabled when the car isn't moving. For me using the rotary knob became muscle memory so I don't ever use the touchscreen anyway.

That's great to know. I ended up with a 2018 Mazda 3 after I gave up trying to find a car that didn't have a screen and ticked the other boxes I wanted. I seriously considered an Audi A4 just because the screen retracts when you start driving.

This is something Apple could, at least in theory, fix on its end.

Right now, CarPlay interfaces with steering wheel remotes in the standard way where prev/next buttons change tracks and volume +/- changes the volume. What Apple could do is this: add a toggle somewhere in the OS that remaps these to cursor controls. This would, without any effort required on the part of auto manufacturers, bring something comparable to the Mercedes control system to the majority of CarPlay compatible vehicles on the road, all via an OS update.

Carplay on my subaru has navigation by dials all the time. The touch screen works, but the dials are always available. You just turn the right side dial (normally used for tuning when the radio is active) to move the focus on the screen, and press to select. It's how I nearly always interact with carplay.

Surely, the answer is to use Siri?

Now you have two problems.

It's funny to hear you praise that wheel, because internally (in the cloud software division, not hardware) everyone pretty regularly derides it. Of course our only interactions with the hardware are disembodied head units that we're paying 100% attention to, not trying to use out of the corner of our eye while driving.

This is one advantage of smaller teams -- the hardware and software people can communicate needs more effectively, like the importance of tactile controls. From threads like this I think the mistake the industry has made is prioritizing "hands-free" (and mechanical parts reduction) when what we really need is "eyes-free".

Have you considered a BMW with their iDrive controller for the satnav/entertainment?

I have yet to find a car with a better UX (aside from road handling, which I find equally good, but that’s another topic).

Touchscreens should only be allowed in cars with self-driving capabilities, and probably only on the higher levels.

I have, and I find it abhorrent.

In some lists the scrolling wraps around. In some it doesn't. Sometimes it's a click on an item. Sometimes it's a shift to the side.

And the systems I've seen (in BMW's DriveNow) have the worst feature of them all. The main screen where you have your selection of things to do (Nav, Car options, Media, Radio etc.) is not a fixed list, it's an MRU list.

So, if let's say radio is the very last item on the right side of the main screen, and you chose it, the next time you go back to the main screen, it will be the first on the left side of the screen. Now use Nav, go back. Now Nav is the first item and radio is the second item.

It is my long standing theory that people who design car interfaces have never seen a car in their entire life much less have driven one.

I've heard great things about BMW's system, only because you can bind the hotkeys to any screen/feature you want. But there's only like 8 and they all look the same.

True, but they stay at the exact same location, so it‘s easy to memorize.

(And just hovering/slightly touching the key will show the current setting in the display.)

Is this a newer thing? I drive a 2009 model and this is surely a fixed list there. I agree, an MRU would drive me crazy.

It could be a newer thing or their DriveNow interface on top.

Audi Carplay has this too, their screens don't even allow touch.

I put a Sony XAV-1000 in my '07 Honda Fit recently, it was the only Carplay unit I could find with a physical volume knob. You can hold the volume knob down to activate Siri, so I never have to actually use the touchscreen. It's been very nice for Apple Maps/Spotify, I'd recommend looking into it.

I don't think variants of this are particularly uncommon, at least in newer cars -- on my Honda Insight, I can hold down a button on my steering wheel to activate Siri.

(Personally, I don't think I find CarPlay any more distracting than any other in-dash screen; I'm not looking down at the car's built-in navigation system any more than I'm looking at Apple Maps on the same screen. But, I also tend to listen to podcasts while driving, so once they're playing and the map destination is set I rarely have much impulse to fiddle with things.)

The screens are because all new cars in the US are required to have backup cameras now. The lack of physical controls to go with them is entirely on the car companies, though.

i was looking for a "safe" car and that's why I didnt buy a current volvo. to add to the problem the screen is laggy too. kind of reminds me of cars before seatbelts. safety has come sooo much farther but seems we have a few new lessons to learn as we catch up with the shiny new tech.

What was your problem with the volvo specifically? I just collected a 2020 XC60 T8 and I have zero issues with it. Much much better than the infotainment system I had in my 2016 Mercedes, far more intuitive and very responsive. My only gripe so far is that if I navigate away from Android Auto I need to scroll left to bring it back up again.

I can't speak for OP but can echo the sentiments with laggy touchscreens in Volvos. I don't know about the 2020 models or even 2019, but certainly the 2017-2018 models had issues in my experience. Maybe they've fixed them, but it left a sour taste in my mouth. I've always been a fan of Volvo's interface pre-touchscreens, they just made sense to me somehow. This is why I'm looking at a late model C70 as a potential purchase.

2019 and onwards got much faster CPUs. I was aware of people complaining about the speed and laginess of the interface on the models before then, but it's not been a problem in my experience, everything is pretty responsive.

Ah right that might be it then. The older models definitely had issues, to the point where you weren't sure if it had actually registered the press or if it was just being slow. The worst of it was the inconsistency, it would sometimes be responsive, and most of the time not. Glad to hear the 2020 models seem better!

I suspect it'll have to get solved the same way as seat belts did, too. For the same reason: Cost. A low-distraction interface is going to be more expensive to develop and manufacture than a touchscreen that can be largely assembled from commodity parts and some software.

> A low-distraction interface is going to be more expensive to develop and manufacture than a touchscreen that can be largely assembled from commodity parts and some software.

That seems bizarrely counter-intuitive as a more-or-less standardized low-distraction interface already exists for car radios.

Okay, sure, you add the touch screen so you can do GPS and stuff, but is it really that hard to wire up a pre-existing car radio knob and buttons to an Android device along with some software to map twisting the knob to adjusting the audio volume and so on?

It just baffles me how little apparent attention was given to this sort of thing. I wonder if these people are dogfooding.

The way I read the history section here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt makes it sound like seatbelts are mandated.

In what way is it cheaper to install seatbelts than not?

I think what the GP is saying is that because seatbelts were an added expense, the only way they were ever widely adopted was through legislation, and that distraction-minimizing infotainment systems will have to follow a similar path.

Right, sorry, yes, I see that now.

what also bothers me about this is even if I don't buy one for the perceived safety risk, others can. the risk remains.

IIRC Mazda is looking to remove touch from their driver UI.

We have a 2018 Mazda 6 and a 2019 Honda Odyssey.

The Mazda does have the little wheel (it's down near the gearshift) and in addition the touchscreen on the display screen is disabled when you are in motion (which I think is a great idea). I adapted to it within an hour (I was coming from our older 2007 Honda Civic which has none of these)

The Honda does not have the wheel and you can use the touchscreen any time (which I think is a bad idea)

So a good compromise for you might be a Mazda (I think all cars will come with screens especially now backup cameras are federally mandated)

The newer models (2019, at least) still have that wheel as an option. I love it. I didn’t realize how great it was until I had to rent a car with touchscreen CarPlay for a couple weeks and it SO distracting compared to the Mercedes wheel.

BMW has a pretty decent non-touch infotainment system. It is a wheel style but they do also offer touch if you want to use that.

I've driven i3s and, unfortunately, it's not ideal.

Well, the knob is fine - the CarPlay apps aren't. You can find the physical control by touch, but for any non-trivial operation you still have to actively watch the display as you fiddle the dial to get to the action (on-screen control) you need.

Which is dangerously distractive on the road and kind of irritating when parked.

Audi had this scrollwheel too. It was great. The newer Audis have touchscreens and I find them distracting as well.

There are Mazdas with the center tactile knob for CarPlay interactions.

I hear yah. FYI Current gen maxima has a wheel used to navigate

Audi A5 - still a small wheel in the 2017 model

Audi is also pretty good at making more relevant information and controls available in the dial display area, controlled with a scroll on the steering wheel.

Audi does this too. It isn’t a touchscreen.

I think most of them have this feature. In a Subaru you can the radio tune dial to navigate instead of touching.

> I hope this kind of thing doesn't get banned entirely. when it works, I find that having a good navigation system allows me to pay more attention on actually driving the car.

Anecdotally, over the years I've been driving, a majority of potentially collision-causing mistakes I've made (and that I've noticed) have been when I've been cognitively distracted by navigation systems and was looking for a turn/exit or thinking ahead for a turn/exit.

I've adjusted to always prioritize real-time safety even if it comes at the cost of missing my turn and having to double back to get where I'm going. I believe that following nav directions in real-time comes at a safety cost, and am skeptical that many people both realize this and make the appropriate adjustments.

I'm guessing this is a ymmv type situation. I personally find navigation to be by far the most stressful part of driving. I have a bad tendency to flip binary directions like left/right, east/west, etc. when I first had my license (before navigation apps for your smartphone really existed), I had to spend a lot of my cognitive budget trying to remember whether the turn at X St was a right or left and not paying as much attention to the evolving situation on the road. I'm always willing to miss an exit/turn if I notice it too late or there isn't room to merge safely. if anything, I'm more willing to miss a turn in an unfamiliar area when I know the nav system will automatically find a new route.

this probably varies depending on your spatial reasoning skills. my brother can take a quick look at a map and remember the connectivity of all the major roads and then navigate from memory. whenever I try this, I end up in a stressful loop of miss turn -> find place to pull over to look at map -> miss turn again. stress has a comparable impact to driving safety as distraction in my experience.

> I've adjusted to always prioritize real-time safety even if it comes at the cost of missing my turn and having to double back to get where I'm going.

To me, this is where GPS shines. If I miss an exit, it isn't a big a deal because the GPS will tell me the best route based on my current circumstances.

I find that to be true, and actually consider this an advantage of GPS. I remember being super careful not to miss turns before it, because getting back might be difficult or confusing in some cases.

Now, I don't care so much. GPS can route me back pretty easily if I miss anyway.

This is the attitude we need collectively. It no longer matters as much to miss a turn, GPS will optimize the best route moving forward.

Some people are however, still unwilling to be delayed no matter the danger.

Depends on the circumstances. On a roundabout, the cost of missing an exit is minimal. On a highway, it’s often 30km, and can be much higher (we once missed an exit and ended in Mexico on a 3hour illegal detour).

I can understand that, but I don't that it takes a lot of attention to keep from missing highway exits that are far apart.

It does still happen sometimes, though.

Still not sympathetic. That's no reason to put someone's life in danger.

I had one of those portable navigation systems before in my old car and had it mounted on the lower left end of the front window. It was perfect. I never felt distracted or in need to leave the street out of my view for longer.

Now I have a quite large navigation screen in the mid console and those optional arrows next to my speedometer. It really took some time to get me to not look and the centre screen. It took even longer to get used to just listen to what the computer lady says.

I can't understand how this centre screen has become a safe standard. Especially in countries like Germany where there is no speed limit. It's a toy for passengers.

In fact that is why the audio buttons on the steering wheel are the only way I can listen to music off my phone. If I gotta unlock my phone and look down to find the "button" on screen its too distracting for my comfort level.

I dont know how people can text and drive. I usually see cars swerving and driving way too slow into a high way and it always turns out they are texting up a storm when you look.

they just don't realize how obvious it is from outside the vehicle. that's the scary part.

Not even from a safety perspective, but from a UX ergonomics perspective:

Give me a D pad, an OK and a Cancel button. And make a phone API that works exclusively by that and the sounds and chimes it outputs.

I just want every supported app to be in a top level list that I arrow through and OK. Then within any app the options are all navigable in simple ways. Overall functionality is reduced.

Voice control is a secondary system altogether.

It almost feels as if we pretend that "hands free" solves the distraction problem. In practice, I find that voice commands don't work reliably enough most of the time and, as you say, add the increasing frustration of repeatedly trying things and cursing at Siri or Google.

If I try to do voice commands while driving my field of vision narrows to a pinprick.

Hey I've noticed this too. It's like I'm mentally somewhere else. Very odd. Fortunately, when I drive long distances I have other people in the car. And when I drive short distances, I can just stop wherever and change things.

Honestly, on 101 and 280 I see drivers texting all the time and they're driving right in the lane, no problems at all except being slow to react to what happens in front of them (which makes it obvious they're on the phone). I don't know how they do it. Even glancing down at my phone instead of the center console loses so much state.

I don't use voice commands but neither do I use the screen. I have my navigation app on my phone speak to me using text-to-speech while my phone is screen-down in the center console. When I need to input something I either have the passenger do it, or I find someplace to pull over.

Pulling over to make changes may not be the most convenient, but I think for me at least, it's safest.

This is a great question.

There's no question that physical controls for the most common tasks in a vehicle (there are actually very few) take less attention.

Additionally, it seems like one great promise of software in a vehicle would be to augment and improve upon that fact by design. But it's terribly obvious that this has not been a design goal ever. The goal has been to take the familiar UX of your phone and transfer it to your car so that the media component is immediately familiar (this is nice), but all the while we could have been making the act of driving safer too...

Or Android's obnoxious tendency towards silent failure of the Google Assistant. How many times has your phone just just get stuck in the busy-spinner? Mine does often. No audio feedback, not even a way to stop it without picking up the device.

IMO touch screens should be banned as a part of safety regulations. There's simply no need from them in cars, it's a gimmick. Physical buttons are better and don't you to look at them to use them while driving.

Physical buttons are much safer, and this is well known within the industry. But touch screens are cheap and easy - so automakers won't go back to physical buttons unless they are forced to by regulators.

I agree. I don't think touchscreens in cars should be a thing. Anything that requires you to look away from the road is a huge distraction, especially a giant colorful screen.

Also, the physical controls never change, so it's much less mental effort if you do glance at them.

Is it true that you can't use touchscreens in cars without looking at them? I don't drive so I wouldn't know, but my experience touch typing on my smartphone (and I don't use it very often) and as a cashier during high school who used a touch screen point-of-sales system would lead me to believe otherwise. Sure you can't keep track of its state the entire time, but you only need to glance at it to know what state/screen to operate/navigate from.

As the owner of a modern car, PoS systems are in a whole different league than cars. In particular, PoS vendors actually care about making usage efficient.

In my car, if I want to increase the fan speed, I need to tap a small target, wait while the system lags out, and then tap a new target on a popup. Meanwhile, I’m trying to focus on the road at (effectively) infinity. It’s distracting and unsafe.

In my old, very well designed 1991 car, I could push the button to do this. It had two major benefits: it never moved and I could feel it. Touchscreens can’t replicate the feel of a button, but they could at least have the decency to keep controls in the same place.

This is my big objection to Tesla's "touch screen for everything" approach. I know Tesla fans love it, but in my modern car (a 2019 Honda Insight), if I want to change the fan speed -- or anything else about the A/C -- I touch a physical button or twist a physical knob.

A recent software update introduced Natural Language Processing and opened up pretty much every control that would otherwise require a button or dial.

I can literally tell it "Turn on driver seat heaters to 3 bacons" and it will set the seat heater to the max setting (1-3).

https://youtu.be/mV8h2doorrc?t=58

https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/voice-command...

So no, I disagree that physical buttons are safer than an NLP enabled infotainment/dashboard display where I can turn on/off and adjust things using voice. Without taking my eyes off the road and hands off the wheel.

You can change the fan speed (and much more) in a tesla via buttons on the steering wheel.

Yes. By pressing a scroll wheel to pop up a menu, then scrolling through the menu to select a mode, then pressing the scroll wheel again to select a mode, then scrolling once more to peform the desired action.

This may well be better than using the touchscreen, but it's still bad.

Yes the best way is to use voice control. You can tell the tesla to "set fan speed to 2" and it will do it. Voice commands are the safest imho.

But at least in my car I only need to select fan speed in the first menu then scroll do actually change it. This in a model x. But I was really responding to the "100% touch screen" statement.

I have never gotten my Tesla to understand a voice command like this. I could get music and phone calls, and that was it. The second-to-last update that supposedly made it better instead broke voice commands almost completely. Supposedly the update from a couple days ago is better.

In contrast, IIRC a 2007 Prius could do this type of voice command with no obvious difficulty.

That was my experience before the christmas update but after that it understands almost everything I say both in my south-western Norwegian dialect (if I set it to Norwegian) and my English.

The only bug I've found so far was when I said "open driver door" and it displayed "opening trunk" and it slammed it into my garage door!

I’m guessing my particular combination of hardware versions just got broken. I have MCU1 and the old Mercedes-style wheel. After the Christmas update, it couldn’t recognize anything. I think I got it to make a phone call once.

> Yes the best way is to use voice control. You can tell the tesla to "set fan speed to 2" and it will do it. Voice commands are the safest imho.

...if you are from English-speaking country or you know English.

Does Tesla understand every language in the world?

Or: how would my father change settings in Tesla? Would he need to learn one English phrase ("Tesla/Alexa/Siri/Whatever, open Google translate"), then speak in his native language, then somehow speak the translated text to Tesla's system?

Currently in his car, he does that by pressing a button. Done.

It does understand Norwegian (even dialect) just fine at least if the car is set to Norwegian UI.

I'm going to say Tesla did this for no good reason. They could've added 3 knobs to the center console and nobody would have complained.

I replaced my 2015 jeep with a 2020 and luckily, it still has volume and air knobs! Sadly, they replaced the AC mode knob with a mode button. It kinda works, but the UI could be better for it. Pushing it displays a popup on the screen saying what mode it is now in. It should show the order of modes, then at least I could more easily memorize it lol.

I drive a lot and quick glance is usually fine I'd say, but touchscreens often require more than a glance because the UI isn't as static as a typical dashboard. You lose context between apps, and so you end up having to look a bit longer. But the worst part isn't the glancing to be honest, the worst part is that when you're driving there are all these little changes in the road that makes you miss your target on the screen. Maybe it's a little bump or maybe there's a tiny adjustment in the steering that does it, but you end up tapping the wrong thing so often you then have to go back and fix things, and that's where you get into trouble I find because now your attention is truly divided.

I like CarPlay, and found in the Mercedes models that had the little control wheel in the center console it worked well, because you had a physical switch to interface with CarPlay, but had the flexibility of the screen. I'm no expert, but I drive a lot of different cars and that so far is my favorite way of interacting with CarPlay.

I'd still prefer a simple dashboard with physical controls though.

My fingers have pretty much memorised the few things I sometimes change from the screen while driving in my tesla, but 99% of what I would use the screen for can also be done via the buttons on the wheel / voice command. I still glance over when I do hit the screen though to make sure I did it correctly.

I think with the latest update I can also control the active suspension via voice which is the only thing I still use the display for while driving except for hitting cancel on the navigation once in a blue moon. Cancelling navigation might also be available via voice command now, I haven't checked.

In any case, voice and physical buttons (on the steering wheel) is much safer than touching or buttons below the screen the screen regardless. At least I feel much more in control personally when I can keep my eyes on the road and not glance away / feel my way to a spot on the screen.

A point of sales system has the distinct advantage of not travelling at a combined speed of 60 metres / 200 feet per second.

Glancing takes a long time because your eyes don’t just have to flick to and fro, you need to actually refocus your vision, scan for and find the object or point you’re intending to look at, switch contexts, then do it all over again.

> you only need to glance at it

I think you answered your own question.

the button targets are much smaller on most infotainment screens. also, the vehicle being in motion makes it a lot harder to rely on muscle memory.

Obviously I can't say if this is universally true, but it is most certainly true for me. I have CarPlay, and I do my damnedest to control it with Siri. It always feels incredibly dangerous to use the touchscreen.

Because of the problems I have with Siri, I end up using the touchscreen much more than I'd prefer. My latest defensive habit is to queue up enough audio for the trip and not touch it again until I arrive.

I would definitely prefer hardware buttons.

> I'm curious how different it would be if you could control Android auto with physical buttons

You can, if the car is made that way of course, but the software supports it. I would not buy a car knowing it's only a touchscreen. At least in my car, the radial controls the focus on Android Auto and press it down to select. The screen is not a touch screen.

I hope Google and Apple will consider putting in place a solid way of navigating the UI with physical buttons. As much as I love Android Auto, I feel like I'm always constrained to use voice commands which I hate with a passion, and I already stick to my steering wheel buttons to control music playback.

Android already has a solid way of navigating UI with physical buttons. The first generation of Android phones didn't have touchscreens, so the whole OS was designed around DPAD controls — it's support for navigating UI with directional buttons is second to none.

The problem isn't OS itself, but applications. Android application developers are frequently implementing custom graphical components, that do not handle "presses" and "clicks" and instead try to directly interact with touchscreen.

Google have made a number of increasingly aggressive attempts to work around the issue — for example recent versions of Android try to infer purpose and interactivity of custom UI elements instead of expecting developer to declare it. But that does not help, when everyone is using a handful of fancy libraries, hardwired to require touchscreen.

Incidentally, the biggest offender is not a third-party component... It is RecyclerView — Google's official item list implementation, distributed as a separate library. It's support for DPAD navigation is so abysmal, that Google's own engineers (from different department, I presume), had to create Leanback framework largely from scratch instead of relying on official RecyclerView components.

Who cares about Android Auto with specific buttons, I wanted them to compare the same tasks to a old device.

How distracting is it to play a specific song on a radio from 1999? Or a specific FM radio station that isn't already programmed?

2000 Volvo with same radio interface as the earlier 850. For playing a particular song, rest my wrist on the shift lever and push seek next until it gets to the right track. For a specific station, same button until it lands on that station. Not particularly distracting, and minimal glancing at the LCD readout that only shows current frequency or track number.

You can control android auto with physical buttons. It’s really up to the car makers. In my car I rarely need the touchscreen. I use a pixel 3a in a Honda Clarity.

Mazdas have a physical wheel to control Android Auto and CarPlay. I couldn't live without it. Also true for Toyota Yaris and the older Scion iA.

Do you really use physical buttons on the dash without looking at them? I can't in any of my vehicles.

I absolutely develop tactile memory of the stereo and A/C control panels.

It's pretty easy to set up navigation without voice control. Basically just pull over for a second, enter your destination, start navigation, then get back on the road. It probably takes the same amount of time as voice commands, but it's not nearly as distracting.

> even voice can be distracting when you have to repeat variations of the same command five times and keep checking whether it actually works.

This is a silly argument, given the number of arguments that I’ve seen drivers participate in.