> Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car

I have to strongly disagree with this. The touchscreen is great for the vast majority of things it replaces. The only physical controls I ever miss are for temperature (which is a very minor complaint) and windshield wipers (though I would also accept auto wipers that actually work). I do think the UI smoothness and touch latency could be slightly improved, and Apple would do better, but Tesla is already so far ahead of every other car manufacturer there that it's not even funny.

Somewhat ironically, the physical controls for the turns signals are by far the worst part of the whole Tesla UI. I've had my Model 3 for over two years now, and I still cannot reliably cancel a turn signal, or "soft push" the signal so it only blinks 3 times. It's infuriating to inadvertently signal left, then right, then left again, as you frantically try to just cancel the turn signal. I'm broadcasting confusion and incompetence to the outside world, when inside the car I know exactly what I'm trying to do.

BMW did this, too, starting with the E90 3 series, if I remember correctly. It's awful, because in almost every car I drive, and especially in BMWs (E92 and the E70 X5 I own now), the steering wheel blocks the top of the speedometer and the turn signals entirely. The "modern" turn signal sounds are too soft to be heard over music, and the switch itself is stateless. I think BMW finally gave up on it for their newer models, but I'm not positive on this.

Both the Tesla and the X5 annoy me when I can't tell the state of the switch by feel. Which is funny, because, IMO, BMW has some of the best-feeling and best-weighted stalks in the business. It sounds silly, but I positively LOVE the way engagement on the steering wheels stalks feel on my X5, and every other BMW I've owned or driven.

You can try adjusting the height of the steering wheel? I run into the same issue in my E90 335d, but it's by choice as it's where I like the steering wheel to sit in relation to my seat position.

Very much agreed on the feeling and weight of the stalks. By far the best in the business. Especially for knowing the difference between a lane change vs. turn signal

Yeah that's exactly it. I run the wheel as low as it goes, it would have to be really high for the whole cluster to be visible. Thankfully I have the HUD which I use for speed, but it does not show turn signal indicators.

I have a Z3M where I can see all the instruments perfectly, but that's just because the steering wheel is fixed and much higher than I'd like.

I give the "worst" award to the wiper controls, but I do dislike the mushy feel of the control stalks and the way turn signal cancellation works. Last time I drove a BMW I recall it working similarly though, so maybe it's just the style now?

Perhaps it is just a defect in my hardware, but on mine it is nearly impossible to reliably "soft" press in either direction. Every motion either registers as nothing or hard press.

Yeah could be worth bringing that up during next service. I haven't really had an issue with the two-stage indicators, once I got used to the concept.

I had this issue with mine ( 2018 M3 ). It is a known issue and the service center fixed it.

BMW switched back to normal turn stalks in more recent cars.

We went from a Model S to a Model 3 and this is my only complaint. The steering wheel stalks are terrible on the 3. But are perfectly normal on the S.

I prefer everything else about the 3.

What kills me are the wipers. During the dry season I forget about them, and then winter hits and I dread driving my car. Why oh why could Tesla not just use an off-the-shelf IR sensor like every other premium car? FFS, trying to use cameras to detect rain is a disaster.

I agree, the turn signals suck. Though interestingly I don't have the same problem you have. What gets me is that the detent between the momentary switch and the full signal is stiff enough that I somewhat regularly inadvertently flash oncoming traffic when activating the turn signal. Because the pull resistance on that stalk is much lower than the pressure required to overcome the signal detent.

As a counterpoint, I absolutely love the turn signals in my Model 3. I always thought BMW had the best turn signals (which are functionally identical to Tesla's), and was thrilled to see that Tesla took the same approach.

Man I don’t drive with a passenger enough to care about ui animations on my car. I just want to set the fan speed and move on... preferably without looking.

Fan isn’t that bad because you can change it when it’s safe to do so. Changing the windshield wiper speed because you can barely see is my biggest issue. I always forget which way to swipe while trying focus on seeing out the window. It was worse when auto wipers feature just didn’t work and now it kinda works.

When I rented a Tesla I recall being able to set all these controls with my voice.

How well does voice control handle outside noise? Torrential downpours, sleet/hail?

If the windows start to fog during one of those situations, taking your attention off the road to look and swipe is very dangerous.

Edit to add: Is the voice processing being handled on board? If not, then if your signal fails....

> How well does voice control handle outside noise? Torrential downpours, sleet/hail?

The Model 3 at least is remarkably quiet; hard rain and street noise and dampened a lot. To the point where we felt it was almost eerie the first time we took it home. Voice recognition has been perfect in all conditions.

Do you have a 2021 model with dual pane windows? The Model 3 objectively has a noisier cabin at highway speed than anything else in its class.

I turned the wipers on with my first try, wearing a face mask, without knowing what the voice command was, and English isn't my native language.

You do need to speak loudly, and there's an unfamiliar concentration aspect to using a voice command rather than a switch.

Probably not the best place to ask this, but how well does it understand languages different from English?

Or even English with something other than a North American accent?

I suppose it’s personal preference but the touchscreen is probably the single biggest factor why I didn’t buy a Tesla recently. I think it will be great when self driving works, but for driving it’s hard to try to touch parts of a flat screen.

Here’s an example of various controls I fiddle with while driving: temperature control through a little knob that sticks out; Heated seats through a button with sight curve around borders; Apple CarPlay through a knob.

There’s also no heads up display to present speed and nav onto the windshield.

All these things are good for me to look at the road and not have to precisely touch something with at least a few seconds of focus.

I have friends who love their Tesla and love the touch screen so it may just be my control style that doesn’t work.

I suspect Apple would get this stuff better.

You can activate the wipers with one of the control sticks, at least on the model 3.

You can only "activate" them to wipe a single time with the button on the stalk. Not useful in rain unless you like pressing a button every three seconds for the entire time you're driving.

> The biggest lesson from Tesla is that cars are not cellphones. Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car.

This is both the most functional and most beautiful design choice I've ever experienced. My favorite part of my Model 3. You quickly come to realize that voice control does everything and that you should never have to reach for a button or fiddle with climate controls, etc.

Tesla realized what all other car manufacturers failed to see, you don't need physical buttons because you don't need buttons of any kind. I'm never buying another antiquated car with physical buttons again.

And I view the voice command thing as a thing to be avoided in most or all cases. I simply don’t want to talk to electronics. The privacy implications alone scare me away. No thanks.

> I simply don’t want to talk to electronics. The privacy implications alone scare me away. No thanks.

I think you should consider the tradeoffs here.

Practical safety on the road today, where I don't die because I'm fiddling with buttons, trumps theoretical unmeasurable fearmongering about vague privacy concerns. The reality is that if Tesla were to record every command I ever give the car and post them online against my will, no one will not learn much about me aside how aggressive I want the windshield wipers to be and that I enjoy having a warm butt when I drive.

> The reality is that if Tesla were to record every command I ever give the car and post them online against my will

The way echo speakers are implemented is that the device only determines if you used the wake word and then sends it to the cloud service. However this wake word detection is sloppy and turns on more often than it should. It's filtered out on the cloud service side, but it creates a situation where extremely private moments are uploaded. For end users this means that you can't be certain when it's recording vs when it isn't....

IDK how it's implemented in cars, but the STT features I've seen require the explicit press of a button and IIRC it's inferenced locally on the car's hardware. Which is possible thanks to the car's high energy usage and price. But it might depend on implementation and it might send telemetry back to the manufacturer.

how well do voice commands work if there is loud music playing? what about when you are having a conversation with someone and you are the person talking? having to stop mid sentence to demist your windows or whatever sounds annoying

Practical safety is a car that slows down when I'm moving too fast toward an obstacle because I am distracted.

Talking to electronics does not increase practical safety.

Safety is multi-faceted.

Yes, a car that can slow down to avoid collisions is a form of safety. Seatbelts are another form. A car that does various things to avoid driver distraction is another form of safety. Just because you can think of a more immediate safety system does not make other increases to safety in some way "not practical" or "not real increases".

There are many things, small and large, that go into practical safety of a car

Safety is engineered, it's not about throwing as many devices you can to a car hoping that something sticks and improve safety by chance.

Safety belts work even if I am unconscious, a car that slows down works even if I am unconscious, airbags work even if I am unconscious, so they are 100% safety devices, as in "they keep me safe when everything else failed and things are already out of my control".

Hands-free calls are a safety feature because they are designed to eliminate the distraction of operating a phone.

But they are a workaround, the real safety feature is "operating a phone while driving is prohibited by the law" because the simple act of talking is a distraction.

Voice commands are a workaround because the real safety feature is "touch screens are a distraction and you shouldn't use them while driving"

If we remove touch screens from cars, there is no need for voice commands.

Most of the sources of distraction in modern cars are caused by functions that do not belong to cars and are hard to operate.

I work for a large insurance company based in Europe whose primary business is car insurance (>10 million clients).

We launched a two-year program to monitor the distractions of our customers (we especially monitored the phone's activity, thinking it was a major issue) and the primary sources of distraction while driving are (in reverse order of importance)

- adjusting settings or operating car controls: less than 1%

- eating or drinking: 2-3%

- reaching for things: 2-3%

- talking: 4-5%

- multitasking: 5%

- looking at the GPS display: 10%

- texting and driving: 10%

- using a smartphone: 15%

- not looking at the road for too long: ~50%

there are subcategories for each one of the macro-categories above.

For example:

Adjusting car settings like mirrors, seats, the heater is basically risk-free, more than half of the distractions in this category are caused by adjusting the audio volume. It makes sense, muscle memory for settings helps us to not think too much when doing it. Regulating the audio volume usually follows some unexpected event that forces us to change it. Still only 1/200 distractions are caused by it.

Eating or drinking is mostly eating here, I guess in the USA it would be the opposite. Bringing hot beverages inside the car is quite common there, here is quite rare. People spill the coke on their shirts or choke on the water anyway. It is also very common to frequently stop at motorway restaurants here to eat, drink, use the toilets, rest a little bit and eventually refuel. It helps to keep this kind of distractions to a minimum.

Reaching for things is less dangerous when the driver picks up things from the driver's or the passenger's seat, opening the glove compartment is two times as dangerous, picking up something from the pedals area is the most dangerous of them all.

Talking is interesting because there's no difference between people talking with other occupants and people talking on the phone. What's less interesting and probably obvious is that 8/10 happen when people are arguing. But 2/10 are people talking normally like they would to a car to activate the wiper.

Multitasking is when people do other things unrelated to driving the car itself. For example, handling pets is more dangerous than applying makeup that is more dangerous than handling children. The good news is when people carry kids around they drive more carefully.

The GPS display is a major source of distraction, no matter what voice people chose to give them directions, the tendency to not trust other people's instructions makes people look at the screen to confirm what they heard. Also, there are times, not rare, when the instructions are not clear or haven't been updated to the actual road conditions (a roadblock for example.

Despite the technological improvements, texting and driving is still very popular, especially among younger generations. More importantly, we counted using chat apps in this category and it's not surprisingly the vast majority of the cases.

Using a smartphone is an interesting one: while the "phone" part of the smartphone has been standardized and is easy to remote nowadays, most of the time people use the "smart" part of the smartphone, which cannot be remoted. They scroll the Instagram feed, they take pictures, make videos, and, despite having the freehands at their disposal, people prefer to send voice messages. Which involves removing your hands from the wheel.

Did you notice how many times talking and/or hearing voices caused a distraction?

But the most important of them all is not looking at the road. It sounds obvious once you hear it, but it happens a lot more than people think, 100 times more than turning the volume up or down. It could be an external event like an accident, an emergency vehicle passing by, a fire, or something that attracted the driver's attention like a billboard or a beautiful person walking on the sidewalk - it happens more often than you can imagine -. These are the "good" ones, often they don't last enough to cause severe accidents and people just end up rear-ending each other at the traffic lights. The real killer is being lost in one's thoughts, zoning out, keep driving on autopilot while you are not there anymore, and don't realize you are still in a car moving at 50km/h.

That's how accidents happen most of the time.

That's why I think that cars that slow down automatically or correct your errors are a breakthrough, they already exist on the market, have no voice control but they can alert you with a warning sound if they detect that you are distracted behind the wheel.

A car that adjusts the temperature of the heather using voice commands is not equally useful, I would argue that is completely useless unless fixing the temperature in the car will become a dangerous activity in the future, but honestly, I don't see that happening very soon.

So yes, small things are important, but BIG things are even more important.

Let's fix those before thinking that cars need UI/UX designers more than safety engineers.

Before "disrupting" the car industry for the sake of changing things and adding the cool factor to something that doesn't really need it.

p.s.: My opinion is based on the experience gathered doing my job, I'm not against voice commands because I don't like them, but because they can be a source of distraction per sé.

p.p.s.: it took me time to put this together, so please if you don't like it don't downvote it without leaving a comment. Thanks.

> So yes, small things are important, but BIG things are even more important.

Totally agree.

> Let's fix those before thinking that cars need UI/UX designers more than safety engineers.

"Let's fix big things before we even think about fixing small things". Which is silly. We can try to improve multiple things at once. We can improve easy small hanging fruit before we improve harder things. This is a false dichotomy I think.

Anyway, all tesla vehicles already have automatic emergency braking, so I don't really understand why you went on such a long rant to argue for adding that instead of voice commands. The car under discussion has both, which seems better than having just one or the other.

> Which is silly. We can try to improve multiple things at once.

Which is naif.

There is a limited amount of time and resources that a company can spend on features , prioritizing big things is always the sensible choice.

In the specific case of cars, they can't be patched after reaching the market and usually a recall is issued only after something serious has already happened.

Thake the example linked below that made the front page: A Tesla car speeds on autopilot when both seats are reclined in sleep mode.

Tesla overlooked safety to provide useless features.

If they had put big things first, the car would completely stop if the driver seat is being used as a bunk bed.

And why the autopilot can go over the limits?

They didn't think about it, because the amount of time engineers can spend debugging issues and QA finding problems is limited.

(someone in the comment wrote «Teslas often “shadow brake” when driving under overpasses or overhead signs because the radar system gets confused.»)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25545202

You sound like a grandpa, but kids that grow talking with Alexa and Siri will find buttons antiquated.

Tesla's touchscreen is so functional it made you change to voice control, you say?

The thing is the car is not my butler.

I shouldn't say to my car what I want the car to do, I should do it.

Also, I listen to loud music when I drive.

Imagine you are driving and the kids start activating car functions because it's fun.

Thanks but no thanks.

Just so you know, the way you talk to a tesla is via a physical button on the steering wheel.

When you press it, music pauses/dims, so loud music isn't going to get in the way of you being heard. Kids can't just yell "car, do X" because they can't hit the button on the steering wheel.

There are valid reasons to dislike voice-controls, but the ones you've picked are not issues with the specific system in question.

You realize that with the drive-by-wire systems in (most) modern cars, when you press the accelerator, you are sending an electronic message that "asks" a computer to increase the speed of the car - there's no mechanical linkage from the pedal to a carburetor and/or fuel pump, right?

Similarly in many cases with windshield wipers, headlights, windows, temperature controls, etc.

Ask yourself why Tesla didn't introduce drive by voice, but still relies on your foot to do the right thing...

Drive by wire systems are simply not completely mechanical anymore, but you don't have to ask them to do something for you, they translate a mechanical input into an electric signal and then in a mechanical output.

There is no understanding involved.

I hope you realize that.

Th gas pedal is still a moderately precise mechanical actuator that can be easily and accurately measured regardless of who uses it, you can also use a stick or a brick to accelerate, the car doesn't care as long as you move the pedal.

You can also be a mute and use it.

big difference uh?

The fact that everything is on the center display is the biggest reason keeping me from seriously considering buying a Tesla. Distractions don't belong in a car.

You get over it in the first week and it really isn't as bad as you'd think.

I'm waiting for a good PEV from Mazda. They announced a policy of no touch screens.

So here's the thing - there is nothing wrong with touchscreens.

But they have to be used appropriately.

A touchscreen for wiper control, or to turn on defrost, or to flash your headlights at another car is NOT appropriate.

A touchscreen for a nav display, or to set infrequently used preferences is very appropriate.

I leased a 2020 Mazda 3 precisely for this reason... I want tactile feedback from my car's controls so I can keep my eyes on the road.

> I think if they had gone first they might have made that mistake too, but now that it's been tried they can find interesting ways to innovate that don't break the experience.

I’m just hoping that they don’t relegate a lot of stuff like climate control to a Siri-only interface.

I don't honestly think I'd mind.

I think they should prioritise physical controls for stuff you use regularly and I'd be happy to have voice on controls for stuff I use very infrequently.

Like putting the rear window wiper on, barely use it and half the time I accidentality turn it on (or someone else using the car does) and I have no clue how to get it off again. Just saying "siri clean the rear window" or "turn the rear window wiper off" would honestly just be easier.

butterfly keyboard buttons maybe or a circular touchbar on the wheel?

or maybe a line of keys, f1 to f12

Fwiw I love nothing being in the way of me and the road except the wheel.

I wouldn't have minded a HUD that I could turn on and off though.

I disagree with your assessment of the one screen driving experience. First and foremost the use of the screen is incidental to driving. Just the normal eye travel one has when checking the mirrors is more than sufficient to pick up your speed and outside of that the glance time is insignificant.

If you really want to make this fun, you don't even need to know as you can use traffic aware cruise control, a feature many cars have, to set and forget your speed on any road.

I have two issues with the UI/Human interface that Telsa has followed. First, their automatic wiper solution is dreadful and while you can instant a wipe action by pressing the button on the end of the stalk I believe the variable rate should be available on the stalk.

The second is that I think the steering wheel would be better served with buttons dedicated to cell phone use, namely accept, ignore, mute, and hangup.

However it should be noted the cars voice controls respond very well and you can easily change the temperature should you want that way, there are a lot of settings easily changed by voice but Tesla does not alert you to them.

The best way to grade their UI though is that I can muscle memory activate many features including one level down options. Of course you can just let the car drive and play with the screen all you want, something I have done to prove a point but the simple fact is...

I rarely if ever, as in nearly never, need to access anything through the screen as its all set and forget. Now I get into other cars and think, damn this has enough buttons and screens to be an airliner.

It won't be but a generation before we look back and wonder how anyone though six gauges, forty buttons, and three or more levers, were ease of operation, Not all cars will be as simple as a Tesla but the age of forty buttons is going away.

(Seriously, count how many buttons are in your car - then try to remember how often you use them)

This sounds like something someone would write when they are young and don’t have issues with focusing near and far. Having speed off to the side is terrible. End. Stop.

You can't focus on the display but you can focus on your instrument cluster in your dashboard? They're pretty close to the same distance away in most cars. If you have trouble changing focus then what you need is a HUD, not a traditional instrument cluster.

HUD is great. But often you look at the instrument cluster just under your glasses. Sort like a low tech bifocal!

My G37x has one button per car function, as it should be. Perfect tactile feedback, non-modal, always there. You want it to do a thing, you push the button.

(Photo of someone else's dash: https://cars.usnews.com/static/images/Auto/izmo/323783/2010_... )

I don't own a car anymore, but the Car2go I rent has five (maybe 6) buttons total

> The moat that Waymo has built with their particular kind of testing and iteration is diametrically opposed to how companies like Tesla, Lyft, Uber etc have tried to do self-driving. Even they are going to be restricted to the easiest of locals for years.

Nobody has figured it out out yet, and a 'moat' for a market that is basically impossible to a big money-maker is not a 'moat' at all.

The quest for self driving is not the same as the quest for the first commercial deployment. Solving general self-driving is the real quest.

And I don't trust any experts to predict this correctly, as nobody knows yet what the solution actually is. Some experts say one thing, others say other things.

I was under the impression that Lyft wasn't building self-driving in house and was instead partnering with Waymo. It looks like they do have in house self driving: https://self-driving.lyft.com/level5/

But they also have an extensive partnership with Waymo: https://self-driving.lyft.com/riders/

I also know that both Alphabet and GM have large stakes in Lyft. I bought stock in Lyft with the expectation that they will one day be acquired by one of their partners.

Lyft has both own self-driving project and integration with multiple third party vendors.

Apple's been reasonably good with the buttons they do make, like the crown on both the watch and their new headphones. Also, a dedicated silence switch on the phone is something not every manufacturer thinks is important.

I do like tesla, but I strongly agree about the display.

I test drove a model 3 and ... couldn't buy one because of the dash.

I think there should be - always - status in line of sight of the driver.

The model 3 dashboard in the center of the car is just a bunch of bathwater with no baby.

Some people won't care. I've had friends say they got used to it.

I can... almost... think of it like an off-road motorcycle with a handlebar and no instruments.

But personally I couldn't buy in.

Related, I think the controls on the model 3 have also been over-minimized. The scroll wheels have the feel of a $3 computer mouse, and autopilot overloaded on the gear selector is cheap, not elegant.

>Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car.

It also totally sounds like something Apple would do.

They did not make this choice with touch on Airpods Max, instead opting for the digital crown.

Still, Marco has been complaining[0] about the lack of a separate play/pause/skip button that's not integrated into the digital crown. The solution Apple chose is (a) a bit finnicky (b) makes you unintentionally change the volume while doing other actions.

[0] ATP 409 https://atp.fm/409