This can't end up well. The Tesla's get a lot of stuff right but trying to get everything into that touch screen is a mistake in my eyes.

I really don't think they get that much right. Everything above the drive train is subpar for vehicles much cheaper than theirs, and now it's become clear that they're less reliable too.

They also moved the indicators to the steering wheel in what looks like touch capacitive buttons. That also seems like a mistake to me over an actual stalk.

Is that what those circle things are on the wheel?

Musk's reply sounds like their AI will automatically turn the left/right on and you have to over ride with a touch screen - which to me sounded like a center console... Either way based on the many posts/videos on their current ML I don't think either is a good idea.

I don't think they're "circle things". You're probably confusing them for the normal steering wheel controls that were already in the Model 3.

https://twitter.com/DriveTeslaca/status/1354588881786605570

oh thanks for that tweet. those 'turn signal buttons' are so faint at least in the photos

yeah I dont drive let alone a tesla and i still have no idea what those shiny (glass?) circles do lol

It should be illegal to make a gear selector with no tactile feedback. People have died from poorly designed gear selectors. Having the car guess the direction you drive in also sounds like the most braindead thing ever. It won't be long before someone dies from this.

People have died from poorly designed gear selector levels.

Anton Yelchin, the actor that played Chekov in the recent Start Trek films died because his Jeep Grand Cherokee has a "joystick" style control for the Park gear selector. It wasn't obvious that it was properly engaged. He got out, the car rolled down an incline, and pinned him against a brick wall until the life was squeezed from his body.

Elon Musk likes to joke that cars are two-ton death machines, but this stuff is no joke.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/20/11978044/anton-yelchin-je...

https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/22/12007862/fca-jeep-grand-c...

It was worse, they could be in "P" but randomly were known to slip out of park, which is terrible design and safety.

No, the 2015 Grand Cherokee shifter doesn't randomly change gears. There are known cases of it being accidentally hit from a passenger since there is no locking mechanism. That said, it is standard procedure to engage the parking brake and anybody that doesn't is a bad driver.

That car had two indicators for park, on the center console and the dashboard which Yelchin ignored. Plus, he never engaged the parking brake, which is standard procedure. His death was his own fault.

a) My much cheaper car engages the brake automatically when I stop it and turn the engine off.

b) To engage the brake, you have to push the lever, and then it moves back to its original location, like a joystick. This means that there's no positive tactile feedback that the brake is engaged

To quote:

"The problem is that the "Monostable" design doesn’t provide any meaningful feedback about what gear you’re in — it returns to the center position after each shift. To completely confirm if you’re in drive or park or reverse, you have to look at either the LEDs on the shifter (often covered by your palm) or the digital display in the instrument cluster. This has confused thousands of people, led to over a hundred injuries, and now potentially a death. And it’s all because of a design that prioritizes screens over switches."

The 2014-2015 Grand Cherokee was recalled because of 304 vehicle rollaway incidents, 117 crashes, and a death.

There is no excuse for this kind of "too clever" design.

People drive while tired. People drive in emergency situations. People drive while distracted by screaming infants.

You can't blame dangerously bad user interface design on the users. Essential safety settings should be designed so that the operator falls into the pit of success instead of stumbling into the pit of deadly failure.

Do you recognize current gear by touching gear knob on AT car? I never do that on my linear gear knob.

The recall didn't involve any physical change, it was a firmware update that engaged the parking brake when the transmission is shifted into park. This shifter design came over from Mercedes, where it was used successfully.

A motor vehicle is a heavy machine which requires proper operation because it can cause serious injury and death. This is no different than operating a forklift. People need to start taking responsibility for their actions. If folks don't read the operating manual and can't successfully operate a motor vehicle, they have no business driving.

> can't successfully operate a motor vehicle

That's a set of goalposts that move automatically to render any argument against it invalid.

No matter how counter-intuitive, error-prone, or difficult the control interface of an automobile is made to be, you can always say: "Well, if you can't figure it out, don't drive!"

Would you fly on a plane designed with this attitude? "It'll drop out of the sky if you accidentally bump anything, without a noticeable warning, but pilots that can't handle flying shouldn't be in the cockpit anyway!"

But seriously: would you get on a 737 MAX without the MCAS fixed?

Would you get in a 737 MAX with an unfixed MCAS a decade after the MCAS incident, when people have forgotten? With a new pilot that had never heard of the two specific crashes?

Or would you insist in flying in a plane designed not to crash into the ground in ways that's counterintuitive for the pilots to deal with?

Similarly, would you let your relatives drive a 2014 model Jeep Grand Cherokee that hadn't been recalled and had the parking brake changed to be automatic? Would you trust your Grandmother to check the tiny little light every time that will stop her dying, or would you take it to the shop for her so that she doesn't have to?

I read (or skim) car operating manuals, but that's because I'm technically minded, and curious. I know a lot of people who don't bother, and haven't read a car manual in their lives: if they have "no business driving", there would be a lot less drivers on the road.

All aspects of driving should be made as intuitive as possible, from the operator controls to the fonts on road signs. Adding more mental work makes a dangerous task even more so.

There are US regulations on this. [1] "If a steering-column-mounted transmission shift lever is used, movement from neutral position to forward drive position shall be clockwise. If the transmission shift lever sequence includes a park position, it shall be located at the end, adjacent to the reverse drive position."[1] So the P-R-N-D-L order is required by US law. GM used P-N-D-L-R at one time, which led to some unexpected shifts into reverse.

Ford had to recall and fix the 2015 Lincoln MKC. That had a column of buttons in the order P-R-N-D-S-I, the last two being Sport and Ignition. Ignition was the start/stop button, and if pressed while the engine was running, immediately stopped the engine. This tended to happen when someone was trying to go to "sport" mode and accelerate. Worse, it looked just like the other buttons.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.102

[2] https://www.reifflawfirm.com/push-button-ignitions-gear-shif...

I'm extremely skeptical that will ever make it to production.

No way that's actually getting approved by NHTSA.