After the panic subsided, I decided to learn the voice commands. It seems that each device, now, has its own language, which we have to learn in order to function. A modern tower of Babel.
We can hope, but there's reason to be pessimistic:
> With traffic fatalities spiking over the past few years and with no real plan for how to make screens less distracting, we seem to have entered into the type of brutal acquiescence that’s common in the tech era; car manufacturers will keep putting bigger and more complicated screens in cars without much thought to safety or even functionality, and we, the consumers, will continue to buy them.
> ...
> The incentives of carmakers are pretty clear: Touch screens are cheaper than designing and installing a mechanical panel. And given that most cars today are reliable, come with lengthy warranties and an array of mostly uniform features, a big screen becomes a way for a car brand to distinguish itself from its competitors, especially on the showroom floor before potential buyers have a chance to really immerse themselves in just how annoying the screen will be.
One of the weaknesses of the market is that it doesn't necessarily give consumers what would work best for them, it just lets them pick from what they're given. Barring regulatory action, I don't see device-makers moving away touchscreen maximization.
Who's this "we"?
I'm in the pre-buy stage, it looks like my record of non-car-ownership will end at 23 years. (My last car was stolen from a SOMA lot in 1999.)
It does look like I'm buying used and IC, because I will not have a touch screen. I've driven basically every model of car you can rent, and some of them are less offensive than others, but they're all ass. Backup assist is vaguely nice, but I learned to parallel park before they existed, so I don't really care. And everything else about them is actively worse.
The UI is such a weird thing to cheap out on. As far as I'm concerned, keep your butt warmers and solenoid-driven seat adjustment, I want physical knobs I don't have to look at to use.
My car has these things, controlled by physical buttons and knobs. They're nice features and they don't require a touchscreen to use.
That's not a solution - you have to look at market of brand new cars, as whateber is avaliable now will replace all the used cars.
> Of course it is a solution. I end up with a car that doesn't have a touch screen.
The point is that solution is only a band-aid. Cars wear out. New cars turn into used cars, which turn into "classic cars", which then turn into museum pieces. Especially with the later two steps, supply drops and maintenance becomes harder.
There is a reasonable chance I won't buy another vehicle, so I don't care what the rest of the market does.
Good for you, but why do you feel you need to weigh in on the new car market when you have no intention of ever participating?
Because we're discussing a complaint about modern cars, and "always buy used ones that predate the change, and plan to die before those become unavailable" doesn't really address the complaint. It's a rather idiosyncratic and radical way of avoiding it, and bends the conversation to discussing that personal idiosyncrasy.
Also worth acknowledging that the battery makes up a huge chunk of the car both physically and in terms of cost, and yet is a consumable, so I guess this lowers the resale value of EVs significantly? I wonder if it's even worth any of the remaining savings on the rest of the car after fitting a new battery. Maybe the next stage is scaling up lithium-ion recycling to drive down battery replacement and general battery cost to a point that "everyone else" can join in the EV game.
It would be a big step backwards for society if a new wealth gap is created when oil becomes too expensive to continue running cheap ICE cars and only moderately wealthy people can afford cars priced exclusively at "new" values without a 2nd hand market.
That's coming whether you want to or not.
Once we start pricing in the externalities of climate change into road vehicles (which is beginning to happen, slowly), cars will become increasingly unaffordable to those in the bottom quartiles of income.
I don't want to drive—or negotiate with AI to drive—a giant cellphone on wheels.
Not sure I agree with that. Even Porsche are doing touch screens, unfortunately.
Touchscreen for other things: android auto, apple car play (which provide maps) and more complicated user settings (such as whether you want the lights to stay on after you turn off the car for a while)
It's a shame they went more "slick" with the 2022 refresh, still tactile, but just more flush and less accessible without a glance. [2]
[1] https://cdn.motor1.com/images/mgl/OYAqe/s1/2020-chevy-bolt-e...
[2] https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/02/2022-...
https://www.automotiveaddicts.com/25445/2012-chevrolet-volt-...
They do have a rotary dial and push button that controls the display, so no touching it. Makes it a lot simpler when your UI designers are restricted to left/right movement and button push. Can't hide things all over the place and under deeply nested menus.
Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are designed to be touched. Navigating either without a touchscreen is a horrible experience and requires significantly more steps than just touching the item you want on the screen.
The only thing I can remember might be the address entry, but that can easily be done with the keyboard on the phone itself (click "phone" icon in the on-screen Auto keyboard to handoff).
That said, people I know have a strange resistance to using voice commands with their cars and phones.
Like if I want to tell my alexa to turn the temperature up on the thermastat I have to remember this exact phrase: Alexa, tell the ecobee to turn the temperature [up, down], [ecobee name]. Anything else and alexa tells me "ecobee doesn't support that". And alexa/siri/google are all top of the line, offline processing inside a car's CPU is measurably worse, and syntax is even more esoteric.
Ever try to use voice commands to tell your car to give you GPS directions to the nearest walmart? Basically impossible unless you have the street address memorized, and even then it's a 10 minute ordeal with a lot of stops and starts because the processor wasn't listening as soon as you started speaking to it so it only caught the end of an address, or it misheard a number or street name, etc.
Voice control is far from being an acceptable alternative to physical dials and switches.
1. Do not want to talk in the loud-clear voice needed for them to work (e.g. someone else in car is on their phone, kids are sleeping).
2. Completely soured on the experience due to things like this[1]
What I think is a lot more weird is that archaeology works: i.e. you can dig in old European cities and find the remains of older cities underneath. The short answer is that stuff like dust, decaying plant matter, erosion from nearby mountains and debris from the buildings themselves can effectively create this new layer on top, but it still feels counter-intuitive because we're not used to thinking in these timeframes: https://www.straightdope.com/21341986/how-come-archaeologica...
On the latest Mazda 3 (2019+) it does seemingly only use the screen for info and back up camera. There's a big wheel in between the seats to move about the menus. I test drove one recently and it is very nice and intuitive.
Though I don't know if they followed through
> Like most modern Mazdas, the CX-5 uses an ultra-wide, non-touchscreen infotainment system.
Buttons and knobs for HVAC
https://www.autoguide.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/20...
HVAC is screen-independent. So is volume, thankfully.
I have a 2018 Mazda3 and I like the backup camera. But I can control the climate control and temperature with physical buttons. The seat warmers have buttons. I can control the volume with a knob or on the steering wheel.
The radio, unfortunately, is software. Seems like that much is unavoidable. But the small screen that is there is secondary to everything else I want to control while driving and I don’t ever need to use while driving. I’m typically using Apple CarPlay (or previously Android Auto) so if I do need to do something, I can use voice controls and at least keep my eyes on the road.
I don’t mind small screens, as you said, they’re not going away. What I don’t want is a giant screen that controls everything.
I’m just not buying an EV until there’s one that doesn’t rely on a giant touch screen for everything or I can’t buy an ICE vehicle anymore.