How do you, say, check tire pressure? Setup a new garage-door opener? View your calendar for today? Do you have physical buttons for those things?

A car that does everything via physical buttons would be insanely hard to use. It would look and feel like, and be as hard to use as, a jet cockpit.

Obviously a car doesn't need to do any of these things, especially in the age of the smartphone. A good tradeoff might be:

1. Physical controls for everything

2. A separate mini tablet screen for an advanced CarPlay-like dock that connects to your phone.

Ideally the physical controls would do everything on the screen as well, so the advanced functions can be accessible while driving (if you absolutely need something there).

Those are not things you need to do while driving. There’s no reason why, say, garage door pairing can’t use a button like my 2006 Subaru does for the one time most people will do it in the life of the vehicle. Checking a calendar is distracted driving and should be illegal.

> Checking a calendar is distracted driving and should be illegal.

Tesla vehicles, as well as iOS and Android car UIs, have functionality for navigating to the next appointment in your calendar, if the appointment has a physical address. For a lot of folks, e.g., salespeople and service crews, this is a godsend.

And you can do that, parked on the side or the road, with a tiny LCD panel and buttons on the steering wheel. No need to add a screen for that.

Alternatively, you can use the app on your phone that you probably need as a backup key anyway to queue up your navigation for you while you're safely parked. You shouldn't do this while actively driving, especially if it needs a screen to work.

You use this before starting the journey, or after pulling over if the destination must change part way through the journey.

What? Put first location in navigation. Do sales pitch. Get back in car, put next location in navigation, etc.

You can set the whole thing up in advance in Google Maps. This solves a problem that was already solved.

My car, born from jets, has no tire pressure checker, no garage door opener, no touchscreen, no automatic transmission, and smack-you-in-the-back-of-the-head turbo lag. I honestly can’t think of a new car I’d trade it for (unless selling that new car to buy more old cars isn’t cheating).

I miss my old Saab... One of these days I need to pick up another one.

As a COVID project, I looked for a Saab to play around with. The cheapest I found was a 2009 crappy GM 9-3 for $11k.

I really miss my pre-Malibu 900s and 9-3s.

My understanding is that a 2005 or earlier (pre-Dame Edna) 9-5 still had oversight from the Swedish engineering and manufacturing team. For example, an austere Saab dashboard rather than a blingy Buick one. Not sure when that switch happened for the 9-3, but it would have been for whatever facelift happened around the same time.

2003 Aero is the sweet spot. GM sales “engineers” tried selling with all-options-standard that year, so they are all very well equipped. Any still running had the sump issue fixed long ago. Hard to imagine you couldn’t get a fettisdagsbulle for $5k.

It's amazing that they even had a "nightpanel" button to turn offvthe lighting for everything except the speedometer. That is such a cool feature.

A feature to get rid of features. No one who knows me is surprised my car has that.

> How do you, say, check tire pressure?

Cars have had these for decades. Usually a dash indicator pops up if it's low.

> Setup a new garage-door opener?

??? Have a physical garage door opener.

> View your calendar for today?

WTF? Pretty sure you shouldn't be looking at your calendar while driving. Also, it's on your phone, again, which you shouldn't be using while driving.

Not sure if you are being sarcastic but yeah, my car has a physical button for the garage door. I just hold it down for 5 seconds to set a new one.

Tire pressure I use a physical button to cycle through my cars diagnostic info.

And I have no idea why I would check my calendar on my car. Lol seems like a made up argument.

They make tire pressure gauges without touchscreens; even then, dashboards have indicators light up when pressure is too low. Garage door openers have buttons, and long-pressing often does magical things, like entering setup mode. And presumably, you have a calendar in a handheld device you carry with you everywhere; it's much more convenient then trying to carry a car in your pocket.

If you want a computer to check the tire pressure, then use a computer to poll the tire pressure indicator and report a fix error when it's too low. My 2006 Passat did that, and it didn't have a touch screen (or a backup camera). Cars have had sensors that report errors for a very long time, and this doesn't require any touchscreens.

> How do you, say, check tire pressure?

You shouldn’t do that while driving. If your tire pressure becomes low, the vehicle should alert you. Pull over and check it.

> Setup a new garage-door opener?

You should absolutely 100% not be doing that while driving. I genuinely don’t know how this could even be a question.

> View your calendar for today?

You absolutely should not be doing that while driving.

You haven’t presented any questions for things that are necessary tasks while driving.