I have a 2017 Chevy Sonic with a built in touchscreen and I basically never have to touch it other than to input an address into Android auto.
I haven't found any pieces of the car functionality I cannot access through a button somewhere on the dash or steering wheel
I doubt a 2024 car has that much more functionality than my 2017
Every UI using "simple" menu button navigation has been horrific in my experience. Remote controls, handsets, TV configuration menus, yadda yadda.
Last time I had something useful was in my Volvo 740. After that it has been getting worse and worse. Even physical nobs can be bad, just round and smooth, without any physical notch that snows what direction it points.
But there are so many settings on a contemporary car that it would be impractical to have a switch for all of them, and even if they were, if it's something you'd like to change once in a blue-moon being able to search for that setting is really useful.
I don't know if this makes great sense as an example, but, say you're travelling from the UK to France (or USA to Mexico?) and want to have your speedometer show km/h rather than miles/hour. That's not a setting which should have a switch, but may be something useful.
Three presses in a Mercedes on its speedometer screen.
> speedometer screen
> screen
So a setting behind a screen instead of a dedicated hardware button/switch/toggle for it.
I don't see why in God's name would you ever need that as a hardware switch.
My rule of thumb is if it's on the center console I shouldn't be messing with it when the car is in motion. If I'm supposed to mess with it while moving it's on the wheel or immediately around it.
And tbh between my car with a zillion buttons I shouldn't be pressing while driving and a small screen and the car where most of those functions I shouldn't mess with while driving are on the screen I prefer the screen. Far bigger screen to quickly glance at the maps when driving instead of a smaller one that's harder to see. Less space to actually see the media collection when I'm stopped and can safely navigate it.
That's on the steering wheel on practically every car I've had for over 20 years of model years.
You probably shouldn't be flipping between audio sources while driving. But even then, I've had change audio source as an option on steering wheels before. Generally, you shouldn't be fiddling with the radio when the vehicle is moving, you should be driving. Keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road, not on the stereo in the center console.
FWIW, in pretty much every car I've had since a 2012 model year I've been able to press a button on the wheel and say "tune to am 1510" and it'll tune that without having to take my hands or eyes off the wheel. Far preferrable than trying to look over at the radio to find the AM button again and figure out which knob is the tuning dial and then look to see I'm tuning to the right station.
Every time I try to talk to the voice assistant its the most horrible driving experience. It hijacks everything, and definitely sets me to where I have to pull over, or just stop trying to talk to it to get anything done. It does not understand me whatsoever.
And then on top of that people want AA/CarPlay which is designed around touch inputs first, so you're going to have that screen be touch anyways.
None of that should really be changed by the driver when the car is in motion, and you'd have to manage the deep navigation of a bunch of button presses on a screen anyways so arguing you'd be less distracted is a moot point.
Sadly all other GPS navigators we used to use has gone downhill to the state of unusable so this is what we turned out using all vacation.
If I was making such an interface, that would be a dial or knob instead of buttons.
I've had far more rotary encoders fail than I've had capacitive screens fail, so even an argument of higher reliability is pretty moot. Most damage that would break the capacitive touch is going to damage the rest of the screen anyways.
Finally, if it's so I can change those settings while wearing gloves, wow I'm going to increase the complexity of the car and take up more space so I can change the settings on the secondary keys without taking off my gloves when it's really cold outside someday. So much stuff just so I can do that thing I rarely do anyways slightly easier for a few days of the year, assuming I'm changing those settings while also getting in and out of the car a lot so I wouldn't want to take off my gloves for a minute.
Just put the settings behind a touchscreen. It's fine.
That doesn't sound like a dial/knob. You'd give it a single big twist or scroll to get the cursor around the right spot first. Same as old-fashioned radios.
At least with an old-fashioned radio knob you got the feedback of if you were tuning into the station by hearing it. But moving a selector on a screen?
It's like you're arguing for the MacBook Wheel, as if a knob is the most optimal way to input arbitrary choices on a computer.
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On this feature (which itself can be enabled/disabled), sometimes you can choose how far back it'll move the seat automatically for you.
Its this setting that you're suggesting you're going to mess with enough to have decent muscle memory to change without looking. That you'd want as a top-level feature setting option, practically a dedicated button to change it.
The video below shows what I'm talking about. Note in a lot of cars it's just a basic toggle. Sometimes you can set how far back you want the seat to go, if you want the steering wheel to move, how far you want the steering wheel to move, etc.
We only need knobs for crucial things like fog lights, turn signals and skipping podcast ads.
> I haven't found any pieces of the car functionality
Any functionality.
I agree though. Any critical driving function should be physical. Like the podcast ad skip button on the steering wheel, one of the most important control components in a modern car.
I'm talking about important, everyday functions of a vehicle, like the radio, GPS, heating, cruise control, etc
GPS? As in you're going to have like a whole QWERTY keyboard as physical keys or something for punching in addresses? I've got no problem with practically everything about the navigation be on a touchscreen, I shouldn't be messing with it while the car is moving. Just make it big.
Radio/stereo should have physical controls on the steering wheel. You shouldn't really be messing with the center console while driving. It's not like you should be swapping CD's or navigating folders on the USB drive or whatever. Anything past next/previous and volume is probably too much.
Cruise control should be on the steering wheel or stalks as well.
It's 2024. Thermostats have been a thing for a long time. Cars can make us comfortable without having to mess with the settings every five minutes. Every time I'm in a car that doesn't have auto climate I hate it, have to constantly futz with it to make it actually comfortable. Meanwhile even my 2000 Accord had a decent auto climate that I practically never had to touch. But whatever, put the basic AC controls and what not as physical controls. The only one I care to absolutely be physical is max defrost.
But my point is, there are a ton of controls you're possibly going to use sometimes, even if only to originally set up the car how you want it. It's asinine thinking every function of a modern car can have some physical switch and toggle to it. Loads of cars would look like the controls on the Space Shuttle if you forced every feature available to be assigned to a physical switch.
There is a cool idea called open source, but I suppose something as radical as giving users ownership of software for their car isn't something companies would be willing to consider. Much better when you get to charge a subscription for heated seats.
The functionality you refer to is probably the creature comforts (ie, multi zone A/C, memory settings for front seats, …). But the essentials of a car (ie, transmission, wheels, structural integrity, windshield wipers) haven’t changed for decades.
What has changed though is:
- increasing size of vehicles due to increasing insecurity of American buyers
- a large majority of class C holders largely unprepared for the size of these vehicles
- this gives manufacturers the opportunity to stuff as much tech junk into these vehicles to give these less qualified drivers more assistance
- coincidentally, all of this tech junk comes with a very high premium for manufacturers and dealerships
Fear sells in this country. 9/11 changed the game.
I understand the average vehicle size increased to exploit a loophole in emission reduction requirements.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24139147/suvs-trucks-popu...
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/models/en_us/GUID-E9B387D...
Designs for structural integrity are also different. Look at a 1997 Honda Accord and how big its windows are and how skinny those pillars are. Look at a modern Accord and see how big its pillars are. Look at a crash test of a 2000s Town and Country and compare that to a modern Pacifica. Radically different.
AFAIK, an airliner cockpit also hides the "long tail" of functionality behind multi-function screens (though AFAIK they use physical multi-function buttons and keyboards, instead of touch screens); only the essential functions have physical buttons (but there are a lot of essential functions on an airplane).
With the regrettable exception of the couple of climate controls I detail below, the only functionality on the touch screen is stuff I shouldn't be fiddling with while in motion anyway: GPS, car settings, and anything that CarPlay displays. I know a Civic isn't a prime example of a "high tech" car, but it's a well-specced one and I'm struggling to think of much that substantially fancier cars have that would blow past a reasonable limit for physical controls.
† on/off, temp, screen blower, seat heaters, and defrosters all have physical controls. The manual fan speed and direction controls are on the touch screen. I wish they weren't, and I believe the newer 11th gen has restored these as physical knobs and buttons.
I wound up getting a new 11th gen Civic since used cars were ridiculously expensive at the time, and I was very pleased to find that the touchscreen is only used for iOS/Android and some settings. The climate control knobs are imperfect though: for some reason they decided that the user should select which vents are active with an infinitely scrolling knob, so you can't utilize muscle memory, and you have to look at it while you're turning it. An improvement over the previous generation, but a step down from my dad's 1992 Civic.
The thing is I intuitively know about 50 of them since I’ve been driving the vehicle about six months now.
Of course it still has a touch screen display for all the usual carplay/android auto shenanigans.
One of my newer cars has only one physical control and that’s for volume. I never realized it before owning this car but I change the AC much more frequently than I change my audio volume.
My 95B.2 Macan: "Hold my bier and watch this..."
(Naturally, many of the 90+ buttons were gone with the next facelift, which is why the old one is still in my garage.)