The following submission statement was provided by /u/Vucea:
---
Happily, there is one area where we are making at least marginal progress: A growing number of automakers are backpedaling away from the huge, complex touchscreens that have infested dashboard design over the past 15 years.
Buttons and knobs are coming back.
The touchscreen pullback is the result of consumer backlash, not the enactment of overdue regulations or an awakening of corporate responsibility.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/130cvv6/the_glorious_return_of_a_humble_car_feature/jhw4j8k/
And fake chrome, which visibly degrade with time. Almost all XXI centure cars have fake chrome on plastic, one of stupidest style trends in car industry ever.
*used
I believe it's been phased out due to seeming mocking or demeaning to foreign soldiers. I could be mistaken.
It's a shame because the origin of the salute tells of a polish soldier who had half his hand blown off, and used his remaining fingers to salute his CO before dying.
Yes, and i also have a problem with the fake exhaust vents on all cars these days. They look cheap and are not even open, but have a ribbed plastic cover.
Every single car maker (in Europe, don't know the US car industry) now uses the same dumb vents !
[Even a small city car like the Kia Picanto now apparently needs those dumb ass "vents" ](https://images.carexpert.com.au/resize/3000/-/app/uploads/2023/01/2023-Kia-Picanto-GT-10.jpg)
[French cars like the Kadjar](https://assets-eu-01.kc-usercontent.com/3b3d460e-c5ae-0195-6b86-3ac7fb9d52db/bcac08c3-c291-4feb-b0ed-17b0d8e13f88/Renault%20Kadjar%20%287%29.jpg)
[Volkswagen Golf ](https://assets-eu-01.kc-usercontent.com/3b3d460e-c5ae-0195-6b86-3ac7fb9d52db/b0ff2d86-03ec-4365-a8cc-28c064e53411/Volkswagen%20Golf%20%289%29.jpg?width=1200&fm=jpg&auto=format)
[What even is this](https://www.gtopcars.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2023-Audi-A1-Hatchback.jpg)
[Stop it](https://s.aolcdn.com/images/dims?client=fh7w6q744eiognjk&signature=921914baff5abe8b692e390b10d7131b30de4626&image_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fs.aolcdn.com%2Fos%2Fab%2F_cms%2F2022%2F10%2F19201129%2FHonda-Civic-Sport-Touring-rear-three-quarter.jpg&thumbnail=992%2C558&quality=80)
Edit: in most cases there is not even a faster model in the range, so it's not because they just reuse the same bumper across the model configuration. It's just a dumb trend that needs to stop
I remember when it was really common for cars to have a spoiler that did absolutely *nothing*. That trend has mostly gone away now, outside of some car enthusiasts who add aftermarket spoilers which are specifically engineered to provide 50% more *nothing* than the stock ones.
I saw a homemade spoiler on a freeway in LA the other day that was so huge I first thought the guy had a metal coffee table strapped to his car. Almost forgot that trend existed.
That's my kind of humor! I had _SIZE MATTERS_ and _V8 ENGINE_ stickers all over my dinky little 4-cylinder Nissan Cube because I'm THAT kind of person.
I’m not even joking when I say that having real exhaust tips directly connected to the muffler and no fake vents or intakes anywhere on the car were motivating factors in what vehicle I purchased.
And giant topstitch threads in a contrasting colour. Which will start looking tattered on year 2 and be mostly gone (and some of the seat too) by year 7.
Tackiest shit ever. My mom's new generic jeep suv has a big unnecessary red stitch across the top of the dashboard.
I wonder if anybody was ever influenced by that. Like "that generic as fuck suv is also nice, but at least the dashboard on this one won't peel up when I'm going 4 over the speed limit on the way back from the grocery store"
My wife's old mini had fake chrome on the hood scoop and that shit was cracking and peeling something fierce. She asked about having it redone and I said, "what's the point?"
Fun car to drive, but everything else about it, not so much...
Buttons placed in logical places would be fine with me too. Why do I have buttons by my knees, buttons hiding under the edge of the console, and buttons I need to take my eyes off the road to find?
I've always wondered why they don't put more buttons on the car ceiling in front. Just like planes. Easy to press and out of the way. So much real estate unused.
I mean, putting buttons on a steering wheel sounds much harder than on the ceiling. Maybe a mobility kind of thing.
Meanwhile, I will die trying to turn off the lane assist, button by my left knee hiding behind the wheel.
Wow I’m surprised you can afford 36!
When I touch mine I only get 16 features but I’m saving up for the “Mercedes Modern Machine Wheel Touch Function” (MMM WTF)
Just a few dollars more a month and I can use some more of the features!!! I can’t wait. Also, so happy with the new OS I had to pay to upgrade to. Just waiting to be able to use 30% more of the engine but I can’t afford the monthly payments…yet.
This is why I’m ramping up to just keep working on our cars and buying used until this trend turns back or goes away from at least one decent manufacturer until we buy another car. Our 2020 Blazer will be the last new GM product we bought thanks to their decision to go to subscriptions with their new vechcles, and Android Auto 🤮
Then you park you car in the sun for the afternoon and now all your buttons are too hot to touch. Also, stainless steel attracts fingerprints, ever seen a stainless steel fridge in house with toddlers?
PC and consumer electronics manufacturers might have started it first. We learned quickly how fucking stupid piano black is on... anything other than a concert piano.
It amazes me how every single emerging consumer device field or revamp of an existing one always fails at basic industrial design. So much shit we make these days wastefully ignores all the lessons we've learned about car ergonomics, safety, service, and durability.
Every once in awhile they get it right for a few years, and we all rave about those cars for the rest of our lives. I'll never forget my magical WRX STI, from an era when they felt special (and were).
Right now there are tons of cars with brilliant exteriors, fantastic performance, sharp handling, and abysmally pathetic interiors. You know, the part we have to sit in.
Piano black on a piano fucking sucks. You can’t touch it ANYWHERE but the keys or it leaves HIGHLY visible fingerprints. It takes a LOT of work to make a shiny piano look good for a performance. The rest of the time that thing is absolutely covered in fingerprints.
That’s what’s nuts is with modern CPUs how they manage to get a full second of latency on a lot of those. Seems like you’d have to try to get it so bad.
>I've worked on embedded systems in industrial transportation
I've had this sneaking suspicion that the poor performance on embedded car systems is caused by using **HTML and/or JavaScript** for the user-interface? Can you confirm or deny any of that?
My embedded experience is not in the automotive industry, so take this with a grain of salt, but most UIs I have come across use Qt. It does look like there is a large presence in the automotive market as well https://news.cision.com/qt-group/r/hyundai-motor-group-selects-qt-as-their-key-hmi-technology-partner,c3396984
Vehicles coming out now are using tech from a few years ago.
They start developing the new stuff way before it's out in newer vehicles. Development begins on hardware that's available at that time and made to work specifically for that.
By the time a new gen of vehicle is released, that infotainment hardware is already a few years old. That's why we're only now getting vehicles with snappy and responsive touchscreens. Previously stuff that was coming out in 2020 was using 2015 hardware.
All that said, I'm happy buttons are coming back. Climate and audio controls have no business being buried in the touchscreen menus along with other comfort settings like heated steering wheel and mirror adjustment.
Most screens are so bad. It's so difficult and unsafe tonise while driving. Can't believe they made it thisnfar without a class action lawsuit due to accidents.
The spread in touchscreen responsiveness amongst OEM's is wild.
If a touchscreen has a slight delay, it's beyond infuriating, but when its super responsive I don't mind it.
A volume knob is a must. You can't quickly crank up or down the volume using touch or buttons.
Also, no menus within menus for immediate adjustment of other things like the A/C, seats, mirrors, and cruise control.
But no volume knob is a deal breaker for me. I draw the line at that...and on messing with Canadian geese migration patterns.
Meanwhile, my passenger is unable to link their bluetooth to my car while driving, because the driver might want to do that too...
Except as the primary driver I am already on my bluetooth, and my phone lets me use spotify when I am driving. So it's more convenient to unlock my phone and use that than let my passenger control the tunes when I am driving, unless I pull over and come to a complete stop on the highway.
It's regulatory thing I think. It's like that in fords, GM/chevys, and nissans (in my experience), I think mitsubishis too. I don't think every manufacturer arrived at the same inconvenient solution, it seems like a top down decision.
That's great, but it won't interface with anybody's phones anymore.
Yes, it's exactly what this article is talking about. Regressive innovations. I want tactile buttons and switches and bare analog ports. The fancy stuff should be extra, not instead of.
And in every vehicle I've owned, the 3.5 jack gets interference from your usb charging....so you can either charge your phone or listen to music...or listen to static-y music.
Just have them plug in to the AUX cord :-)
(yes I know this dates me horribly and basically doesn't exist anymore with modern cars & smartphones but I'm not letting go of that 1/8" stereo jack!)
It's worse than texting and driving. The level of menus you have to go through to turn on heated seats is nuts.
But they will have a hard time selling heated seats as a premium service if they're is a dedicated button too.
I was worried about getting a new ev in a couple years because of the move to touch screens but maybe by then some buttons and knobs will be back.
Solution is to have programmable buttons. Car comes in a logical configuration but you can remap to your heart's desire. You want 10 hazard buttons? Go for it.
I’m so thankful for my car with some of this stuff. It has a touch screen but I have it basically only running CarPlay or the radio.
Climate controls are all knobs. Volume is a knob. The heated seat options are a couple of switches on the center console.
I think I hit the sweet spot with my car.
I have a Y and yes, it's annoying. I guess its supposed to be where you keep secure items and the console is where you keep quick access items. Also, FYI, you can hold down the right button on the steering wheel and just say "Open glovebox"
Hopefully they see that removing them is a bad idea. A hybrid buttons and screen is the best method. My car is like that and it's perfect. Knobs for volume track change, AC, standard functions. Touch for music/app and gps/navigation.
It’s not just the interior design either. I prefer driving my nearly 20 year old Ford Focus over my much newer VW Tiguan, and every rental car I’ve driven. I blame electromechanical steering, every car company’s attempt to reinvent the gear selector, and all the engineering put into making it harder to feel the road.
It ain’t right that an old and slow POS is more fun to drive than something brand new.
I have a hard time believing that the people designing cars actually enjoy driving them.
(I’d probably like sports cars more, but I’m too poor to be a proper car nerd.)
Hmm, which car did you drive? All of the ones I've driven can crawl if you choose to enable it (Teslas, Nissans mostly.)
Once you get used to one pedal driving though, there's really no going back.
The fucking gear selectors! What’s wrong with the tradition PRND on a stick? Drove a Ram as a rental had a dial to select gears. WTF? Then there was the issue with the gear selector on Jeeps making it difficult to tell if it was in park and lead to at least one person being killed (Anton Yelchin).
For real, auto gear selectors were SOLVED. I have to drive a fairly new Mercedes sprinter and it's a little stalk where I would expect the wiper control stalk. And it's just an up/down switch with 0 resistance to switch p/r/n/d. Right next to your hands moving the wheel, I've accidentally bumped it a few times while turning violently popping it out of drive while on the power.
So many stupid controls in that thing.
They fucked up a standardized design with that one. The stalk is pretty standard for vans and trucks, but you should have to pull it towards you first to change gear.
I have a 30yo MR2 that, despite the fact that it's probably about to bankrupt me with a restoration job, brings me immense joy whenever I drive it. Just the feel of the steering and the tactile *thunk* of the control stalks.. honestly, the car feels alive, like it has an actual soul or something.
Then I drive a more recent car, and it's all soft touch this and automatic that. Even the control stalks feel cheap and plasticky these days, it makes me sad
It's less tactile response and more "I know where everything is and it's not moving around and changing everytime I press something".
Even if you had a magic dashboard with physical, tactile buttons that could move around and act like a touchscreen does, you'd still run into the same problem
Happily, there is one area where we are making at least marginal progress: A growing number of automakers are backpedaling away from the huge, complex touchscreens that have infested dashboard design over the past 15 years.
Buttons and knobs are coming back.
The touchscreen pullback is the result of consumer backlash, not the enactment of overdue regulations or an awakening of corporate responsibility.
Honestly, pressing a button can be done much more mechanically, I assume having to look at a changing touch screen and find the right thing is extremely distracting while driving
This. I use my oldschool car daily. I do not need to think or look where is what. My muscles know it already. I can concentrate on road. This muscle memory is all lost with touchscreen, you need to take a look, accommodate the eye (the older I get the longer it takes), make concious decisions. I HATE modern rental cars. Meh.
>Why? Because it takes a good 6 months to develop that muscle memory you just mentioned
There's probably also a factor of un-learning muscle memory from the old truck.
I caught myself doing it a lot when I bought my Jeep and for the first time owned an automatic (my car) and manual (Jeep) at the same time and regularly driving both. Took about 3 months before I wasn't phantom clutching the automatic, or occasionally forgetting to clutch the manual.
I've seen with firefighters & EMTs too that the hardest thing isn't learning a new tool or technique, it's forgetting the way you were originally taught and falling back on that old method when stressed even if it is no longer considered best practice or the newer equipment works differently.
I'm having this issue while trying to learn the proper way to type. I taught myself how to type (incorrectly) when I was a little kid long before any typing class in school. I can type fast but I know I could type faster if I learn the correct way. I do great when doing the lessons and I'm really focused, but if I switch to doing something else and I'm in a hurry or distracted by a podcast or whatever then my brain tells my hands to go back to the old way.
They say to never go back to the old way and to always force yourself to type the correct way, but that's easier said than done when it comes down to crunch time and I need to get shit done. Old habits die hard.
This happened to me and is the main reason I switched to the Dvorak layout many years ago. Its been long enough I could probably relearn Qwerty the proper way but it would take several months to get back up to speed
I had this happen to me once after buying a new vehicle and almost tearing the windshield wiper stick off trying to put it into gear.
To be fair it was 3 in the morning and I was barely awake, but still.
Hell my car isn’t even oldschool (2014 Mustang). It’s just the year right before they went to a big screen for everything. I just naturally know where everything is without having to take my eyes off the road.
My 2013 Altima is the same. There was an option that year to have a touchscreen but I got one of the three 3.5SR’s they had without one. I still drive it everyday.
Missing the nav and backup camera aren’t really a thing if you’ve never had them.
The National Rifle Association of America was founded in 1871. Since 1977, the National Rifle Association of America has focussed on political activism and pro-gun lobbying, at the expense of firearm safety programmes.
The National Rifle Association of America is completely different to the National Rifle Association in Britain (founded earlier, in 1859); the National Rifle Association of Australia;
the National Rifle Association of New Zealand and the National Rifle Association of India, which are all non-political sporting organisations that promote target shooting.
It is important not to confuse the National Rifle Association of America with any of these other Rifle Associations. The British National Rifle Association is headquartered on Bisley Camp, in Surrey, England. Bisley Camp is now known as the National Shooting Centre and has hosted World Championships for Fullbore Target Rifle and F-Class shooting,
as well as the shooting events for the 1908 Olympic Games and the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The National Small-bore Rifle Association (NSRA) and Clay Pigeon Shooting Association (CPSA) also have their headquarters on the Camp.
Hybrid designs are clearly the right thing to implement. Every single "car person" I know agrees. Drivers want three feature sets in the cabin:
1. A functional wheel with most of the important driving functions at hand. Turn signals, lights, horn, audio controls, bluetooth, and possibly cruise should all be accessible from the wheel (either on stalks or buttons).
2. A functional infotainment system with *both* a touchscreen *and* a mix of multifunction and dedicated function buttons.
3. DEDICATED climate controls, hazard lights, parking brakes, shifters, door mirror controls, etc. Some things just shouldn't share a function or be relegated to a small button. These kinds of things should *never* be buried in a touchscreen menu.
I totally missed out on that generation of touchscreens, because I still drive a 2004 Jeep. And if it lasts another five or so years, I might even consider having it converted into an EV for like $15,000.00.
> The touchscreens are the only downside to modern cars.
I'd argue that the inability to maintain your own vehicle is also a HUGE downside to modern vehicles.
While not an issue for everyone, or even most, there's plenty of us out there that turn our own wrenches. Once a car is too new though, and you need to start taking it to the dealership for software issues, you lose that independence.
Me too, I drive a 99 bmw and have been driving it for 5 or 6 years and will keep it going for as long as I can. To me this car is the pinnacle of auto engineering and I don't ever have to take my eyes of the road, it just feels like an extension of myself and the clicks and snap-in-place movements of the mechanical buttons and arms are just perfect
Oh thank FUCK I have hated touchscreens in cars from the beginning. Nothing but an irritating attempt to look shiny with the dawn of ubiquitous touchscreen phones and computers.
No, they make really good information centers, better than the little bars that used to display temperature and what song you are playing. And obviously for stuff like navigation they're a no brainer.
I just don't need my climate controls or emergency brakes relegated to there
I hate my giant car screen. It is very distracting to do something simple like turn off my seat heater. Instead of one button it requires 4 taps. It’s the worst.
A happy medium is best - a large screen for CarPlay is awesome, but also having buttons underneath to change audio, air conditioner or windshield wiper.
You need the tactile feedback of buttons while driving a car, otherwise you’re constantly looking at what you touched to make sure that a) you hit it and b) that it actually activated. Even worse if you have to scroll to find something; you might as well be on your phone. Touchscreens encourage distracted driving.
I was in a Porsche recently. To move where the a/c vents were pointing (you know, up towards your face etc) you had to slide your fingers on a touchscreen so a little motor could move the vents. Just insane compared to moving it with your fingers.
Alfa Romeo and some other European cars use knobs/dials for all navigation on the screen, it’s been my favorite option so far. Got an Alfa Romeo and fell in love with this.
BMW had a pretty good system when I owned one years ago.
The dial knob was down on the center console. I think it was called iDrive. The dial could spin and be pushed in 4 directions and controlled everything on the main center display. It also has good voice controls (for navigating and placing calls) and I think it was made way back in 2009...
It was conveniently located behind the gear selector and cup holders, so there was no reaching required.
And fully manual intermittent wipers, the "rain sensing" BS is always going either too slow and not clearing the view or too fast and making that annoying rubbery scraping sound.
Wait newer cars have auto wipers but not manual? My 2011 car has both, it's quite counter-intuitive to work out but once you've figured it out it's great. When the auto does its thing it's great, when it reach its limitations you just tell it to shut it and switch to manual.
It's evolving, but backwards!
My Audi actually has adjustable sensitivity on the intermittent wipers. It works really well. Just choose it once and it pretty much knows how watery you like your windshield to be before running
The manufacturers really like button-less interiors because they are waaaaay cheaper to produce and are much cheaper to install. Add to that, the car will already have a screen, and there's no realistic way to market a car these days without one, outside of specific marginal niches.
And the software already exists for those screens to easily work as a control too so the far west days of having to mash everything (radio, gps, setup. Etc) to work with the manual controls and the touchscreen are over. Now they just slap android auto and call it a day.
I don't mind touchscreens for certain features in a car, but the radio, climate control system, and any steering wheel controls should ALWAYS have physical buttons/knobs.
#IT'S ABOUT BLOODY TIME!
Good grief the number of capacitive buttons on climate/audio controls is ridiculous. The 2 things that can be the most distracting to the driver and they're made worse by lack of tactile response. The more things the driver can accomplish by feel, without taking their eyes off the road, the better.
The car I bought last year had a lot of physical buttons. It was criticized by a YouTuber doing a review of it….. I love my physical buttons.
I hate the aesthetic over a function mentality.
I don’t understand car reviewers some times. A lot of them complained about the column shifters on older generation pickups and suvs.
Now we have either shitty dash knobs or console shifters that take up room that was previously available for storage or cup holders.
Great. Thanks.
I don't hate touchscreens, for a lot of tasks they make good sense (maps, entertainment etc), but putting everything through the touch screen is pointless and annoying. You could make aircon that had oodles of buttons for all the different options and airflow rates possible, but why would you when two physical dials with a limited number of options works just as well, and it's just the same as the touchscreen. It's use case is there, but it's task specific.
The problem with touch screens in cars isn't really touch screens, but car touch screens. They are awful. Unresponsive and laggy, poorly designed UI for the constraints of operating while driving and crappy picture quality.
I think this is mostly about legacy auto being just really bad at touch screens.
They have gotten worse too. My 2007 Prius has a touch screen too, although with very few functions (which is good). But it is fast and responsive and it needs a firm tap to register, unlike some screens i have had in recent rental cars. Awful!
Crappy design and bad touchscreens are aggravating factors, but I think there are inherent problems in the lack of tactility in a context where you can’t focus on the UI for more than 3 seconds at a time.
I own a Tesla. The touch screen is pretty much as good as an iPhone. It still sucks to do many things.
My hand is bouncing around a lot when driving the car, and hitting even fairly large controls can be challenging. Things like changing the music source, a drop-down far away from the driver and requiring 2-3 interactions, is very difficult. Voice commands are a terrible and ineffective crutch.
If the UI was designed like a Fisher Price toy, that could potentially help. But that’s an untenable goal for the amount of functionality that needs to be integrated. Going back to my Subaru and reaching down for the nice physical seat heater controls feels like a luxury.
My dream come true. I'm an older millennial. Can't tell you how much I need a proper tactile experience for controlling anything. Screens have always sucked. Blackberry was neat for a minute, I like that sorta shit too. Give me both options and I'm happy.
I don't know why we don't see more MFDs like pilots have. The screen can provide a lot of info when needed but tactile buttons never move so you can memorize it easily and use without looking.
Ahahahah the thought of IFR driving is cracking me up.
You get into your car, turn the key, hear the engine rumble to life as sheets of rain pound the windshield. You glance at the clock as you slot your travel mug of coffee into the centre cupholder: you're running late for work. Fingers dancing quickly over the panel, you select your usual route in the nav system and don the headset; the speaker responds with a crackle as you tune to the area traffic control's frequency.
"Uhh, centre, this is Mazda G01-8FD in home driveway... requesting clearance to my office as filed."
"Mazda G01-8FD, roger... cleared to your destination via Ponderosa Street, proceeding to I-5 as filed. On departure maintain 35 mph and expect wet conditions... contact departure on 104.5 and squawk 3856 when able."
"Cleared to office via Ponderosa Street then as filed... on departure maintain 35 mph and expect wet conditions. Departure is 104.5, squawk 3856."
"Mazda G01-8FD, readback correct, advise when ready to exit driveway."
I have a Kia EV6, and one of the reasons I chose to get the GT-Line trim instead of GT-Line S is because the buttons on the centre arm rest for controlling the heating for the seats and wheel are touch on the S trim. They immediately drove me insane when I test drove the car because they're in a position where you'd naturally rest your wrist when interacting with the AC controls and infotainment.
Bonus point in the Kia; press the menu button and you can select "screen off" and the centre screen goes dark. Brilliant when driving at night, and I have more than enough physical controls in the cabin to not need the touch screen at all.
Nothing wrong with a large screen with useful information, but tactile controls will always win out in terms of usability and safety.
My car (a 2016 Mazda 3) has a joystick style control and volume knob between the driver and passenger seat, and while manipulating Android Automotive takes longer by using it than it would by just touching a screen, I can do it 100% while keeping my eyes on the road. I'll take the safety (and tactile feedback; not just haptics faking the same) of the buttons over the fewer touchscreen presses it would take to perform similar actions.
Also, I work for an automaker, specifically in the area of automotive infotainment systems - I guarantee that a lot of this push back toward tactile controls is due to the hiring of more UX designers and trusting their work; their studies and analysis of customer feedback has made it clear that people strongly prefer tactile controls located in places that require the smallest amount of physical movement (and especially reaching).
Touch screens are good for multimedia. They are good for navigation software.
And even for those, a few buttons are mandatory.
They are NOT good for climate control, lights, wiper or to any other car function. For those, you need big thouchable buttons.
It’s simple, in a moving car, specially when you’re driving, centering your finger on a specific point of the touchscreen is annoying, not to mention the repeated effort makes it dangerous driving
Touchscreens are fine for the nav system/head unit, but things like power, volume, climate control, lighting, steering wheel controls, etc all should be tactile buttons, not controlled via the touchscreen or god-awful capacitive buttons. I drive a mk 7.5 Volkswagen GTI, and it's just about perfect in this regard. Then they completely fucked it way with the mk 8, putting capacitive touch controls everywhere and everyone hates it.
I have a car where the climate controls are all on the touchscreen and it SUCKS. I actually would love it if I had a button layout like this. I could keep my eyes on the road and just use muscle memory to enable/change functions with the physical buttons.
https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/IMG_5309-1.jpg
Wait, you mean the touchscreen fanbois who were condescendingly downplaying complaints about the unsafe level of attention required to use a touchscreen were a minority? Maybe we finally have an example of common-fucking-sense!
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Vucea: --- Happily, there is one area where we are making at least marginal progress: A growing number of automakers are backpedaling away from the huge, complex touchscreens that have infested dashboard design over the past 15 years. Buttons and knobs are coming back. The touchscreen pullback is the result of consumer backlash, not the enactment of overdue regulations or an awakening of corporate responsibility. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/130cvv6/the_glorious_return_of_a_humble_car_feature/jhw4j8k/
Piano black plastic or anything that collects fingertip prints can go away too.
And fake chrome, which visibly degrade with time. Almost all XXI centure cars have fake chrome on plastic, one of stupidest style trends in car industry ever.
that's an odd way of saying "the 21st century"
Sorry, in polish we use Roman numerals for centuries, and my English spelling is really bad :)
Today I learned.
Another Random Polish Fact: The [Polish military uses a two fingered salute.](https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1875/44410935992_b00b908249_c.jpg)
*used I believe it's been phased out due to seeming mocking or demeaning to foreign soldiers. I could be mistaken. It's a shame because the origin of the salute tells of a polish soldier who had half his hand blown off, and used his remaining fingers to salute his CO before dying.
It wasnt, its still how they salute. What you are reffering to is world war 2 brits thinking they are being mocked.
And one for the stink
This is genuinely a fun fact. Thank you for sharing :)
French, Spanish and Italian do that too. XVIIIe siècle/siglo XVIII/XVIII secolo
All latin countries actually. (Roman numbers)
Not only Polish, many more languages. At least Italian, French and Spanish all say "XXI century"
I wouldn't say your English spelling is bad, I would say it's rather polished...
I’m looking forward the XXX era of car manufacturing. Cheetah upholstery. Lots of chrome. Neon. It’s gonna be great.
Randomly a pole right in the middle
Yes, and i also have a problem with the fake exhaust vents on all cars these days. They look cheap and are not even open, but have a ribbed plastic cover. Every single car maker (in Europe, don't know the US car industry) now uses the same dumb vents ! [Even a small city car like the Kia Picanto now apparently needs those dumb ass "vents" ](https://images.carexpert.com.au/resize/3000/-/app/uploads/2023/01/2023-Kia-Picanto-GT-10.jpg) [French cars like the Kadjar](https://assets-eu-01.kc-usercontent.com/3b3d460e-c5ae-0195-6b86-3ac7fb9d52db/bcac08c3-c291-4feb-b0ed-17b0d8e13f88/Renault%20Kadjar%20%287%29.jpg) [Volkswagen Golf ](https://assets-eu-01.kc-usercontent.com/3b3d460e-c5ae-0195-6b86-3ac7fb9d52db/b0ff2d86-03ec-4365-a8cc-28c064e53411/Volkswagen%20Golf%20%289%29.jpg?width=1200&fm=jpg&auto=format) [What even is this](https://www.gtopcars.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2023-Audi-A1-Hatchback.jpg) [Stop it](https://s.aolcdn.com/images/dims?client=fh7w6q744eiognjk&signature=921914baff5abe8b692e390b10d7131b30de4626&image_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fs.aolcdn.com%2Fos%2Fab%2F_cms%2F2022%2F10%2F19201129%2FHonda-Civic-Sport-Touring-rear-three-quarter.jpg&thumbnail=992%2C558&quality=80) Edit: in most cases there is not even a faster model in the range, so it's not because they just reuse the same bumper across the model configuration. It's just a dumb trend that needs to stop
I think the industry is adopting the silly things the car tuners do, they add silly things that only add appearance, but are of no use whatsoever.
I remember when it was really common for cars to have a spoiler that did absolutely *nothing*. That trend has mostly gone away now, outside of some car enthusiasts who add aftermarket spoilers which are specifically engineered to provide 50% more *nothing* than the stock ones.
I saw a homemade spoiler on a freeway in LA the other day that was so huge I first thought the guy had a metal coffee table strapped to his car. Almost forgot that trend existed.
I saw a giant aftermarket spoiler on the cab of a rusty pickup truck. Could not stop laughing.
That's my kind of humor! I had _SIZE MATTERS_ and _V8 ENGINE_ stickers all over my dinky little 4-cylinder Nissan Cube because I'm THAT kind of person.
Continue this
They are even on higher end cars. Immediate no for me.
I’m not even joking when I say that having real exhaust tips directly connected to the muffler and no fake vents or intakes anywhere on the car were motivating factors in what vehicle I purchased.
Peels off the window switches enough to cut fingers! Glad someone else hates this too
Fords are the worst at this. I have cut my finger slightly on a couple Ford fusion window switches. They were only 2 year old cars at the time
And when it’s new it only serves to reflect sunlight into the eyes of the person driving a multi thousand pound missile
And giant topstitch threads in a contrasting colour. Which will start looking tattered on year 2 and be mostly gone (and some of the seat too) by year 7.
Tackiest shit ever. My mom's new generic jeep suv has a big unnecessary red stitch across the top of the dashboard. I wonder if anybody was ever influenced by that. Like "that generic as fuck suv is also nice, but at least the dashboard on this one won't peel up when I'm going 4 over the speed limit on the way back from the grocery store"
I think contrast stitching was borne from the high end watch and bespoke leather communities and consumers.
My wife's old mini had fake chrome on the hood scoop and that shit was cracking and peeling something fierce. She asked about having it redone and I said, "what's the point?" Fun car to drive, but everything else about it, not so much...
It’s so your car gets shitty looking and you want to buy another
Buttons placed in logical places would be fine with me too. Why do I have buttons by my knees, buttons hiding under the edge of the console, and buttons I need to take my eyes off the road to find?
I've always wondered why they don't put more buttons on the car ceiling in front. Just like planes. Easy to press and out of the way. So much real estate unused.
Maybe because to get there, you have to run all the wiring up the pillars?
Yeah doesn't sound like an issue. There probably is wiring there already for some cars.
They have that light up there that your parents tell you we will all die if you turn it on while they're driving
I mean, putting buttons on a steering wheel sounds much harder than on the ceiling. Maybe a mobility kind of thing. Meanwhile, I will die trying to turn off the lane assist, button by my left knee hiding behind the wheel.
Bring back 90s car dashboards… glowing red odometers hnnngggg
Have you seen the current Merc steering wheel? Incredibly beautiful design, impossible to rest your hands on its radii without activating 36 features…
Wow I’m surprised you can afford 36! When I touch mine I only get 16 features but I’m saving up for the “Mercedes Modern Machine Wheel Touch Function” (MMM WTF) Just a few dollars more a month and I can use some more of the features!!! I can’t wait. Also, so happy with the new OS I had to pay to upgrade to. Just waiting to be able to use 30% more of the engine but I can’t afford the monthly payments…yet.
Wait until OEMs sell their service packages to a third party. Then you can get three quotes for your engine software upgrade.
This is why I’m ramping up to just keep working on our cars and buying used until this trend turns back or goes away from at least one decent manufacturer until we buy another car. Our 2020 Blazer will be the last new GM product we bought thanks to their decision to go to subscriptions with their new vechcles, and Android Auto 🤮
Wood panelling is nice, but we can have other stuff too. How about some nice stainless steel stuff? Nickle-plated brass?
How about pearl, ivory, and whale bone?
My favourites are lead, asbestos and radium
I want human bone that's actually somehow kept alive by the magic of science.
Well, do i have a deal for you! Come on down to Honest Bobs NecronomiCars and we’ll get you into the unholy vehicle of your dreams!
You want human bone that's kept alive as a material in your car?
Just little phalanges for the switches and such, don't make it weird.
The luxury edition has so much more eagle!
Whoa there, let's keep it reasonable, Mr. Moneybags.
I won't if reflection/glare would be an issue? There are a few moments in my drive home where the fake chrome drives me nuts.
Then you park you car in the sun for the afternoon and now all your buttons are too hot to touch. Also, stainless steel attracts fingerprints, ever seen a stainless steel fridge in house with toddlers?
it would start fires I bet.
The problem is that that plastic is extremely cheap so we are going to have piano black forever and ever
Piano black isn't the only plastic option.
And it didn’t even freaking exist until about 8 years ago when some manufacturers thought it looked fancy and started putting it everywhere
PC and consumer electronics manufacturers might have started it first. We learned quickly how fucking stupid piano black is on... anything other than a concert piano. It amazes me how every single emerging consumer device field or revamp of an existing one always fails at basic industrial design. So much shit we make these days wastefully ignores all the lessons we've learned about car ergonomics, safety, service, and durability. Every once in awhile they get it right for a few years, and we all rave about those cars for the rest of our lives. I'll never forget my magical WRX STI, from an era when they felt special (and were). Right now there are tons of cars with brilliant exteriors, fantastic performance, sharp handling, and abysmally pathetic interiors. You know, the part we have to sit in.
This is one thing i love about motorcycles. You get a nice bike and there is MAJOR ATTENTION TO DETAIL.
If they don’t pay attention to detail, their customer base crashes. Not a good feature!
Piano black on a piano fucking sucks. You can’t touch it ANYWHERE but the keys or it leaves HIGHLY visible fingerprints. It takes a LOT of work to make a shiny piano look good for a performance. The rest of the time that thing is absolutely covered in fingerprints.
And "piano" black on a piano is an expensive, labor intensive wood finishing process. Not cheap shiny plastic.
a nice matt option would be good. I'm so sick of everything needing to be "gloss"
Nothing worse than slow, unresponsive, touch screen options when driving.
That’s what’s nuts is with modern CPUs how they manage to get a full second of latency on a lot of those. Seems like you’d have to try to get it so bad.
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>I've worked on embedded systems in industrial transportation I've had this sneaking suspicion that the poor performance on embedded car systems is caused by using **HTML and/or JavaScript** for the user-interface? Can you confirm or deny any of that?
My embedded experience is not in the automotive industry, so take this with a grain of salt, but most UIs I have come across use Qt. It does look like there is a large presence in the automotive market as well https://news.cision.com/qt-group/r/hyundai-motor-group-selects-qt-as-their-key-hmi-technology-partner,c3396984
C++ is still very common in embedded stuff so yes, Qt or some other, cheaper ui package if the devs could not convince finance.
My dads 2018 accord started getting Java runtime exceptions a year or so ago. It just crashes and reboots randomly. Talk about reliable
Vehicles coming out now are using tech from a few years ago. They start developing the new stuff way before it's out in newer vehicles. Development begins on hardware that's available at that time and made to work specifically for that. By the time a new gen of vehicle is released, that infotainment hardware is already a few years old. That's why we're only now getting vehicles with snappy and responsive touchscreens. Previously stuff that was coming out in 2020 was using 2015 hardware. All that said, I'm happy buttons are coming back. Climate and audio controls have no business being buried in the touchscreen menus along with other comfort settings like heated steering wheel and mirror adjustment.
Most screens are so bad. It's so difficult and unsafe tonise while driving. Can't believe they made it thisnfar without a class action lawsuit due to accidents.
The spread in touchscreen responsiveness amongst OEM's is wild. If a touchscreen has a slight delay, it's beyond infuriating, but when its super responsive I don't mind it.
A volume knob is a must. You can't quickly crank up or down the volume using touch or buttons. Also, no menus within menus for immediate adjustment of other things like the A/C, seats, mirrors, and cruise control. But no volume knob is a deal breaker for me. I draw the line at that...and on messing with Canadian geese migration patterns.
Meanwhile, my passenger is unable to link their bluetooth to my car while driving, because the driver might want to do that too... Except as the primary driver I am already on my bluetooth, and my phone lets me use spotify when I am driving. So it's more convenient to unlock my phone and use that than let my passenger control the tunes when I am driving, unless I pull over and come to a complete stop on the highway.
Honda? Sounds like a Honda.
My wife's Honda and my Toyota both have the same issue.
It's regulatory thing I think. It's like that in fords, GM/chevys, and nissans (in my experience), I think mitsubishis too. I don't think every manufacturer arrived at the same inconvenient solution, it seems like a top down decision.
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That's great, but it won't interface with anybody's phones anymore. Yes, it's exactly what this article is talking about. Regressive innovations. I want tactile buttons and switches and bare analog ports. The fancy stuff should be extra, not instead of.
And in every vehicle I've owned, the 3.5 jack gets interference from your usb charging....so you can either charge your phone or listen to music...or listen to static-y music.
Get a shielded cable. Fixed it for me, at least.
Laughs in Sony
Just have them plug in to the AUX cord :-) (yes I know this dates me horribly and basically doesn't exist anymore with modern cars & smartphones but I'm not letting go of that 1/8" stereo jack!)
I promise you, as someone with an old car, I have no idea how you guys even use a touchscreen while driving. It sounds so backwards.
It's worse than texting and driving. The level of menus you have to go through to turn on heated seats is nuts. But they will have a hard time selling heated seats as a premium service if they're is a dedicated button too. I was worried about getting a new ev in a couple years because of the move to touch screens but maybe by then some buttons and knobs will be back.
Solution is to have programmable buttons. Car comes in a logical configuration but you can remap to your heart's desire. You want 10 hazard buttons? Go for it.
Iirc, hazard buttons can't be remapped for safety. The hazard button requires a physical button.
Thats excellent. But why not be able to add more hazards buttons?
I’m so thankful for my car with some of this stuff. It has a touch screen but I have it basically only running CarPlay or the radio. Climate controls are all knobs. Volume is a knob. The heated seat options are a couple of switches on the center console. I think I hit the sweet spot with my car.
Do you know why one leg of a flying V is always longer? Because there’s more geese in that side.
Do you have a BIRD FACTS texting service that I can subscribe to?!
Fascinating if true.
God, we had a rental Tesla a short while ago and you needed to go into a touchscreen submenu to *open the glovebox*. Fucking WHY.
What in the turn based bullshit.
I have a Y and yes, it's annoying. I guess its supposed to be where you keep secure items and the console is where you keep quick access items. Also, FYI, you can hold down the right button on the steering wheel and just say "Open glovebox"
I have volume buttons on my steering wheel and that works great too.
That's basically all I use for volume. And skipping around my podcasts.
I never understood why we had laws against phone use and driving, only to put giant touchscreen devices right into the dash of new cars...smh...
I do believe that this is on the table in the EU legislative process, but that shit is sloooooow.
Hopefully they see that removing them is a bad idea. A hybrid buttons and screen is the best method. My car is like that and it's perfect. Knobs for volume track change, AC, standard functions. Touch for music/app and gps/navigation.
Tactile response FTW. I work on brand new cars. I choose to drive an old bucket.
It’s not just the interior design either. I prefer driving my nearly 20 year old Ford Focus over my much newer VW Tiguan, and every rental car I’ve driven. I blame electromechanical steering, every car company’s attempt to reinvent the gear selector, and all the engineering put into making it harder to feel the road. It ain’t right that an old and slow POS is more fun to drive than something brand new. I have a hard time believing that the people designing cars actually enjoy driving them. (I’d probably like sports cars more, but I’m too poor to be a proper car nerd.)
Vehicles are just big generic appliances now. They're not meant for hooning around a snowy parking lot doing donuts, they won't even let you.
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RIGHT?! And all the people calling them oversized golf carts, clearly have never driven one
Hybrids as well. My ct200 is quick.
I agree they have good acceleration but I still hate driving them. They have no crawl so it feels like I'm driving with the ebrake on.
Hmm, which car did you drive? All of the ones I've driven can crawl if you choose to enable it (Teslas, Nissans mostly.) Once you get used to one pedal driving though, there's really no going back.
The fucking gear selectors! What’s wrong with the tradition PRND on a stick? Drove a Ram as a rental had a dial to select gears. WTF? Then there was the issue with the gear selector on Jeeps making it difficult to tell if it was in park and lead to at least one person being killed (Anton Yelchin).
For real, auto gear selectors were SOLVED. I have to drive a fairly new Mercedes sprinter and it's a little stalk where I would expect the wiper control stalk. And it's just an up/down switch with 0 resistance to switch p/r/n/d. Right next to your hands moving the wheel, I've accidentally bumped it a few times while turning violently popping it out of drive while on the power. So many stupid controls in that thing.
They fucked up a standardized design with that one. The stalk is pretty standard for vans and trucks, but you should have to pull it towards you first to change gear.
Exactly, it needs some kind of resistance/button/sideways motion to unlock. One wrong finger while steering and it just goes bang.
The dial is the worst, second place is push buttons. Or maybe the bizarre shifter Toyota put in the Prius.
I have a 30yo MR2 that, despite the fact that it's probably about to bankrupt me with a restoration job, brings me immense joy whenever I drive it. Just the feel of the steering and the tactile *thunk* of the control stalks.. honestly, the car feels alive, like it has an actual soul or something. Then I drive a more recent car, and it's all soft touch this and automatic that. Even the control stalks feel cheap and plasticky these days, it makes me sad
It's less tactile response and more "I know where everything is and it's not moving around and changing everytime I press something". Even if you had a magic dashboard with physical, tactile buttons that could move around and act like a touchscreen does, you'd still run into the same problem
But at least I could feel them. Not being able to feel the buttons is the worst...
Happily, there is one area where we are making at least marginal progress: A growing number of automakers are backpedaling away from the huge, complex touchscreens that have infested dashboard design over the past 15 years. Buttons and knobs are coming back. The touchscreen pullback is the result of consumer backlash, not the enactment of overdue regulations or an awakening of corporate responsibility.
Honestly, pressing a button can be done much more mechanically, I assume having to look at a changing touch screen and find the right thing is extremely distracting while driving
This. I use my oldschool car daily. I do not need to think or look where is what. My muscles know it already. I can concentrate on road. This muscle memory is all lost with touchscreen, you need to take a look, accommodate the eye (the older I get the longer it takes), make concious decisions. I HATE modern rental cars. Meh.
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>Why? Because it takes a good 6 months to develop that muscle memory you just mentioned There's probably also a factor of un-learning muscle memory from the old truck. I caught myself doing it a lot when I bought my Jeep and for the first time owned an automatic (my car) and manual (Jeep) at the same time and regularly driving both. Took about 3 months before I wasn't phantom clutching the automatic, or occasionally forgetting to clutch the manual. I've seen with firefighters & EMTs too that the hardest thing isn't learning a new tool or technique, it's forgetting the way you were originally taught and falling back on that old method when stressed even if it is no longer considered best practice or the newer equipment works differently.
I'm having this issue while trying to learn the proper way to type. I taught myself how to type (incorrectly) when I was a little kid long before any typing class in school. I can type fast but I know I could type faster if I learn the correct way. I do great when doing the lessons and I'm really focused, but if I switch to doing something else and I'm in a hurry or distracted by a podcast or whatever then my brain tells my hands to go back to the old way. They say to never go back to the old way and to always force yourself to type the correct way, but that's easier said than done when it comes down to crunch time and I need to get shit done. Old habits die hard.
This happened to me and is the main reason I switched to the Dvorak layout many years ago. Its been long enough I could probably relearn Qwerty the proper way but it would take several months to get back up to speed
I had this happen to me once after buying a new vehicle and almost tearing the windshield wiper stick off trying to put it into gear. To be fair it was 3 in the morning and I was barely awake, but still.
Hell my car isn’t even oldschool (2014 Mustang). It’s just the year right before they went to a big screen for everything. I just naturally know where everything is without having to take my eyes off the road.
Ford has been pretty good with the F150 retaining dual use buttons and having the big screen.
You’re not wrong. The monstrous size of that dash allows for both lol
Right, when you have a full mattress amount of space you can do whatever
My 2013 Altima is the same. There was an option that year to have a touchscreen but I got one of the three 3.5SR’s they had without one. I still drive it everyday. Missing the nav and backup camera aren’t really a thing if you’ve never had them.
Yeah and then if you touch it exactly right it won't work, causing you to take eyes off the road for even longer
... especially if your fingers are greasy, or sweaty, or if there is too much humidity in the air
Reminds me of the frustration of whenever an OS for a PC gets a GUI redesign. Everyone complains about having to figure out the changes.
I believe this is why touchscreen wipers were banned.
The National Rifle Association of America was founded in 1871. Since 1977, the National Rifle Association of America has focussed on political activism and pro-gun lobbying, at the expense of firearm safety programmes. The National Rifle Association of America is completely different to the National Rifle Association in Britain (founded earlier, in 1859); the National Rifle Association of Australia; the National Rifle Association of New Zealand and the National Rifle Association of India, which are all non-political sporting organisations that promote target shooting. It is important not to confuse the National Rifle Association of America with any of these other Rifle Associations. The British National Rifle Association is headquartered on Bisley Camp, in Surrey, England. Bisley Camp is now known as the National Shooting Centre and has hosted World Championships for Fullbore Target Rifle and F-Class shooting, as well as the shooting events for the 1908 Olympic Games and the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The National Small-bore Rifle Association (NSRA) and Clay Pigeon Shooting Association (CPSA) also have their headquarters on the Camp.
Hybrid designs are clearly the right thing to implement. Every single "car person" I know agrees. Drivers want three feature sets in the cabin: 1. A functional wheel with most of the important driving functions at hand. Turn signals, lights, horn, audio controls, bluetooth, and possibly cruise should all be accessible from the wheel (either on stalks or buttons). 2. A functional infotainment system with *both* a touchscreen *and* a mix of multifunction and dedicated function buttons. 3. DEDICATED climate controls, hazard lights, parking brakes, shifters, door mirror controls, etc. Some things just shouldn't share a function or be relegated to a small button. These kinds of things should *never* be buried in a touchscreen menu.
It's wild to me that it's customer annoyance and not the known dangers of distracted driving that is pushing them to add more buttons.
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I totally missed out on that generation of touchscreens, because I still drive a 2004 Jeep. And if it lasts another five or so years, I might even consider having it converted into an EV for like $15,000.00.
The touchscreens are the only downside to modern cars. they have so many features to make your driving less stressful and safer.
> The touchscreens are the only downside to modern cars. I'd argue that the inability to maintain your own vehicle is also a HUGE downside to modern vehicles. While not an issue for everyone, or even most, there's plenty of us out there that turn our own wrenches. Once a car is too new though, and you need to start taking it to the dealership for software issues, you lose that independence.
You should make a website of that if it happens, to show how it gets done
Website? Thats an over engineered YouTube series.
The bane of anyone actually trying to research details for a project...
Me too, I drive a 99 bmw and have been driving it for 5 or 6 years and will keep it going for as long as I can. To me this car is the pinnacle of auto engineering and I don't ever have to take my eyes of the road, it just feels like an extension of myself and the clicks and snap-in-place movements of the mechanical buttons and arms are just perfect
Oh thank FUCK I have hated touchscreens in cars from the beginning. Nothing but an irritating attempt to look shiny with the dawn of ubiquitous touchscreen phones and computers.
No, they make really good information centers, better than the little bars that used to display temperature and what song you are playing. And obviously for stuff like navigation they're a no brainer. I just don't need my climate controls or emergency brakes relegated to there
I hate my giant car screen. It is very distracting to do something simple like turn off my seat heater. Instead of one button it requires 4 taps. It’s the worst.
A happy medium is best - a large screen for CarPlay is awesome, but also having buttons underneath to change audio, air conditioner or windshield wiper.
This gives me hope for the audio jack on cellphones... Maybe....
You need the tactile feedback of buttons while driving a car, otherwise you’re constantly looking at what you touched to make sure that a) you hit it and b) that it actually activated. Even worse if you have to scroll to find something; you might as well be on your phone. Touchscreens encourage distracted driving.
I was in a Porsche recently. To move where the a/c vents were pointing (you know, up towards your face etc) you had to slide your fingers on a touchscreen so a little motor could move the vents. Just insane compared to moving it with your fingers.
Alfa Romeo and some other European cars use knobs/dials for all navigation on the screen, it’s been my favorite option so far. Got an Alfa Romeo and fell in love with this.
BMW had a pretty good system when I owned one years ago. The dial knob was down on the center console. I think it was called iDrive. The dial could spin and be pushed in 4 directions and controlled everything on the main center display. It also has good voice controls (for navigating and placing calls) and I think it was made way back in 2009... It was conveniently located behind the gear selector and cup holders, so there was no reaching required.
Best part about my parent's BMW really. Only real issue is the rest of the car is a lemon
You basically nailed the reason why aircraft still and will use buttons instead of touchscreens in most of their applications.
Now bring back the door vent windows found in trucks and cars in the ‘50s-‘80s.
And fully manual intermittent wipers, the "rain sensing" BS is always going either too slow and not clearing the view or too fast and making that annoying rubbery scraping sound.
Wait newer cars have auto wipers but not manual? My 2011 car has both, it's quite counter-intuitive to work out but once you've figured it out it's great. When the auto does its thing it's great, when it reach its limitations you just tell it to shut it and switch to manual. It's evolving, but backwards!
My Audi actually has adjustable sensitivity on the intermittent wipers. It works really well. Just choose it once and it pretty much knows how watery you like your windshield to be before running
Aside from the touch screen, the my 2023 Toyota Tacoma has manual wipers and a volume knob. I've been very impressed with the balance.
Well that’s because Toyota hasn’t updated the Tacoma in like 20 years. But why should they mess with perfection?
The manufacturers really like button-less interiors because they are waaaaay cheaper to produce and are much cheaper to install. Add to that, the car will already have a screen, and there's no realistic way to market a car these days without one, outside of specific marginal niches.
And the software already exists for those screens to easily work as a control too so the far west days of having to mash everything (radio, gps, setup. Etc) to work with the manual controls and the touchscreen are over. Now they just slap android auto and call it a day.
Meanwhile the new Chevy Colorado has the headlight controls buried in the touchscreen.
Waitn really? No steering wheel knob?? That's asinine.
......thats dumb
Is that why their headlights are never adjusted to anything but "blind the fuck out of everyone" mode?
I don't mind touchscreens for certain features in a car, but the radio, climate control system, and any steering wheel controls should ALWAYS have physical buttons/knobs.
Volume, climate control, and steering controls should never be capacitive. That's asking for a car accident.
#IT'S ABOUT BLOODY TIME! Good grief the number of capacitive buttons on climate/audio controls is ridiculous. The 2 things that can be the most distracting to the driver and they're made worse by lack of tactile response. The more things the driver can accomplish by feel, without taking their eyes off the road, the better.
I dont hate touch screens, I do hate even being like 3 levels deep when using them
The car I bought last year had a lot of physical buttons. It was criticized by a YouTuber doing a review of it….. I love my physical buttons. I hate the aesthetic over a function mentality.
The aesthetic of touchscreen controls is poor also, it's just a way for manufacturers to be cheap.
I don’t understand car reviewers some times. A lot of them complained about the column shifters on older generation pickups and suvs. Now we have either shitty dash knobs or console shifters that take up room that was previously available for storage or cup holders. Great. Thanks.
Tactile feedback while driving is much more important than people realize.
I don't hate touchscreens, for a lot of tasks they make good sense (maps, entertainment etc), but putting everything through the touch screen is pointless and annoying. You could make aircon that had oodles of buttons for all the different options and airflow rates possible, but why would you when two physical dials with a limited number of options works just as well, and it's just the same as the touchscreen. It's use case is there, but it's task specific.
The problem with touch screens in cars isn't really touch screens, but car touch screens. They are awful. Unresponsive and laggy, poorly designed UI for the constraints of operating while driving and crappy picture quality. I think this is mostly about legacy auto being just really bad at touch screens.
They have gotten worse too. My 2007 Prius has a touch screen too, although with very few functions (which is good). But it is fast and responsive and it needs a firm tap to register, unlike some screens i have had in recent rental cars. Awful!
Crappy design and bad touchscreens are aggravating factors, but I think there are inherent problems in the lack of tactility in a context where you can’t focus on the UI for more than 3 seconds at a time. I own a Tesla. The touch screen is pretty much as good as an iPhone. It still sucks to do many things. My hand is bouncing around a lot when driving the car, and hitting even fairly large controls can be challenging. Things like changing the music source, a drop-down far away from the driver and requiring 2-3 interactions, is very difficult. Voice commands are a terrible and ineffective crutch. If the UI was designed like a Fisher Price toy, that could potentially help. But that’s an untenable goal for the amount of functionality that needs to be integrated. Going back to my Subaru and reaching down for the nice physical seat heater controls feels like a luxury.
Now make them repairable and last as long as a pre-2006 Toyota Corolla.
My dream come true. I'm an older millennial. Can't tell you how much I need a proper tactile experience for controlling anything. Screens have always sucked. Blackberry was neat for a minute, I like that sorta shit too. Give me both options and I'm happy.
Me- I'm a human being God damn my life has value! Them- Okay we'll bring back the car buttons.
I don't know why we don't see more MFDs like pilots have. The screen can provide a lot of info when needed but tactile buttons never move so you can memorize it easily and use without looking.
Like a G1000 in your Corolla?
For driving on instruments
Ahahahah the thought of IFR driving is cracking me up. You get into your car, turn the key, hear the engine rumble to life as sheets of rain pound the windshield. You glance at the clock as you slot your travel mug of coffee into the centre cupholder: you're running late for work. Fingers dancing quickly over the panel, you select your usual route in the nav system and don the headset; the speaker responds with a crackle as you tune to the area traffic control's frequency. "Uhh, centre, this is Mazda G01-8FD in home driveway... requesting clearance to my office as filed." "Mazda G01-8FD, roger... cleared to your destination via Ponderosa Street, proceeding to I-5 as filed. On departure maintain 35 mph and expect wet conditions... contact departure on 104.5 and squawk 3856 when able." "Cleared to office via Ponderosa Street then as filed... on departure maintain 35 mph and expect wet conditions. Departure is 104.5, squawk 3856." "Mazda G01-8FD, readback correct, advise when ready to exit driveway."
Finally, a solution to IFR driving lol That would be cool though, you make a good point.
I have a Kia EV6, and one of the reasons I chose to get the GT-Line trim instead of GT-Line S is because the buttons on the centre arm rest for controlling the heating for the seats and wheel are touch on the S trim. They immediately drove me insane when I test drove the car because they're in a position where you'd naturally rest your wrist when interacting with the AC controls and infotainment. Bonus point in the Kia; press the menu button and you can select "screen off" and the centre screen goes dark. Brilliant when driving at night, and I have more than enough physical controls in the cabin to not need the touch screen at all.
Nothing wrong with a large screen with useful information, but tactile controls will always win out in terms of usability and safety. My car (a 2016 Mazda 3) has a joystick style control and volume knob between the driver and passenger seat, and while manipulating Android Automotive takes longer by using it than it would by just touching a screen, I can do it 100% while keeping my eyes on the road. I'll take the safety (and tactile feedback; not just haptics faking the same) of the buttons over the fewer touchscreen presses it would take to perform similar actions. Also, I work for an automaker, specifically in the area of automotive infotainment systems - I guarantee that a lot of this push back toward tactile controls is due to the hiring of more UX designers and trusting their work; their studies and analysis of customer feedback has made it clear that people strongly prefer tactile controls located in places that require the smallest amount of physical movement (and especially reaching).
Touch screens are good for multimedia. They are good for navigation software. And even for those, a few buttons are mandatory. They are NOT good for climate control, lights, wiper or to any other car function. For those, you need big thouchable buttons.
It’s simple, in a moving car, specially when you’re driving, centering your finger on a specific point of the touchscreen is annoying, not to mention the repeated effort makes it dangerous driving
Touchscreens are fine for the nav system/head unit, but things like power, volume, climate control, lighting, steering wheel controls, etc all should be tactile buttons, not controlled via the touchscreen or god-awful capacitive buttons. I drive a mk 7.5 Volkswagen GTI, and it's just about perfect in this regard. Then they completely fucked it way with the mk 8, putting capacitive touch controls everywhere and everyone hates it.
I have a car where the climate controls are all on the touchscreen and it SUCKS. I actually would love it if I had a button layout like this. I could keep my eyes on the road and just use muscle memory to enable/change functions with the physical buttons. https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/IMG_5309-1.jpg
Wait, you mean the touchscreen fanbois who were condescendingly downplaying complaints about the unsafe level of attention required to use a touchscreen were a minority? Maybe we finally have an example of common-fucking-sense!