[jakear]

Tesla’s have a touchscreen instead of analog controls, recently there was a case where a driver attempting to use the touchscreen wiper rate changer got in a collision and was deemed negligent.

Based on them taking arguably the single most important toggle in a car [1] and hiding it behind a touchscreen so that when you already are in shitty conditions and you can’t see, you have to take your entire focus off the road and navigate a touch screen interface, compared to every other car on the market where you can do it subconsciously while keeping your hands on the wheel... let’s just say I don’t think Elon’s companies care particularly much about creating interfaces that are easy and safe to use if it means sacrificing “aesthetic“.

https://www.businessinsider.in/thelife/news/german-court-rul...

[1] wipers and headlights are the 2 “I’m driving a massive hunk of steel at 80mph down the highway and I can’t see shit I need to fix this immediately” controls, and wipers are more likely to be needed at the spur of a moment, so I’d say it is the single most important toggle in a car and replacing it with navigating a touchscreen seems like it ought to be grounds for not street-certifying a car.

[ex3ndr]

Tesla has very convenient wiper hardware button.

[modeless]

That button is the opposite of convenient. It only makes the wipers wipe once. There's no way to start/stop or change interval with it. Probably the worst design flaw of the car.

It wouldn't be a problem if the auto wipers worked, but Elon doesn't think they need a dedicated rain sensor because he believes neural nets can solve any problem just by looking at the autopilot cameras. So they don't work.

(I should note that it's still the best car I've ever driven by far)

[ex3ndr]

Do you really think that changing wiper mode on Mercedes is much better than "touch screen"? It also awful to use and really hard to locate without looking at. I own both vehicles and they are about the same.

In emergency situation you can pres button as long as you want, a little bit weird but in reality very useful. Also pressing this button will open wiper settings and you can blindly pick a different mode.

Not like typical implementation in Mercedes.

[thw0rted]

I drive an '03 Mercedes and I can tell you that the wipers are absolutely intuitive -- just like almost every other car I've driven, from back before the automotive design industry collectively lost their minds. Touch screens have never belonged in a car, and they still don't.

[jakear]

I’m not particularly interested in whether Tesla is more or less convenient than whatever Mercedes is up to, what matters to me is that is is undeniably less convenient than the standard lever toggle that has been around since as long as I remember. In my 2004 4Runner I can go to any wiper configuration without taking my eyes off the road (or even thinking about it at all), I can do the same for head lights, radio, cruise control, A/C, traction control, transmission toggles, etc. To pay $$$ for a “modern” car that makes every one of those core operations more difficult is, to me, absurd.

[modeless]

I'm not an absolutist about physical controls vs. touchscreens. Of your examples, A/C and traction control are automatic enough that I don't fiddle with them during driving and the touchscreen works great. As for transmission, the Model 3 doesn't have one. Radio, headlights (brights), and cruise control have physical controls that work just fine.

The wiper controls are really my only complaint. It wouldn't even require hardware changes to fix, as they could add a gesture involving holding the button while moving the stalk or something like that; they just haven't bothered, presumably because they think everyone should just rely on the auto wipers.

[jakear]

> The wiper controls are really my only complaint.

Back to my original point: the wiper control is arguably (see above) the single most important important manually operated safety feature in a car (besides maybe the breaks). For them to have such poor design speaks to Elon’s ability to put function over form.

[jakear]

My understanding is that the button toggles enablement of the sensor-driven wiper mode. If this is correct, it means every Tesla driver is betting their life and the lives of those around them that for every instance of something on the windshield blocking their view, either the sensor will accurately respond to it, or they will be able to navigate the touchscreen to activate the manual override before needing to react to developing conditions on the road. Given the reliability of automotive grade sensors (I’m not the only one who has paid mechanics a lot of money to tell me the sensor was bad right?) and the difficulty of interacting with touch screens, that’s not a bet I’d be willing to take. Looking at the German case, I wish more people were unwilling to take that bet.

[tensor]

That button causes the wiper to wipe once, no matter what. No sensors involved. Yes you might have to keep hitting it but you aren't "betting anyone lives" on a sensor or UI.

[numpad0]

Driver ended up crashing the car, that’s the result isn’t it.

[tenuousemphasis]

I have no experience with the S but I can say that every Model 3 made has had light and wiper controls on the stalk.