[koheripbal]

I don't think these cynical comments add anything to the conversation.

The reality is that even if the knobs and the touchscreen were identical in cost, the touch screen allows for a separation between the software and hardware design teams.

It's quicker to update, enhance, patch, redesign, etc. It's just better from a manufacturing perspective, and aside from the tactile loss, allows more options and more data presentation for the consumer in a much smaller space.

[Barrin92]

>the touch screen allows for a separation between the software and hardware design teams

it allows for the illusion that there is a separation, which isn't the case because when you're controlling a physical system through a digital interface both are inherently connected.

What it likely allows for is significantly more bad design, because both teams have no idea what the other one is doing or how changes in one system affect the other.

It's like arguing that separating the head from the body allows for better medical treatment because you can ship one to the psychologist and the other to physiotherapy when in reality you end up in the morgue (a fate you might be sharing with the touchpad distracted driver who was staring at data presentations while driving into the busy intersection)

[gambiting]

Also it allows nonsense where clearly things are done because they can be, not because anyone in the world thought this was actually a good idea. Look at the latest Porsche Panamera, where the middle vent is directed by using a control on the touchscreen.....directly below it. So you replaced a simple and intuitive dimple on the vent that allows you to easily direct the vent without looking, to something that's hidden under a submenu, that you need to look at to use, and that takes several seconds to adjust because there's now a motor controling the vent orientation.

Like, I honestly cannot imagine anyone at Porsche actually thinks this is a good idea - it exists purely because a team somewhere had to fill a quota for "features" they are responsible for.

[maxdo]

ha-ha, they just blindly copy it from tesla, without copy profiles and other features. In all new tesla's including expensive ones' you don't have manual regulation. You do everything with one gesture, saving so many manual frictions. Once you set it up it remember your profile, so you don't need to change it every time your family member decide to use your car e.g. every day or more often.

[gambiting]

I mean, I get the idea with profiles, sure, but I just don't understand how that's removing friction in day to day situations? You jump in your car after going to the gym, you want cold air blasting in your face - having to mess with the on-screen controls to change that temporarily is a huge amount of friction in user interaction, especially compared to the previous UI which was literally "grab a little handle, point the vent at your face, done".

[maxdo]

Jump in the car, and say "I'm hot" while getting out of parking. Climate control blast the air to optimal temp regardless during first minutes. You adjust it with few taps to you and your passenger. You can even use in some cases camera in the car to point the air to your face. And yeah, swipes gesture also work on the screen, so you can adjust temp without looking at screen, even thought voice is much intuitive.

[lttlrck]

I was a rear passenger in a model 3 on a hot day and the amount of fiddling the owner had to perform to actually get some cool air flow in the back was ludicrous. In my 2013 car with 20th century knobs and dials I could have done it myself in 2 seconds.

[maxdo]

You probably confused it with some other car, back seat on model y and 3 equipped with analog handles. Same as your 20th century car.

[gambiting]

I mean, I haven't been in the back seat of a Model 3 personally, but literally every car I have ever had, analog handles or not, you had to do something to make the air flow to the back. Even if you have vents in the back, the air doesn't go there by default. This was usually a button on the dash - so I'm not surprised if even in a Model 3 you have to select an option on the screen to make the air re-route to the back. This is not a critique btw, just a possible observation.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

<<It's quicker to update, enhance, patch, redesign, etc. It's just better from a manufacturing perspective, and aside from the tactile loss, allows more options and more data presentation for the consumer in a much smaller space.

So this is my beef with this approach to today's manufacturing. It is never complete and relies on future updates. The final product is never fully delivered.

It started with games, but the demographics skew young and those are not exactly savvy consumers. I lost it when Tesla was allowed to bring this model into cars. Constant updates including ones that affect how the battery you bough operates. Even if you buy the same model, it is not a given that the car will behave the same way ( as more recently evidenced by Model Y and "Phantom Breaking").

And this is the part it don't get. Buying cars is not exactly a cheap affair. It can't be just the case of 'fool and his money', because the trend is being adopted by other manufacturers to an extent so there must be research suggesting people will buy it and anecdotally in my MBA class students were earnestly pitching IoT devices with subscription models for cars along the lines of 'this is about to break'.

I just want something that works. It is a car. It is not a website. It is supposed to a job. You don't need to redesign UI every few weeks just to feel relevant.

GDI, now I really feel old.

[soco]

"move fast, break things" gets an entire new (dark) dimension in car manufacturing.

[LocalH]

>The reality is that even if the knobs and the touchscreen were identical in cost, the touch screen allows for a separation between the software and hardware design teams.

A touch screen is not required for that separation. Physical controls can also be interfaced to hardware in the same fashion. A knob control can be a "soft" knob, where it only reports the direction of rotation (or the current knob position, and the software determines the delta).

[CountSessine]

Sure, but now it doesn’t have a label, or help text, or anything else you could implement with a touchscreen.

Single-function knobs should be mandatory for anything you might need to reach for while you’re driving, but seriously - what’s with the physical control fetish?

[titzer]

There are also completely unusable by visually impaired people who need a completely different interface. I'm so sick of getting touchscreens shoved down my throat by pollyanna-ish types.

(I am not currently visually impaired but have experienced several weeks of temporary blindness...it's a completely terrifying experience. Suddenly computers were almost wholely useless to me.)

[seanmcdirmid]

At what level of visual impairment is one able to still drive safely? I’m not sure touch screens would be the biggest problem in that situation.

[gambiting]

Far sighted people can still drive safely, but might need glasses(or a different kind of glasses) to operate screens in a car. Where previously you could adjust things by touch and intuition, well, now you can't.

[simion314]

I assume parent comment was complaining on physical buttons getting removed from many home electronics and a company removed keys from a keyboard and replaced with a touchbar thingy - though from what I read they had the courage to admit the users did not like it but nobody seems to think "let's do a real world user UX test before we do major changes because some vision person thinks this touch shit looks futuristic".

[varjag]

Since we're talking about driver's dashboard here it's a very marginal case.

[alerighi]

Of course knob cost more than a touchscreen. They are more expensive to produce, since you have more parts, more wiring, more steps to assemble it. Like it's more expensive to produce "analog" electronics than putting a microcontroller and do things in software.

The question is, what is better? To me touch interfaces in cars are very bad from a safety standpoint: they are impossible to use without looking at them, thus not looking at the road. Physical buttons are more practical, since you can just feel them, I don't need to look at my AC controls to change temperature, I just have to rotate som knobs or push some buttons that I know where they are located. Same thing with radio controls, I know where the buttons are and I can perfectly operate them without looking at the radio itself.

Beside that, but it's my opinion, touchscreen are more ugly to see, all modern car seems to have a big tablet, that not only is ugly but it reduces the field of view of the driver, or of the passengers. When I'm on a car trip I want to view outside the panorama, not an ugly 10" display to show me the radio station that I'm tuned to as it did the old 20 character display of my old radio.

I love the dashboards of older cars, with knobs, switches, dials, colored LEDs, an 8 segment displays. Now every car seems identical to another.

If we talk about more data presentation, yes more useless data presentation for sure. Useless information distracts you from driving, and thus makes car less safe. If you want then to extract whatever other data from the car... a cheap ODB-II interface that connects via bluetooh to your car is all you need. Of course to be used only when you are not driving.

[consumer451]

I am also a cynical, if admitting market forces is cynical. :)

The only 75% cynical part of me thought that the move to touchscreens, removing ports, etc improved device lifetime and also lowered the unit cost of things like AppleCare.

The less moving parts the less chance of failure, right?

[cassianoleal]

> The less moving parts the less chance of failure, right?

Of failure by impact and vibration, perhaps. But that's pretty much a solved problem in car dials and buttons - we have decades ols cars with fully functional dashboards and controls.

Otherwise, risk of failure is driven up by complexity, in which case a computer, with all its components, plus an operating system, drivers, etc, and apps on top of it add many layers of complexity in comparison with buttons and dials.

[dTal]

Software is a moving part - usually a lot of moving parts.

[lttlrck]

an electric motor, wiring harness and software to control vent direction versus a couple of injection molded pieces of plastic... which is less likely to fail and which is easier to repair/replace?

[wruza]

Yep, no more headaches if you have no head. Roll safe.

Ultimately no one really uses these touchscreens cause they are ux nonsense. All this work done on redesigns (crap, where is that thing again?) goes straight to the trash, bypassing any criticism.

more data presentation for the consumer

Never heard it as an argument for buying a car. “Why did you choose BMW? Oh, you know that data presentation thing and more on-screen options!” I can’t help but burst out laughing imagining this conversation.

The only reason this happens is that it is a small thing embedded into a big one, and one doesn’t simply turn the big thing down because of a (relatively) minor nuisance. When android or iphone design team break your workflow again, you sigh but don’t throw it away, because it’s still android or iphone and there are no alternatives. These touchscreen teams get ZERO negative feedback except some whining on tech forums.

[cormacrelf]

I rode in a Tesla for the first time yesterday and apparently drivers are putting up with with a constantly flickering, incredibly glitchy rendering of the car’s knowledge of surrounding objects being juggled around like hot potatoes on the huge display panel. Would you prop up a full size iPad Pro on your dashboard as you drive, playing a YouTube highlight reel of Russian dash cam near-misses? No? Then why would you simulate that experience with these grey ghost cars, of which, in the 20 nauseating minutes I watched them, every single one appeared to be an imminent collision, poking into our lane?

I hope Tesla is internally in shambles leadership-wise, because I would hate to be the person that gave the green light to shipping that and not be able to blame it on endemic dysfunction. What a farce.

[brokenmachine]

Hilarious!

I've never been in one (and don't intend to), but that precisely describes what I imagine being in a Tesla to be like from watching videos of it.

The funniest one I've seen was the one where they were following a truck full of stop signs, and it appeared on the screen like a bubble machine endlessly creating stop signs.

These things are funny to watch but terrifying to me that something this half-baked could be released into the public.

There's also the recent one where it was going to drive the car directly into a pole until the driver grabbed the wheel at the last moment.

It's definitely a hard problem, but I believe that Tesla's hubris will NOT be rewarded.

[wruza]

That sounds terrible. And the worst part of it is today you can’t rip it out and insert a good aftermarket part anymore.