[konschubert]

> Touch screens are just their 60+ year old fossils deciding "that's hip, that's what kids want!" and probably their testing audiences responding more positively to images of flashy touch screens and shiny lights.

It's mostly a cost saving measure.

Physical buttons are expensive. I you eliminate them, the car gets cheaper to make.

That's all.

It's a sign of low quality and I expect that in 5 to 10 years, consumers will start to realise this.

[Joker_vD]

Surely the buttons don't cost that much compared to, y'know, the rest of the vehicle?

[brk]

You'd be surprised how much cost savings matter.

Years ago when I was working in IT at FoMoCo I recall seeing a piece of paper on an office bulletin board outlining how they had managed to save like $40 on the production cost of a Taurus, a vehicle that at the time was about $20,000. Those savings were the result of multiple sub-$1 to several dollar cost savings tweaks made between production years.

Ford has built something like 8 million Tauri, save a few dollars on each of them and it adds up to real money, like enough to redecorate the executive cafeteria.

[tokai]

I guess its the installation. One touch screen is one process. 15 buttons require 15 operations to finish the dashboard. You have to save everywhere, else costs will run up. Small savings become huge at scale.

[cma]

104 key mechanical keyboards have 104 buttons and may go for $30. Maybe it is the knobs? But you can get a midi keyboard with 8 knobs, 49 keys, 12 pressure sensitive pads for ~$100 (but maybe it wouldn't last in car cabin heat).

[greyhair]

Those keyboards don't have the same environmental requirements. Automotive environmental is hard. Temperature extremes, high and low, plus humidity extremes.

There are also reliability expectations. If I need defrost because the windshield just fogged over, it better activate when I turn that knob on my sixteen year old car. And so far, it always has.

[hulitu]

Can it work at -40 C or 85 C ? Can it work after it was in a salted atmosphere for 100 hours ? And then in a sandy atmosphere for 100 hours ?

[cma]

You can get an in-dash CD player with 2 knobs and 10 buttons for $45 or something, and it stands up to cabin temperature and humidity cycles.

[Joker_vD]

Okay, remind me to never leave a keyboard in a front seat of a car, apparently it can't survive in there.

[Lio]

Every little counts when it comes to exec bonus time.

My favourite feature of touchscreens in cars is when you try to click a button but go over a bump[1] so your finger misses and you press something else. Genius.

I do get that touchscreens allow manufactures to add and remove controls though.

Rolling out UI changes for self-driving cars, like getting rid of the, knob behind the wheel, will help with safety no end.

1. Not sure what the bump was, probably the neighbour's kid or dog or something. Too busy trying to get the latest Smartless. That Will Arnet, what a card, etc, etc...

[rcxdude]

The reason cars are as insanely cheap as they are for the level of manufacturing and design sophistication within them is because of many, many such cost reductions across the whole vehicle (which is made possible by the large scale on which they are manufactured).

[postalrat]

It's the difference between an on screen keyboard and a keyboard where you make the buttons.

[LtWorf]

Buttons are installed manually by workers. One by one.

Gluing a single tablet is much faster.

[hulitu]

It's not just buttons. It's PCB space, testing, special SW etc.

[vladvasiliu]

> It's a sign of low quality and I expect that in 5 to 10 years, consumers will start to realise this.

I'm not so hopeful. The same can be said about household appliances. Yet more and more random things figure they should have touchscreens, or at the very least touch buttons. And this trend has lasted for far more than 10 years.

[m000]

> It's a sign of low quality and I expect that in 5 to 10 years, consumers will start to realise this.

Consumers is the key word here. Manufacturers already know that buttons have the "disadvantage" that they break independently. They are also easier to fix with a generic replacement part. Which means that you won't have to scrap your car because it suddenly became unusable.

Force manufacturers to provide replacement parts for 25 years after original purchase, and see them flocking back to the basics. But that prob. won't happen in EU (because it's against the interests of Germany) or USA (because "communism"). So I guess we're depending on the common sense of Japanese and Korean manufacturers?