[devnulll]

I have 20k miles driving a Model S with a Yoke. While I'm not a huge fan, the yoke itself is only part of the problem. The bigger problems are:

1. The capacitive buttons for turn signals. They are dangerous. They require taking eyes from the road, offer no feedback, and are honestly dangerous.

2. The horn. It's not in the middle. It's off to the side as a no-feedback capacitive button. Every time I've needed to use the horn, I've been unable to find the button. I think recent S/X Updates have moved it back, but it's so dumb.

It's a feature set designed to look cool on Twitter. Not really for driving.

[checker]

Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) mentioned that his right capacitive turn signal button is occasionally unresponsive with his Model S Plaid and he's had to resort to lane changes without a turn signal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34VZzBWBDN0&t=648s

Granted, this is one anecdotal case. But when spending over 100K on a car, features like this should be bullet-proof.

Actually ... scratch that. Features like this should be bullet-proof because they have been a solved problem for ~50+ years. Tesla is sacrificing safety for minimal cost savings and/or style points.

[spaceman_2020]

Features like these should be bulletproof because they pose a serious safety hazard.

Safety features should be priority number one for any car manufacturer. You can ship with a crappy infotainment system but please don’t screw around with basic safety.

[Dalewyn]

In the first place, how are non-working blinkers not illegal to drive with?

[eyelidlessness]

How are they not illegal to sell to drivers? I am continually astonished about the social experiment being done on drivers buying these cars and others who have no choice but to share the road with them.

[iotku]

You can use hand signals, but obviously that's far from ideal.

[culi]

physical buttons are reliable, easily repairable, more accessible to people with a variety of conditions, allow you to memorize location with feel, etc. I've never met anyone who's preferred capacitive buttons over physical ones yet more and more every "smart" technology seems to be opting for them. Some have even added haptic touch-like software to them... just to regain the feeling of the thing that everyone misses but without actually giving them the thing they want...

[alexvoda]

Apart from regulation mandating that safety features work, are reliable and are easy to use (physical buttons), I think we need some new economic theory.

Why is it that for products with complex spec sheets, the free market (the auto industry is arguably not a free market) does not work to provide the desired diversity? Automakers clearly have the incentive to make any control a capacitive touch surface for many many reasons. Many people hate touch controls for important features in cars. Yet most automakers are switching to touch controls. Free market theory says that other manufacturers should appear and satisfy that desire for consumers. This isn't happening.

I do not know of a economic theoretical model that accurately explains the behaviour of complex (many orthogonal characteristics) goods.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

The economic models assume consumers have more power than they do. It's easier for industry to convince (or force) people that they want (or have to take) what they produce, rather than produce what people want. For example, everyone wants a simple and reliable inkjet printer for home that doesn't have drm or other bullshit. But we aren't getting it and probably never will.

I sincerely hope that capacitance buttons and touchscreens are just a fad like digital speed dials from the 80s. They seemed cool, but ultmately analog dials (even if controlled by digital signals) were just better. I think physical knobs and buttons will come back for the same reason as round steering wheels. It's just the best solution to the problem.

[alexvoda]

> The economic models assume consumers have more power than they do.

That is a fair assessment. But what is the cause of it? What I am saying is we need better models. Better theory.

> It's easier for industry to convince (or force) people that they want (or have to take) what they produce, rather than produce what people want.

And what is the cause of the bandwagoning? I generally do not think it is a case of industry wide collusion (though in some cases it might be). Why is a company going the opposite direction of a trend and marketing that difference a somewhat rare phenomenon? At least partially, I think the cause is marketing driven development. But that still doesn't explain why marketing departments are shy to market going against a trend. It's as if marketing departments of companies buy into the marketing of the trendy company.

How many smartphone companies actively advertise they still have phone jacks? How many car companies actively advertise they are still using physical buttons? They could but they don't. Samsung used to make fun of Apple in their ads but even they became apathetic. Apple used to make fun of the rest of the industry with their Mac vs PC ads. Sony could easily make an ad showing how a DJ takes their Sony phone and plugs it in literally everywhere using the jack to play music to a crowd.

[s] Damnit, I want my car to have hot-swappable, RGB-illuminated, Cherry MX mechanical switches with double-shot keycaps. [/s]

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

There is probably more than one cause, but consider the headphone jack one. Apple decided it wanted to get rid of it. Reasons were that they could make regular headphones less convenient (needs dongle) while simultaneously convincing people that air pods are the thing to have. They didn't have to market 'against' the headphone jack, only add friction to use it (via dongle) while heavily marketing 'for' air pods. Nokia wouldn't have gotten away with this, but Apple could because of clout, product status symbology, and massive cash spends available for ads. Most people don't really like the loss, but the idea of not having the latest phone was worse, so they bought them. Other phone manufacturers then follow suit because they see apple sales and think, they must be doing the right thing. Meanwhile, we hate it.

Telsa was the same for cars. They came out with a bunch of style choices that most people don't really care for, but the status of having a telsa (at least until recently) was a more powerful driver so they bought the car. Other auto manufacturers interpret this as that its what the consumer wants (or will accept) and change accordingly, especially if it also saves them money. Then boom, we get cars with crappy UI.

So I guess my theory is that if an industry has a clear leader whose product offers status along with function, they can make the customer accept pretty much whatever they want. After that, the competition just copies it hoping to keep what market share they have.

[alexvoda]

I agree with your analysis and it matches my thoughts.

But then, wouldn't a naive conclusion be that in order to maintain the freedom of the market, the appearance of status symbol brands/products must be prevented?

That's a tall order. Humans really like status symbols, not only as proof of status but as reminders of status.

[S_A_P]

Do you feel like you’re happy with your model s given the issues/compromises of the yoke you mentioned above?

The industry wide reduction of real buttons/switches and gauges is something that gives me pause on my next car purchase. I was initially thinking of getting a golf r but the infotainment and steering wheel capacitive buttons are almost universally criticized as really bad and there not being any real way to fix it.

When I saw the yoke I thought it was a concept car and they would come to their senses and use a wheel for production.

My wish list for an electric car: 1) be a dumb car. Minimal screens/animations/annoyances 2) if you do OTA updates I want to be able to reject a version and or revert to any version from any other version of the system software 3) don’t track me or show me ads 4) no feature on the car should require additional or recurring payments to use with very limited exceptions (thinking navigation updates etc) specifically don’t disable something on my car because I don’t pay future moneys for its use. 5) I’m fine with fast but I would rather have a reasonably quick car that pushes 400miles of range without needing a 200kwh battery. I get that big motors also help make big regenerative power but I would like a car that has similar performance to say an Audi s4 or bmw 340m but electric. 6) simple is fine but the model 3 is oversimplified. they really can’t put simple gauges in front of the driver? I feel like every feature of most teslas is built for this looming full self driving where some of these features make more sense. I think the odds today are pretty good that someone who takes delivery today of a new Tesla will send it to the junkyard before fsd really fully self drives. 7) don’t try to drive for me and allow tweaking of things like brake /steering feel, suspension settings.

[tom9729]

The VW CEO recently said that physical buttons would be coming back sometime this year, so you may be able to get that Golf after all. :-)

https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/tech/vw-infotainment-...

[dieselgate]

Yikes, buttons for turn signals? I can barely get a "legacy" horn to honk sometimes even

[solarkraft]

Makes you wonder when they'll turn the pedals and steering wheel into capacitive touch interfaces.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Worse, they'll make them into the touch-screen where you have to do a specific gesture to turn right, a different one to turn left, and one needing both hands to apply the brakes.

[l1tany11]

Took me very little time to learn the signal buttons. I honestly prefer it now. I just barely wiggle my thumb. Laziness level 1000 reached!

I never use the horn… but yeah the middle airbag thing should just be a horn button. Leave the touch horn control if you want, no downside I guess.

[renewiltord]

Jesus the capacitive touch signaling is astoundingly stupid.

The horn, though. In decades of driving, I've used my horn maybe once or twice.

[sometimes_all]

Here in India we have to use horns twice a minute.

If they want to sell cars in the developing world, they better make their inputs tactile or people won’t buy them.

[renewiltord]

Yeah but the Model 3 is a 58 lakh car before the import duty. If you have to pay 1 crore for a car, you're going to make your driver suffer through the horn.

IMHO India will have indigenous EVs far before Tesla.

[laserdancepony]

I doubt India is of any concern to Tesla, except for cheap labor.

[StrictDabbler]

Once a pickup truck decided to back out of a failed left turn when the light turned red. Stupid and illegal.

I'd remained well behind the stop line, lots of space between us, so I figured he was just using up a little of it to get his nose out of the middle of the intersection and I hesitated.

He had no idea my sedan was there and backed right over my hood.

I'd never used the horn in that car. It took a firmer press than I expected, a slightly different angle... the milliseconds involved in figuring that out contributed to the accident.

It's worth practicing your horn in any car you're driving and it's worth honking at someone backing up if you're not absolutely sure they see you.

[renewiltord]

Hmm, that's a reasonable scenario. I don't envision I'll ever be in it, but the cost of knowing how to honk is low. Fair point. Convinced.

[pdpi]

I used it with some degree of frequency, because I had to drive past that one specific curve. Sharp corner with a big elevation change, narrow road, narrow pavement. It was a visibility nightmare and honking the horn was the only way you could signal your presence to people coming in the other direction.

[int_19h]

When that rare case happens, though, it can be rather important to signal fast.

[abrawill]

How often have you used your airbag?

[renewiltord]

About as many times, but the key thing is that the horn is only useful if I'm static since otherwise it's faster for me to evade than honk. I estimate ~0.5 s to 1 s net delay to action if I were to honk, with 0.5 s to 1 s delay in action from other person if they're fast. At a 2 s delay, unless I'm not moving, evasion + braking seems superior. And evasion is made harder while honking. I've had many times where people run red lights in front of me (I live in SF) but I've never honked. It's frequently too late to do anything so I just brake.

[abrawill]

The point I was making was that something doesn’t need to be used often for it to be important and for you to want it to be reliable.

Also, the horn is a signal. It allows you to evade and alert other users that something needs their attention. Maybe they need to avoid you while you avoid something else.

[porphyra]

The horn is in the middle now.

Besides, if you cover multiple buttons on the right with your palm, the horn will sound.

[int_19h]

Sounds almost like the flat web UI that took over the desktops is now infecting physical gadgets.