[rippercushions]

I almost didn't buy a Tesla because of my concerns over the lack of controls, but turns out that while driving, it's rarely if ever necessary to touch the screen, because there's voice commands for everything (navigate to X, climate control off, etc). Plus often you don't need to do anything at all: the lights switch on automatically if it's dark, the windshield wipers activate automatically if there's moisture, etc.

For me, the weirdest/most dangerous quirk is that the 'gears' (drive/reverse) are located on the right stalk, on several occasions I've toggled it in the wrong direction.

[altacc]

> there's voice commands for everything

Voice commands fail the universal design principle. I haven't tried Tesla's but I hate using voice commands and it's not an option for everyone. Not every language is supported and if you have a heavy accent or, like me, a speech impediment, even the industry leading software with training does not work most of the time. Pushing a button is quicker than speaking, especially if you have to say the same thing multiple times.

[pleb_nz]

A voice command takes longer to execute than a press or flick of a finger IMO.

It would be interesting to see what the cognitive loads are between a physical movement and a set of voice commands. I remember reading a study that found talking to another person in the vehicle was the equivalent to having had a certain amount of alcohol. I'm sure there's a difference between voice.commands and conversation, but interesting nome the less.

[HPsquared]

Voice commands are good because you can keep both your eyes and hands on the task of driving without interruption.

Having an actual conversation with someone is much more distracting because you need to listen to them, preserve social norms, etc.

[alistairSH]

Until the voice command fails and you have to resort to digging through a touchscreen UI.

For whatever reason, my wife's voice does not do well with voice control (despite being an American with an average American accent). And I have a slight Scottish accent (pronounce my Rs and /hw/) which, despite being mild (lived in the US for nearly 40 years) still causes trouble with voice control.

[eldaisfish]

Voice commands are terrible in general if:

- You do not have a generic north american english accent

- Are not speaking English and standard english.

- Have any sort of speech impediment

- Can’t remember what something is called or a specific command

- Want immediate feedback

Oh and they have a tendency to fail at random.

[buffington]

In my Model 3, voice commands work flawlessly for my wife.

For me, it never hears me. Doesn't matter if I talk loud or quite, fast or slow. I'm a native english speaker with no regional accent. Tesla also has no explanation.

Thing is, even if it worked for me, I'd still trade it for dedicated buttons. It borders on aggravating when my wife is driving to be mid conversation and have her suddenly yell out "wipers on".

[pleb_nz]

In theory yes, but it's never that simple is it.

I have no skin in the game personally though. I just thought it would be interesting to see the figures in comparison.

[saiya-jin]

Most of the world doesn't speak english as their primary language, and TBH I have yet to see a single person here in Europe (Swizerland) to command their phones using voices, or any other device (nests etc are extremely non-popular here, never saw it here and I work of english-speaking corporation).

I mean literally 0 times, this is very US-centric (and maybe UK/Australia/NZ) way of thinking. So US car working safely only via voice command? That means it isn't working for me.

TBH I would never ever want such a critical piece as car commanded by voice. We are 4, no way car will reliably grok everything for it 100% of the time and nothing else (that's the bar to compete with for buttons, not a nanometer lower).

[andrewfong]

YMMV I suppose but the "auto" options for climate + wipers do not work well for me.

Single droplet in the right spot => furious wiping. 100 droplets in the wrong spots => no wipe.

Climate - My preferred mode is to have the A/C on but not actually directed straight at me (so through the windshield vents), but auto also blasts through the front.

[mrobins]

Voice commands can be inconvenient and unnatural. In the middle of a conversation having to wait for someone to pause and then interrupt a conversation to interact with a vehicle is poor user experience. It goes against our natural ability to multitask. Also not great when you have sleeping passengers.

[rytis]

> voice commands for everything

how do they work in small spaces when there's active noise around (small children screaming for example)?

[smaudet]

They probably don't - it's what you get when a sociopath designs cars and doesn't think of anyone but himself.

[gambiting]

>>because there's voice commands for everything

Ah yes, the only other control method that manages to be worse than touchscreens. It works well if you speak absolutely perfect english, but for those of us for whom English isn't our first spoken language, you can kiss voice controls goodbye. Just a complete pile of trash, and incredibly frustrating when the car repeatedly misunderstands you.

[OOPMan]

You mean perfect American English right?

Voice control goofs with my South African accent all the time...

[quonn]

My only request would be an option to override the auto wipers (even on autopilot) and without the touchscreen. This could be done effectively by adding a double press action and auditive feedback to the left stalk button.

[vegardx]

The automatic windshield wipers in Teslas is a joke. They're so bad that I'm having trouble even formulating how bad it is, you really have to experience it. They've clearly not been very well tested in areas places where it rains so often, and in so many different ways, that we have dozens of different words just to describe what it.

1. It will take multiple seconds to react even if the entire windshield is completely covered in water. Like zero visibility. I've had this happen on multiple occasions where water from the opposite direction is splashed over on my car. To manually start them I have to first toggle it with my left arm on the left stalk, then set it to full speed with my right arm on a touch screen. All while at high speeds and trying to perform an emergency stop / regain control. The manual toggle on the right stalk wipes one time, in the slowest speed. You also have to wait for this to finish before it will actually adjust the speed you selected on the touch screen.

2. When they're in automatic mode and I enter a tunnel they will turn off, which is good, but you'd imagine that Tesla with all these supposed self-driving capabilities were able to deduce that it will most likely be raining at the other side of the tunnel, and be prepared to turn them on quickly. They don't.

3. When I manually toggle a single wipe it seems to reset whatever algorithm they use to decide if the cameras are detecting that it's actually raining. I can't really see any reasonable scenario where I'm not also using windshield wiper fluids that this makes any sense.

4. It will randomly just start in glaring sunlight, often at maximum speed. To add insult to injury, if you're in a country that uses a lot of salt on the roads during winter it will then coat your entire windshield in it, causing it to speed up, making it progressively worse, until you can do the "toggle dance" with both your hands to disable it.

Recently Tesla decided that you can't turn off things like automatic windshield wipers and high beams when you want to use adaptive cruise control or similar features. I understand that it has to be able to detect cars in front of it, but I don't understand the rationale of forcing these features to be on automatic. Just let the drivers know they have to turn this on in situations where the car isn't confident it has enough light or visibility to do it.

They recently fixed some of the issues with high beams. You don't go around blinding everyone like you did previously all the time. But it will also just randomly turn off because it sees a sign or a parked car, or take 4-5 seconds to turn back on again. Making them practically useless. In scenarios where I have to use high beams it's often critical that they turn right back on after passing ongoing traffic. If I have them in automatic mode you can't toggle it back on again. You have to wait for it to figure it out. The type of headlights that Tesla now uses, often referred to as "matrix lights", are capable of selectively turning blinding off parts of the light beam, but for some reason they don't use this capability for anything other than making them write "Tesla" on walls in front of the car if you perform the "light show".

I bought a aftermarket product[0] that connects to the ODB-port that lets me overrides these things. And it lets me put programmable physical buttons to do things like toggle windshield wipers in the car. The concept of having user programmable buttons in the car is something I really like, and I think this is a concept that should be explored much more. All the buttons in a car should be programmable. There's more[1] and more aftermarket upgrades to Tesla's that adds capability like this, but everything is living on the whim of a guy who'll just terminate people's API access on Twitter, so there's that. The weird thing is, besides the windshield wipers, automatic high beams and some of the questionable choices Tesla has made, like removing ultra sonic sensors, I really love the car.

[0] https://enhauto.com/product/six-s3xy-buttons [1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ctrl-bar--4#/