When researching family cars recently, I literally avoided the Honda CR-V just because the AC was controlled via the touch screen.
There's a "Climate" button, which brings up a screen on the display where you can turn the aircon on/off, up/down, etc. It's just horrendous. Give me my dials.
My worst gripe - which all modern cars have - is the aggressive bluetooth auto-connect. If my wife takes the car, it will automatically connect to my phone in the house and start playing whatever was last playing. If I'm using headphones, it will just pinch the audio from them. I cannot disable this. Drives me absolutely nuts (no pun intended).
The other day, I was taking a call on my iPhone, over the earpiece, in my office suite's lobby.
The connection was rock solid, and then out of nowhere the audio just disappeared, without warning … but the call didn't drop. A few seconds later it returned. The person on the other end said they heard what sounded like a child for a second. I was perplexed.
Fast forward a week, and this happens again. I look at the call screen, and notice that the audio is being routed to Bluetooth? Opening it, it says I'm connected to my car. Not possible: I'm here, in my office, took a bus in.
I look up, baffled, and happen to see my wife drive by, 40 feet away, through a concrete wall and some glass.
Ironically, perhaps, the car everyone must be complaining about in this thread introduced call transfer controls that avoids just this. Through an OTA update.
Yes, it's Tesla.
If you're already on a call when the car connects to the phone, you must press an on screen button to transfer the call to the car audio.
(Bloody brilliant, if you ask me; and also something that couldn't be introduced to existing cars post release that were buttons only. I was quite anti-screen before I got mine, but now that I've gotten firmly used to it - and seeing enhancements every few months, I'm quite happy. I would like more generic mappable buttons on the steering wheel, but it's not a deal breaker).
And mine won't even hold a steady connection from a few feet away! Not without having to "turn it off - and turn it on again", at least once every few days.
My Mazda CX-5 has buttons for A/C control but I'm still annoyed because my '99 Civic had knobs which are infinitely better. One for temp, one for fan. That's all I need. Don't want no stinking buttons for fan intensity in a row of 100 other buttons.
My old cx-5 has knobs, I love them, but the rest of the system sucks (notably, if you allow the car to download your contacts it will take several minutes at each start to allow you to play audio)
This is why I always turn off Bluetooth when watching porn, otherwise my phone auto-connects to my wife’s Mini Cooper when she drives into the garage. DAMN YOU AUTO-CONNECT!!
I believe it's controlled from the phone side of things.
I'll listen to some music, watch a video, whatever on my phone. I'll pause it, turn off my bluetooth headphones.
Then some time much later, I'll get a phone call, turn my headphones on. When the call ends, suddenly what I had been playing starts playing again through my headphones. It's been a wide variety of apps, not one single thing: podcasts, youtube videos, videos on webpages, google music, spotify.
The pseudocode I had in my head was the phone subsystem had something like:
What’s hilarious is the $10 Bluetooth retrofit I got on Amazon in my 2011 car doesn’t even do this. It just works as a Bluetooth speaker but doesn’t start playing and connects only when I turn on the car. Simple and easy to use.
Ironic, I'm /completely/ the opposite. My radio cannot connect and start playing music fast enough.
The radio stations in my area are all total and utter shit, and I'd rather listen to white noise while I wait for the BT to connect and start playing my music. I find it difficult to even listen to a radio station for a minute these days. It's now permanently set to a dead frequency.
My old car had an aftermarket head unit that would stay on the BT mode when I start the car, not making a sound while it's connecting. Current car always defaults to FM, and only when it's connected then I can go to the BT source option and get music from my phone. It's horrible!
My 'solution' is: _Maximum_ 1 (one, one!) Bluetooth 'master' (e.g. phone) device per 'slave device' (e.g. headphones, speaker). That means, if your friend asks if they can connect to your speaker the answer is "Sorry, no.". If you want to use headphones on your laptop and your phone, you need to buy two headphones, etc.
For really problematic appliances, like cars, I just deactivate Bluetooth. Not worth the pain. For audio in the car, I use a portable speaker. :shrug:
[1] Proof: Many people can't even pronounce it
[2] I've bought two, different, new 3k bucks computers that never got the Bluetooth work with anything (yes, they run Windows).
[3] I have a 200 bucks Victron SmartShunt in my van to monitor my battery. Can't connect to it anymore with any device (yes, its Bluetooth). Will have to buy an expensive external display (at least that exists) and crawl on the floor to read it.
You read my rant this far? Congrats. Have a nice day :-)
It's all in the implementation (which is not to say that the standard isn't contributing to poor implementations).
If you believe hassle-free multi-device Bluetooth is a pipe dream, you have not been experiencing the magic of a ZMK firmware keyboard roaming between devices with high reliability and practically no delay.
(Less blissful and smooth if you want to pair a Windows dual-boot system as a single device tho :p)
I'm willing to accept climate controls within a touch interface so long as the "auto" mode is as competent as the auto mode in my 2013 BMW 1-series. I set it to 22°C at medium intensity. It's rare that I ever have to touch the climate controls, and exceedingly rare that I need to touch the climate controls while in motion. The only manual intervention I perform toggling "max AC" for a few minutes on an especially hot day — and that's pressed while not in motion.
I've used "auto" modes in many cars and they're often rubbish. For example blasting unpleasant hot air in your face if you ask for 22°C and it's 21°C outside. Whereas the "stratification" feature of BMW climate control means the upper vents will never blow hot air in your face unless you override it.
I've had an external heater heating the inside of my car and the engine for 2 hours. Then I start the car with AC set to 22C and instantly I'm blasted with -20C air from the outside.
Why?
The Toyota Prius was the first car I owned that actually waited for the air to be the correct temperature before opening the ducts. The same worked in the summer, if the car was already cooler than the outside air, it wouldn't do anything until the AC had enough time to cool.
FWIW - just bought a 23 CRV for my wife because of the abundance of analog controls. Not sure what on screen display you were seeing, we use the knobs exclusively.
> Plus, while there is a climate button and fan speed button, as well as dials for the temperature settings, you still have to go through the screen to control whether the air conditioner is on or off, and also which ventilation is active. Odd.
You might want to look at tasker to have it enable Bluetooth when you're not at home or something similar.
Also, on most cars you can change the priority of phones, moving yours down would help.
The other day my mom was at our house, parked next to me. She got in her car to leave at the same time I did. I pulled out my phone and put on some music - noting that it was weird that I needed to do anything at all, typically it just resumes playing as soon as it connects to Bluetooth.
But I didn't get any audio. That's weird. Until she drove away and the music started playing through my phone's speaker a few seconds later, and I realized that it connected to the wrong head unit.
Buy two of the same headphone, watch it not work because the software differentiates on the label not the MAC, and never asks you or auto labels the one you connected to...
Not a BT problem so much as a bad software pattern. I solve this by naming my devices uniquely.
> it will automatically connect to my phone in the house and start playing whatever was last playing
If it's an iPhone you could use automations (Shortcuts app which is preinstalled) to auto-pause music whenever it connects to bluetooth and launches CarPlay. I have done it and works like charm.
> If I'm using headphones, it will just pinch the audio from them.
Man the bluetooth protocol really is something. Never connects when you want it to, won't pair or unpair, but when you don't want to use it it'll force a connect.
And the thing is practically wifi, I am always at a loss as to how did they manage to mess it up so badly.
> I cannot disable this. Drives me absolutely nuts
Does this actually happen even if you're using bluetooth headphones? Or just wired headphones.
Because if it's bluetooth headphones that's pretty surprising.
If you mean you're using wired headphones, I realize this is obvious, but you can just turn bluetooth off on your phone when you're not using it. Arguably, you should, since bluetooth drains the battery for no reason and leads to more electronmagnetic 'noise' in the house (interfering with other bluetooth devices) as well as draining the battery on your phone, and possibly having negative effects on your health if you talk while holding your phone to your head
Ironically, the last time my family purchased a "newer" car (2015), we avoided the Ford Flex and instead purchased a Honda Pilot because the Pilot didn't have a touchscreen for anything. We currently have a 2022 Nissan Altima as a rental (one of the kids totaled the beater 2004 Subaru Forester), and while climate controls still use buttons and knobs, everything else is controlled via a tablet-like touchscreen. I hate it.
The sibling comments here are hilarious, but I actually prefer the Bluetooth auto-connect. "When it works" it's even better than a headphone jack. There is definitely more room for customization of the nuance, though. I could easily see a per-device setting on the phone to allow it to pair automatically or manually.
Extending this topic, I've also had my phone calls hijacked by my wife who has just started the engine and is about to drive out. Happened to her when I took the car too. It brings a great deal of confusion as to wtf happened to our phone calls.
I always wondered why they couldn't prioritize devices close to the system over others
All I want on my phone is the ability to NOT auto-connect to Bluetooth devices that are in range. It infuriates me. It should be a simple binary toggle for each device, and yet it doesn't exist. At least not on Android. How does this not exist yet? It should have been part of the original spec decades ago.
And this is why open ecosystems are better for the customer. If the software in the car was more open - even just as much as android - someone would write an app for that.
I hate the touchscreen on my HRV. Thankfully I almost never use it and most controls are buttons and dials but I agree it would be a deal breaker if everything was touch based.
Wonderful. I recently rented a model 3 and found it incredibly frustrating that it required multiple touches to adjust settings that would be a single button press on a more traditional car. Don’t even get me started on the windshield wipers - a total nightmare in winter storms and located on the left stalk? These are safety concerns. As long as humans are operating these dangerous vehicles, I vote for fewer driver distractions.
And navigating a software menu (which changes at random times when it updates itself) just to open the fucking glove compartment. What was wrong with a physical latch?
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
To me, this is definitely a major safety hazard to rely on voice command. If you just get splashed and in a stressed out voice you ask for wipers and your car might not understand you.
It was doing its best on automatic but the wipers were sporadic at best. This was a major winter storm and visibility was awful …the model 3 had no idea where the lane lines were and apparently no idea how bad the precipitation was.
Wipers on the left stalk is entirely normal for cars that have column shifters since those are always on the right. There's plenty of new trucks using column shifters, mostly on those with bench front seats. I'd honestly prefer a column shifter (and therefore wipers on the left side) if it gives me more real estate on the center console. New automatic shifters are sometimes entirely electronic so there's no constraints on where it can go. Having a center console electronic shifter is a skeuomorphic design. Wasting space on something you touch a few times every trip and only when completely stopped seems unnecessary.
Is (among other things) having windshield wipers control on left stalk being a dangerous thing? That cars I had in other countries (with opposite side driving) had signals on right & wipers on left stalk.
Probably not. You'd figure it out pretty quickly the first time you need to go around a corner or change lanes.
FWIW, ever car I've ever owned or driven in the US has left stalk for turn signals and right stalk for wipers. Headlights are often on the left stalk as well, but sometimes a physical on the dash (usually to the left of steering wheel).
Regardless, I have a strong dislike of touchscreen UIs in cars. Fine for the main radio, as long as I have physical controls on the steering wheel. But for open the globe box, or adjust the seat, or changing the wiper speed? GTFO, that's asinine.
The cars I've driven in the UK have varied. The only ones I remember for certain are Nissan Micra (indicators on the right) and BMW 3 series (indicators on the left), and the others have varied. My fingers only seem to know which is which when the car is driving, and I still sometimes hit the wrong stalk if the car is stationary.
Compared to putting the steering wheel on the wrong side it seems like a minor point.
Not really - just mildly embarrassing, like spilling your coffee when opening a door.
Where I come from imported cars vary left or right stalk. So it’s common to see people accidentally washing windows especially in rentals. No great harm and mostly amusement value since it’s very obvious to everyone, everybody’s done it, and nine times out of time they just try again the other way and get it right after that.
As a counter to all the replies, I have owned nothing but Hyundai and Kia since high school, and my family has owned several Kia and Hyundai vehicles. It would take something very major for me to consider another brand.
Their warranties are outstanding and long. My Kia engine was part of a recall, had an issue, but was then replaced out of warranty for free in less than a week during 2020. The engine now has a lifetime warranty. All of their warranty repairs, for small things, were done without hassle.
When we took a look at buying another car a few years ago, Kia and Hyundai were by far the best quality car out of everyone, including Honda. I think people to still shit on Kia and Hyundai because the names aren't Honda or Toyota. They have their issues, but in my experience, the warranty and recalls they did covered everything at no cost. And at this point, my Kia is an 8 year old model which was at the tail end of its model design even then.
I have zero concern about my Kia's reliability. I even drove my much older Hyundai well over 100,000 miles with hardly any maintenance before trading it in.
I was in the same boat until my car was stolen. If you haven't heard of it, look up the Kia Boys, though the same rules apply to Hyundais.
If you do manage to get the car back, you find yourself much more interested in car anti-theft measures, and will then discover that there are very limited options for parts due to the epidemic of them being stolen (66% of cars stolen in 2021 in Milwaukee, the center of the epidemic were Kia/Hyundai). And there is no indication that the company will be of any help going forward. The only real option is to not buy pre-2021 Hyundais/Kias.
So - people shit on Kia, because they remember what it was like before Hyundai owned it.
My sister bought a Kia around 2000. It was garbage. You have to go a ways farther back, but once upon a time Hyundai wasn't very good either. At some point (I guess in the 90's?) people started talking about how Hyundai had caught up to Toyota and Honda, and Ford and Dodge needed to do the same.
I've driven many Kia rentals the past ~15 years, and they are awesome. Even remembering all of what I wrote above, I was surprised at times at how premium the fit and finish was, and how powerful and smooth the ride was.
I rented a Sonata once and drove it 3500 miles without issues. But since then my impression of Hyundai has deteriorated. Had another die on me while driving on I-85 in a rush hour Atlanta. It was scary. Then all these reports of engine fires and theft because of lack of immobilizers.
I'd like to buy Kia or Hyundai, but personally I find the interiors both look and feel "cheap", even on the high-end models like the Kia Stinger. Interiors from BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Volvo look and feel so much more luxurious.
I leased a Kia Niro EV last year (EV FOMO made me unwilling to commit to a car right now, plus the used car market was obscene). I’ve been generally delighted with it, excluding the stupid Bluetooth auto connect nonsense.
I own two Hyundai (2007 Entourage, 2015 Sonata), and a 2022 Honda Odyssey. My initial impression of the Honda is far better than it was for my Hyundais. We'll see how it progresses over time, but as of now, I don't plan to buy Hyundai again. The only thing I hate about my Honda is I can't turn default-to-off that stupid setting that kills the engine and restarts it automatically whenever you stop the vehicle at a light or stop sign.
I can’t speak for their EV line, but no media is talking about how crappy their engines are. I won’t touch a KIA or Hyundai and I have zero qualms speaking up about it. My brother and I both needed new engines after 50,000 miles with normal wear and maintenance. If you read up on oil consumption you will discover they have had problem’s continually since 2014. Last I checked the 2021 +models are still affected. Getting the engine replaced is getting harder as they can’t keep up with engine demand. It’s a 4000 mile set of tests and BS. KEEP ALL YOUR SERVICE RECORDS and keep your maintenance schedule, or you will be paying anywhere from $16,000 USD to fix it on your own dime.
They do have a history of cheaping on parts. When we had a KIA, all sorts of problems with CV joints, and power steering components, all expiring around 130,000km or so. Just lower quality seals & parts on drivetrain components, that lasted just until out of drivetrain warranty, if I recall.
The wildest part for me is that the turbo variants they're selling in Europe seem to be perfectly fine. In the N cars there only seem to be clutch issues (and other stuff that's only relevant if you track them). My family has driven Korean cars since 2008 without ANY issues and I'm perfectly happy with my i30N.
Strangely, Does Hyundai/Kia have some difference wrt engines in US and India?
Never heard anyone complain about engine in India even after 62k miles, they are quite popular among taxi drivers, who definitely stress the engine more than enough. Indian roads can be quite punishing on cars.
I’ve read some threads either here or on Reddit from mechanics saying it was the 2.0 engine (I think the CVT versions) that crapped out like this and they used that engine in a ton of models. Anecdotal, but mine is an old 2013 Kia with a 1.6 engine with DCT like all their turbos / top of line models and I’ve had no mechanical issues at all yet, but I’m looking to buy soon and I won’t consider their 2.0s out of caution.
One of mine has a seized engine at 66k miles. I’ve been waiting 2 months for the pleasure of paying $6k for a replacement. It is hopelessly backordered. I plan to sell mine as soon as I’m able.
It is sad to see even the more 'conservative' (design wise) car companies following this design. Lexus gets a lot of flak for boring/old tech interiors but give me their 2010s design over 'modern' touch screen/capacitive button all-the-things any day. Shame they haven't got more plugin hybrids or EV options though, their build quality/design in my experience makes a lot of other cars feel rushed.
My parents had a 2021 Hyundai Santa Fe top trim, and the design was a mess. A part from lane keeping, it had nothing my 10+ years older Lexus RX didn't have, and I found so many aspects of driving it counter-intuitive. I'm glad they are keeping real buttons, but I also hope they start removing things/make them simpler.
It's crazy to me that people think a "boring" interior is a bad thing. I want my car to be as boring, functional, and familiar as possible. I never want to think about my car except when it needs maintenance.
A friend had a Hyundai Elantra. He needed new brakes so we went to Autozone, picked up some pads and then we jacked it up. I was flabbergasted - they were the easiest brakes to change in any car I have ever done. One bolt, swing the calipers up, pop the old pads out, plug in the new ones, swing the caliper down and put the bolt back in. Had both done in 20 minutes. It was amazing. A car actually DESIGNED to be serviced.
A few months later the crank angle sensor went out - again it was the easiest car to work on I have ever seen. The sensor was out in the open, not buried under a bunch of crap. One 10mm bolt, and the harness connector was easily accessible too. Five minutes and we were done.
Oh yeah, car had 250,000 miles on it and still ran like a top while getting 40MPG. Other than using a little oil. For a "cheap" car I was beyond impressed.
I loved the look and interior of the Ioniq 5. However when testdriving it, it felt sitting on a plank getting tossed about while going over roundabouts. I also had it loose grip and have the FWD kick in in situations and conditions that have never been an issue at higher speeds in my previous (smaller and lower) cars and my current XC90.
maybe it had something to do with the large amount of power it has. But it felt scary enough for me to not try it.
Ive never had a Hyundai but I recently rented a Sonata and wow! It had all the high end perks of other cars like top down parking view and a beautiful widescreen for my apple CarPlay! And driving it was great! I was seriously impressed and I enjoyed driving it for the several days I had it.
I have a Genesis G70 2021. It is fantastic; best car I've ever owned. I don't see myself buying anything other than Genesis, if my budget permits. So many awesome features and almost all of them are controlled by dials. I absolutely love it.
This has been linked to on reddit, and it's being called out that a few 2023 Hyundai models have capacitive buttons and touchscreen controls; Tucson, Ioniq, Verna at least.
On the mazda 6 at least, there's a touchscreen for the native nav/media/etc software, but the touchscreen is disabled if you use Android Auto and are forced to use the dial interface. Go figure.
Guess what, most if not all cars today have what's called an ECM which is essentially a computer that controls your engine among other things. It's certainly a very easy task to flash that ECM as long as your inside that car and can plug in common off the shelf devices and have your car very quickly be unable to start.
Unless you're buying a car that's a decade old you cannot find what you want.
Both buttons and touchscreens have a place in a car... especially ergonomic buttons in just the right place and a well made touchscreen gui.
All the things that the driver might ever do during driving (blinkers, lights, radio, ac,...) should always be controlled by a physical button, that is easy to find by touch only, even in the dark.
On the other hand, reseting TPMS (air pressure system) sensors, looking at service history, internal error display, setting "welcome home" interval (delay with turning the lights off when parking), etc, are much easier done on a touchscreen with a nice menu with all the settings.
Somehow car manufacturers like the extremes... either you use a touchscreen to turn on the ac, with a few popups first, maybe even an autoplaying ad before you can change the temperature... or you have to press six random buttons at the same time and count the number of blinks of a random led on the dashboard to navigate the "menu" to change a not-everyday setting on the car.
IMHO, it has everything to do with old-school executives absolutely beside themselves that the expert labor they should be hiring (for UI/UX) requires wages several times higher than their line workers.
I expect executives to be absolutely beside themselves that they can spend a fraction of money on a few UX designers and coders and eliminate an entire class of parts and steps in a production line.
It’ll be an absolute steal. Executive level usually doesn’t think much about individual salaries and instead thinks about budgets, complexity, and risk.
Imagine everything you hate about modern tech -- touchscreens, bluetooth, loading bars, slow & buggy web-based interfaces, ads, unbelievably stupid "smart" features -- but now you have to use them while traveling 70 MPH in a 6,000 lb steel battle tank next to hundreds of other humans doing the same.
Car reviewers can't get enough of this shit for some reason. I don't think I'll ever buy a car made after ~2012.
to me the generation of cars roughly 5-10y old fits exactly that bill. They usually have touchscreen, often even Android/iOS integration and they have all physical controls still (except for Teslas). And with the right drivetrain you can find ones that are at or above 43mpg on the highway. For daily commuters I guess it's better to have an electric, but for my needs (weekend driving/shopping runs) it's perfect.
BMW had a rotary control button in every car. Now the idiots have removed it from at least two models (X1 and Active Tourer). My bet is that they will put it back eventually, but the person who made this decision should be shot.
Four grids of uniform buttons, they think that's an improvement over a touchscreen? There is zero practical distinction between taking your eyes off the road to see which button you're pushing vs taking your eyes of the road to see which part of the screen you're touching.
GOOD HVAC/radio design means you can perform ALL essential functions WITHOUT taking your eyes off the road AT ALL, once you've spent five seconds learning what's where. The controls should be in locations where it's hard to mistake one thing for another. The controls should also be differently shaped and different types. Give us knobs and sliders!
Unlike a touchscreen, you can feel the line between adjacent buttons and between buttons & the surrounding dashboard. Unlike touchscreens, you can touch these without triggering them, use feel to locate the correct button and center your finger on it, then press it, all without taking your eyes from the road.
Could they be even more distinct? Sure. Are these still a huge improvement over a touchscreen? Absolutely.
I have seen a touch screen covered by a thin layer of plastic in the button row that has some indentation so the finger can feel where the buttons are. This was on the control panel of an industrial machine. With some small sound or haptic feedback when the button is being pressed, this allows someone familiar with the interface to quickly press some buttons while operating the machine.
(There was also an indentation for a slider on the side)
There is zero practical distinction between taking your eyes off the road to see which button you're pushing vs taking your eyes of the road to see which part of the screen you're touching.
There is, in fact, one large difference. With a button you know you’ve pushed it. Once you see where to press your eyes can go back to the road while you actually press the button since the feedback indicating it’s been pressed is tactile.
That’s just a button though. That scenario is magnified with any sort of adjustment slider.
I just got out of a rental with a touchscreen climate controls and it was significantly less safe just adjusting the heat.
Car touchscreens also have tactile feedback - they produce a click and a vibration when a press is registred. This works well. What doesn't work at all is being able to find a button without looking.
Great, we have gone from a horrible and extremely unsafe design to a bad and mildly unsafe design.
What happened to the ~5 decades of design ranging from "decent" to "great"? Even the worst-designed dashboard of the early 00s was better than what we have now in many cases. Give me my damn knobs back.
While I agree that Hyundai's console design is seriously lacking, anything immovable/unchangeable has a key benefit over touchscreens: it can be habituated.
Personally I find any interface that can move while you use it to be borderline anger-inducing (the Google Cloud Platform console comes to mind immediately). In a car it's deadly. Gimmicks move gadgets though, so we had to let some designers and product managers get their bonuses/promotions and then pivot into an "epiphany" (sans the mea culpa) to get to now.
I dare say the thought process is that, does it really matter over and above how they have already designed it?
If you spend enough time in your own car you will get pretty darn good at finding your buttons with the smallest of glances. I don't think car designers really see the benefit, when they're constantly changing their dashboard designs.
I agree entirely; this is lazy design. Cars are the most dangerous machines we’ve invented, by orders of magnitude nothing else causes as much unintended harm. It’s really, really worth doing the best possible job in the control surfaces for these machines.
They’ve prioritized visual consistency over usability. For example, why do the Volume and Tuner knobs look identical? They’re for different purposes, used in different ways and in different contexts. They’re even usually used by different _people_ — the volume knob is more likely to be used by the passenger, for instance.
And yet, they’re more related to each other than they are to the buttons placed between them, like Search and Map. All those buttons seem essentially arbitrary to me. Are Seek and Track really as important as Setup? Why have a rarely-used and interruptive feature like Setup right next to an often-used and non-destructive feature like Favorite (I’m guess that’s what the star means)?
I’m still glad they’re real buttons rather than a touchscreen. But you’re totally right — this is exceptionally lazy design and implementation of physical buttons.
And if I may — I’ve seen replies already to the effect that the usability of this interface doesn’t matter, either because it’s not a big deal to begin with, or because drivers will get used to anything, or for another reason. That’s missing the point — usability is for everyone, all the time. Even exports make mistakes with unusable controls.
> For example, why do the Volume and Tuner knobs look identical? They’re for different purposes, used in different ways and in different contexts. They’re even usually used by different _people_ — the volume knob is more likely to be used by the passenger, for instance.
Given that they’re so far apart, I don’t see why they should be physically different from one another. Also, the standard position of the volume knob is on the left, the tuner knob on the right. This is how it has worked in any car radio I’ve ever seen when the knobs are arranged horizontally like that. They’re both within easy reach so trying to statistically determine which occupant is most likely to operate which knob doesn’t seem very useful.
I agree with everything else you’ve written. I hate it when disruptive controls are mixed in with less-consequential ones. This design could use some improvement, but it’s also substantially better than the touchscreen-only alternative.
Not identical: they typically have raised markers on two of the home row keys precisely to help with orientation. And, well, your hands are already positioned over them much of the time, so relative identification is much easier. Not so with these buttons.
That’s not analogous. Proper use, or accustomed use, of a keyboard places the hands in the correct position by default. Our hands don’t remember the _absolute_ position of those buttons, only their position _relative_ to other buttons.
Buttons in car control panels require users to leave the default position of hands-on-wheel and acquire the new button. That’s an expensive operation, and it’s well-studied — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
Also, keyboard layouts are static — learn QWERTY once, use it forever. Car control panels are usually different between cars, so learnability is harder. Many people regularly drive multiple cars, increasing difficulty again.
Core functions like HVAC and hazard lights deserve dedicated controls, but modern cars also need a type of input that can be used with a tablet-sized display. What to do?
*Rotary Encoders*
The best type of input for a car is a rotary encoder, a knob with tactile "clicks" that register as you turn it. Good ones can also be pressed down like a button, and moved in cardinal directions like a d-pad.
Have one for your volume knob: pressing it down toggles muting.
Have one for the main controls: twisting moves the cursor, swiping changes which app is selected.
Have one on a steering wheel stalk, to cycle between display modes on one of the dashboard display's rounds.
This actually looks like a really practical design to me.
Maybe I've been driving the wrong cars, but I don't expect to be able to feel around blindly to find the right button to press (although, to be honest, that does seem like it'd be doable with this Kona design). I do expect, however, to be able to glance at the button panel and quickly get a fix on the button location so that I can look back at the road while my fingers to the rest. This design would certainly enable the latter.
> There is zero practical distinction between taking your eyes off the road to see which button you're pushing vs taking your eyes of the road to see which part of the screen you're touching.
Practically, I don't need to take my eyes off the road to press an analog button, that I am familiar with, having a small chance to fail (to register the interaction). Touchscreens are notorious for not registering interaction, which is why using a touchscreen keyboard is inferior.
Do you have any good examples of a car or plane that can be operated that way? I'm not aware of any.
Taking a glance to co-locate your finger and a button or knob is far faster than doing so with an element on a touchscreen. And the latter requires visual attention throughout the interaction.
Also, I would wager that keeping eyes on road while mentally finding a button or knob without looking is actually more distracting than taking a quick glance for it.
There is absolutely a difference. You probably typed this entire message on your desktop or laptop keyboard without looking at it. Could you do the same on a touch keyboard on your phone? Buttons staying in the same place and giving tactile feedback makes all the difference.
The design in the linked picture looks just about like any other non-touchscreen car in the world, and is perfectly usable.
and yet, here I am, typing on my keyboard, which is above my eye level while I lay on a couch eating a burrito with my latop on my belly. And I don't even have to see the keys... they should alternate every single key with a knob so I know the difference.
You can take your eyes of the road for a little bit my man. You do it all the time anyway when checking mirrors. Yes, knobs and sliders would be better but this is a good compromise vs exclusive screens.
Also, as per the other content: you can type and remember 100+ buttons.
That's wonderful, I hope other car makers realize how distracting and dangerous touch controls are for a driver's ability to focus on driving.
My car has physical controls for most things, and I use CarPlay for music/podcasts and navigation, and even for that purpose it's extremely distracting to use it while driving when compared to the physical interfaces for A/C, seat heaters, mirror adjustment etc. I generally avoid as much of the CarPlay interface as possible while driving.
Voice commands are not the silver bullet solution here, they have a lot of problems such as requiring all passengers to stop talking, and it interrupts the radio, podcast, or music, and generally it's awkward to use voice commands during a phone call. Voice commands are probably fine for some low stakes input like asking to call someone, changing music tracks etc.
Hardly fair to compare navigation and selecting music to adjusting temperature and seat heaters. Very different tasks with very different requirements for looking at them.
That's great! I hope all new Hyundai's buttons are more readable than the darn things in mine. I thought it was just me, but nope, it's a common complaint. I can not make out a single word on my buttons, it's super annoying.
My wife has an ID.4, and they really have gone overboard with touch controls. You have only 2 sets of window controls (driver-side and passenger); you have to use a touch control to switch between front and back.
Readit News
There's a "Climate" button, which brings up a screen on the display where you can turn the aircon on/off, up/down, etc. It's just horrendous. Give me my dials.
My worst gripe - which all modern cars have - is the aggressive bluetooth auto-connect. If my wife takes the car, it will automatically connect to my phone in the house and start playing whatever was last playing. If I'm using headphones, it will just pinch the audio from them. I cannot disable this. Drives me absolutely nuts (no pun intended).
The connection was rock solid, and then out of nowhere the audio just disappeared, without warning … but the call didn't drop. A few seconds later it returned. The person on the other end said they heard what sounded like a child for a second. I was perplexed.
Fast forward a week, and this happens again. I look at the call screen, and notice that the audio is being routed to Bluetooth? Opening it, it says I'm connected to my car. Not possible: I'm here, in my office, took a bus in.
I look up, baffled, and happen to see my wife drive by, 40 feet away, through a concrete wall and some glass.
Damn you, auto-connect. DAMN YOU.
I can't be the only one that has wanted the car to be a speakerphone exactly 0 times.
Heck maybe someone is the opposite. They love terrestrial radio or their CD collection and also the speakerphone feature. Give people options.
Once you pair devices, it defaults to this connection.
My SO often borrows my noise-canceling headphones and as it stands they're firmly paired with her iPad and will not let go without elaborate ceremony.
Is she okay?
Yes, it's Tesla.
If you're already on a call when the car connects to the phone, you must press an on screen button to transfer the call to the car audio.
(Bloody brilliant, if you ask me; and also something that couldn't be introduced to existing cars post release that were buttons only. I was quite anti-screen before I got mine, but now that I've gotten firmly used to it - and seeing enhancements every few months, I'm quite happy. I would like more generic mappable buttons on the steering wheel, but it's not a deal breaker).
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
I'll listen to some music, watch a video, whatever on my phone. I'll pause it, turn off my bluetooth headphones.
Then some time much later, I'll get a phone call, turn my headphones on. When the call ends, suddenly what I had been playing starts playing again through my headphones. It's been a wide variety of apps, not one single thing: podcasts, youtube videos, videos on webpages, google music, spotify.
The pseudocode I had in my head was the phone subsystem had something like:
func onCallDisconnect() { if bluetooth.Headphones.IsConnected && media.IsPaused { media.Play() } }
It's stopped, I think, on new Android versions. At least I haven't had it happen for a while.
The radio stations in my area are all total and utter shit, and I'd rather listen to white noise while I wait for the BT to connect and start playing my music. I find it difficult to even listen to a radio station for a minute these days. It's now permanently set to a dead frequency.
My old car had an aftermarket head unit that would stay on the BT mode when I start the car, not making a sound while it's connecting. Current car always defaults to FM, and only when it's connected then I can go to the BT source option and get music from my phone. It's horrible!
My 'solution' is: _Maximum_ 1 (one, one!) Bluetooth 'master' (e.g. phone) device per 'slave device' (e.g. headphones, speaker). That means, if your friend asks if they can connect to your speaker the answer is "Sorry, no.". If you want to use headphones on your laptop and your phone, you need to buy two headphones, etc.
For really problematic appliances, like cars, I just deactivate Bluetooth. Not worth the pain. For audio in the car, I use a portable speaker. :shrug:
[1] Proof: Many people can't even pronounce it
[2] I've bought two, different, new 3k bucks computers that never got the Bluetooth work with anything (yes, they run Windows).
[3] I have a 200 bucks Victron SmartShunt in my van to monitor my battery. Can't connect to it anymore with any device (yes, its Bluetooth). Will have to buy an expensive external display (at least that exists) and crawl on the floor to read it. You read my rant this far? Congrats. Have a nice day :-)
If you believe hassle-free multi-device Bluetooth is a pipe dream, you have not been experiencing the magic of a ZMK firmware keyboard roaming between devices with high reliability and practically no delay.
(Less blissful and smooth if you want to pair a Windows dual-boot system as a single device tho :p)
I've used "auto" modes in many cars and they're often rubbish. For example blasting unpleasant hot air in your face if you ask for 22°C and it's 21°C outside. Whereas the "stratification" feature of BMW climate control means the upper vents will never blow hot air in your face unless you override it.
I've had an external heater heating the inside of my car and the engine for 2 hours. Then I start the car with AC set to 22C and instantly I'm blasted with -20C air from the outside.
Why?
The Toyota Prius was the first car I owned that actually waited for the air to be the correct temperature before opening the ducts. The same worked in the summer, if the car was already cooler than the outside air, it wouldn't do anything until the AC had enough time to cool.
This review is for their 2021 model.
> Plus, while there is a climate button and fan speed button, as well as dials for the temperature settings, you still have to go through the screen to control whether the air conditioner is on or off, and also which ventilation is active. Odd.
https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-reviews/honda-cr-v-81488
And a demonstration, though it's for an even older model:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99WLw0pQc8w
But I didn't get any audio. That's weird. Until she drove away and the music started playing through my phone's speaker a few seconds later, and I realized that it connected to the wrong head unit.
Not a BT problem so much as a bad software pattern. I solve this by naming my devices uniquely.
If it's an iPhone you could use automations (Shortcuts app which is preinstalled) to auto-pause music whenever it connects to bluetooth and launches CarPlay. I have done it and works like charm.
https://www.guidingtech.com/how-to-stop-music-from-automatic...
Man the bluetooth protocol really is something. Never connects when you want it to, won't pair or unpair, but when you don't want to use it it'll force a connect.
And the thing is practically wifi, I am always at a loss as to how did they manage to mess it up so badly.
Does this actually happen even if you're using bluetooth headphones? Or just wired headphones.
Because if it's bluetooth headphones that's pretty surprising.
If you mean you're using wired headphones, I realize this is obvious, but you can just turn bluetooth off on your phone when you're not using it. Arguably, you should, since bluetooth drains the battery for no reason and leads to more electronmagnetic 'noise' in the house (interfering with other bluetooth devices) as well as draining the battery on your phone, and possibly having negative effects on your health if you talk while holding your phone to your head
If you want audio to start magically playing in the car, and the car is often turned off...
You can't have the phone connect to it. Otherwise it would continually have to poll for a car, which would burn power.
Ergo, you have to have the car initiate the connection, which should happen when the car turns on.
Now, you could either have a "Confirm connect?" every time that happens or you could have it auto-reconnect.
In most circumstances, "Car-initiated, auto-reconnecting Bluetooth" is preferable to the alternatives.
Even if it does have bizarre and annoying UX failure modes.
Just so much jank, and that’s before you get to most devices only supporting lossy encoding.
I always wondered why they couldn't prioritize devices close to the system over others
/daydreaming ... :(
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
how do they work in small spaces when there's active noise around (small children screaming for example)?
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.
Deleted Comment
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#/
I’d hate to try to operate vehicle controls with the same hit-and-miss interface. Give me tactile controls any time.
Disgusting.
Dead Comment
FWIW, ever car I've ever owned or driven in the US has left stalk for turn signals and right stalk for wipers. Headlights are often on the left stalk as well, but sometimes a physical on the dash (usually to the left of steering wheel).
Regardless, I have a strong dislike of touchscreen UIs in cars. Fine for the main radio, as long as I have physical controls on the steering wheel. But for open the globe box, or adjust the seat, or changing the wiper speed? GTFO, that's asinine.
Compared to putting the steering wheel on the wrong side it seems like a minor point.
I recently bought what I thought was a car, only to find it is a tech-ridden abomination.
I want a vehicle that is reliable. I want a vehicle that is simple. I do not want a rolling AI/touchscreen.
Even just from a security standpoint I want minimal software in my car.
Their warranties are outstanding and long. My Kia engine was part of a recall, had an issue, but was then replaced out of warranty for free in less than a week during 2020. The engine now has a lifetime warranty. All of their warranty repairs, for small things, were done without hassle.
When we took a look at buying another car a few years ago, Kia and Hyundai were by far the best quality car out of everyone, including Honda. I think people to still shit on Kia and Hyundai because the names aren't Honda or Toyota. They have their issues, but in my experience, the warranty and recalls they did covered everything at no cost. And at this point, my Kia is an 8 year old model which was at the tail end of its model design even then.
I have zero concern about my Kia's reliability. I even drove my much older Hyundai well over 100,000 miles with hardly any maintenance before trading it in.
If you do manage to get the car back, you find yourself much more interested in car anti-theft measures, and will then discover that there are very limited options for parts due to the epidemic of them being stolen (66% of cars stolen in 2021 in Milwaukee, the center of the epidemic were Kia/Hyundai). And there is no indication that the company will be of any help going forward. The only real option is to not buy pre-2021 Hyundais/Kias.
My sister bought a Kia around 2000. It was garbage. You have to go a ways farther back, but once upon a time Hyundai wasn't very good either. At some point (I guess in the 90's?) people started talking about how Hyundai had caught up to Toyota and Honda, and Ford and Dodge needed to do the same.
I've driven many Kia rentals the past ~15 years, and they are awesome. Even remembering all of what I wrote above, I was surprised at times at how premium the fit and finish was, and how powerful and smooth the ride was.
Their EVs seem well built, from watching Sandy Munro videos, anyways. (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igFytqIMp0A)
But they're also so-far all in the upper tier of price ranges. Nobody is really making a 'budget' EV yet, apart from maybe GM with the Bolt.
Deleted Comment
My parents had a 2021 Hyundai Santa Fe top trim, and the design was a mess. A part from lane keeping, it had nothing my 10+ years older Lexus RX didn't have, and I found so many aspects of driving it counter-intuitive. I'm glad they are keeping real buttons, but I also hope they start removing things/make them simpler.
[0]: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hyundai-kia-p...
A few months later the crank angle sensor went out - again it was the easiest car to work on I have ever seen. The sensor was out in the open, not buried under a bunch of crap. One 10mm bolt, and the harness connector was easily accessible too. Five minutes and we were done.
Apparently it's no accident - their attention to detail carries over into their construction equipment too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuUi4Fc_8hE
Oh yeah, car had 250,000 miles on it and still ran like a top while getting 40MPG. Other than using a little oil. For a "cheap" car I was beyond impressed.
Loving it so far.
maybe it had something to do with the large amount of power it has. But it felt scary enough for me to not try it.
Lane assist is unreal. It eases 90%+ of the standard driving fatigue.
All that said wish there was more audio commands and overall remote start gets close to Tesla (who is far from perfect too).
Unless you're buying a car that's a decade old you cannot find what you want.
All the things that the driver might ever do during driving (blinkers, lights, radio, ac,...) should always be controlled by a physical button, that is easy to find by touch only, even in the dark.
On the other hand, reseting TPMS (air pressure system) sensors, looking at service history, internal error display, setting "welcome home" interval (delay with turning the lights off when parking), etc, are much easier done on a touchscreen with a nice menu with all the settings.
Somehow car manufacturers like the extremes... either you use a touchscreen to turn on the ac, with a few popups first, maybe even an autoplaying ad before you can change the temperature... or you have to press six random buttons at the same time and count the number of blinks of a random led on the dashboard to navigate the "menu" to change a not-everyday setting on the car.
It’ll be an absolute steal. Executive level usually doesn’t think much about individual salaries and instead thinks about budgets, complexity, and risk.
I drive pretty old used cars so I don't know what newer ones are like
Car reviewers can't get enough of this shit for some reason. I don't think I'll ever buy a car made after ~2012.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/ford-billboard-ad-patent-sys...
Four grids of uniform buttons, they think that's an improvement over a touchscreen? There is zero practical distinction between taking your eyes off the road to see which button you're pushing vs taking your eyes of the road to see which part of the screen you're touching.
GOOD HVAC/radio design means you can perform ALL essential functions WITHOUT taking your eyes off the road AT ALL, once you've spent five seconds learning what's where. The controls should be in locations where it's hard to mistake one thing for another. The controls should also be differently shaped and different types. Give us knobs and sliders!
Is anyone even awake in car design depts anymore?
Could they be even more distinct? Sure. Are these still a huge improvement over a touchscreen? Absolutely.
(There was also an indentation for a slider on the side)
There is, in fact, one large difference. With a button you know you’ve pushed it. Once you see where to press your eyes can go back to the road while you actually press the button since the feedback indicating it’s been pressed is tactile.
That’s just a button though. That scenario is magnified with any sort of adjustment slider.
I just got out of a rental with a touchscreen climate controls and it was significantly less safe just adjusting the heat.
With a row of buttons, you can count and you do not need visual attention.
With a screen, instead, you must look even to understand whether you are on a clickable object at all!
What happened to the ~5 decades of design ranging from "decent" to "great"? Even the worst-designed dashboard of the early 00s was better than what we have now in many cases. Give me my damn knobs back.
Exactly. Drive that car every day and you won't even need to count after a while. And even if you do you count by feel, no need to look.
Anecdote: I drove a friend's Tesla. I couldn't figure out how to adjust the a/c *.
* I mean, I could have probably done it with the manual and 10 min. But in less "advanced" cars you just turn the damn knob.
You can have buttons AND screen, like in Tesla for example.
Not to mention voice and beyond that even simply automation.
Of course some people will say Teslas don’t have buttons, but those people don’t know what they are talking about and can be safely ignored.
Personally I find any interface that can move while you use it to be borderline anger-inducing (the Google Cloud Platform console comes to mind immediately). In a car it's deadly. Gimmicks move gadgets though, so we had to let some designers and product managers get their bonuses/promotions and then pivot into an "epiphany" (sans the mea culpa) to get to now.
If you spend enough time in your own car you will get pretty darn good at finding your buttons with the smallest of glances. I don't think car designers really see the benefit, when they're constantly changing their dashboard designs.
Touchscreen however is a no go.
They’ve prioritized visual consistency over usability. For example, why do the Volume and Tuner knobs look identical? They’re for different purposes, used in different ways and in different contexts. They’re even usually used by different _people_ — the volume knob is more likely to be used by the passenger, for instance.
And yet, they’re more related to each other than they are to the buttons placed between them, like Search and Map. All those buttons seem essentially arbitrary to me. Are Seek and Track really as important as Setup? Why have a rarely-used and interruptive feature like Setup right next to an often-used and non-destructive feature like Favorite (I’m guess that’s what the star means)?
I’m still glad they’re real buttons rather than a touchscreen. But you’re totally right — this is exceptionally lazy design and implementation of physical buttons.
And if I may — I’ve seen replies already to the effect that the usability of this interface doesn’t matter, either because it’s not a big deal to begin with, or because drivers will get used to anything, or for another reason. That’s missing the point — usability is for everyone, all the time. Even exports make mistakes with unusable controls.
Given that they’re so far apart, I don’t see why they should be physically different from one another. Also, the standard position of the volume knob is on the left, the tuner knob on the right. This is how it has worked in any car radio I’ve ever seen when the knobs are arranged horizontally like that. They’re both within easy reach so trying to statistically determine which occupant is most likely to operate which knob doesn’t seem very useful.
I agree with everything else you’ve written. I hate it when disruptive controls are mixed in with less-consequential ones. This design could use some improvement, but it’s also substantially better than the touchscreen-only alternative.
Buttons in car control panels require users to leave the default position of hands-on-wheel and acquire the new button. That’s an expensive operation, and it’s well-studied — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
Also, keyboard layouts are static — learn QWERTY once, use it forever. Car control panels are usually different between cars, so learnability is harder. Many people regularly drive multiple cars, increasing difficulty again.
*Rotary Encoders*
The best type of input for a car is a rotary encoder, a knob with tactile "clicks" that register as you turn it. Good ones can also be pressed down like a button, and moved in cardinal directions like a d-pad.
Have one for your volume knob: pressing it down toggles muting.
Have one for the main controls: twisting moves the cursor, swiping changes which app is selected.
Have one on a steering wheel stalk, to cycle between display modes on one of the dashboard display's rounds.
We need more rotary encoders.
> Have one for your volume knob: pressing it down toggles muting.
Check.
> Have one for the main controls: twisting moves the cursor, swiping changes which app is selected.
Check.
> Good ones can also be pressed down like a button, and moved in cardinal directions like a d-pad.
Check.
People trash talk it, but I actually like it.
And... take your eyes off the road to see where the cursor is?
Reading this comment before opening, I for some reason expected a giant panel of 16 identical buttons in a square.
Maybe I've been driving the wrong cars, but I don't expect to be able to feel around blindly to find the right button to press (although, to be honest, that does seem like it'd be doable with this Kona design). I do expect, however, to be able to glance at the button panel and quickly get a fix on the button location so that I can look back at the road while my fingers to the rest. This design would certainly enable the latter.
Practically, I don't need to take my eyes off the road to press an analog button, that I am familiar with, having a small chance to fail (to register the interaction). Touchscreens are notorious for not registering interaction, which is why using a touchscreen keyboard is inferior.
> Give us knobs and sliders!
Ironic ask.
Aside from the studies, on a personal level I have a car with a touch screen and one without. The one without is, simply, easier to use.
Taking a glance to co-locate your finger and a button or knob is far faster than doing so with an element on a touchscreen. And the latter requires visual attention throughout the interaction.
Also, I would wager that keeping eyes on road while mentally finding a button or knob without looking is actually more distracting than taking a quick glance for it.
The design in the linked picture looks just about like any other non-touchscreen car in the world, and is perfectly usable.
Also, as per the other content: you can type and remember 100+ buttons.
I have a Tesla where autosteer can be engaged by two moves of a stalk.
I have a Nissan where the feature is controlled by a one button within two rows of buttons beneath my left knee.
Buttons are not always an improvement.
Dead Comment
Buttons should be unique visually and by shape, and perform as you expect them to (no eating/missing/etc inputs).
My car has physical controls for most things, and I use CarPlay for music/podcasts and navigation, and even for that purpose it's extremely distracting to use it while driving when compared to the physical interfaces for A/C, seat heaters, mirror adjustment etc. I generally avoid as much of the CarPlay interface as possible while driving.
Voice commands are not the silver bullet solution here, they have a lot of problems such as requiring all passengers to stop talking, and it interrupts the radio, podcast, or music, and generally it's awkward to use voice commands during a phone call. Voice commands are probably fine for some low stakes input like asking to call someone, changing music tracks etc.
https://www.palisadeforum.com/threads/cant-see-buttons-in-br...
I much prefer buttons over a touch screen, but designers need to remember to make them readable.
Keep pushing touch controls, I keep not buying your shit.
Especially with those crappy tiny touch areas.