> Now, Euro NCAP is not insisting on everything being its own button or switch. But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn, and any SOS features
This is much more reasonable than I assumed. Unlike seemingly most people here I have no problem whatsoever with fan controls or audio controls or whatever on the touchscreen, as long as it is responsive (of course the vast majority of car touchscreens are not, but some are). However, the absence of a physical speed control for the windshield wipers is the single worst design flaw of Teslas. Or at least it was, until they removed the physical turn signal controls. I'm very much in favor of requiring safety critical controls that must be used frequently or urgently to be physical.
But even then, how do you find the A/C or volume control on a touch screen without taking your eyes off the road, without accidentally touching something else? You just can't feel your way to the volume knob. Sure, you are a responsible driver and would only do that at a traffic light or other completely safe situation, but I don't know how many accidents touch controls in cars already caused with less responsible drivers, trying to adjust their AC while driving by an elementary school.
A/C is automatic and I don't need to touch it the vast majority of the time. While driving the most I might want to do is adjust the temperature, and since it's not safety critical I can choose a convenient time. It's at the bottom of the screen so it is easy to do by grabbing behind the bezel and only requires a quick glance to align your thumb. In practice I glance at physical A/C controls when adjusting them too, so I don't see a big difference here.
If you really need to adjust the temperature so often and can't stand the thought of using the touchscreen, you can assign that function to the left scroll wheel.
Yes you can. My last three cars have had a volume knob under the left thumb. My current car has a second volume knob behind the gearstick, and the A/C is the only analog dial along the center console. I can easily adjust both without looking away.
I know it will cost me karma to point it out, but in a Tesla you can use voice control to adjust your AC/radio/navigation while your eyes are on the road and your car's 10 eyes are on the road.
I don't change the AC while I'm in motion. All my cars have auto AC so I rarely touch them even as the temperature changes outside. I probably adjust the AC a handful of times a year. I'd rather not waste a lot of dashboard space on buttons that practically never get pressed, I'd rather have my map be even bigger and easier to quickly glance at and have more space to browse my media collection while stopped.
I don't understand how so many people have come across cars with seemingly terrible auto AC systems. Even my old 2000 Honda Accord had a competent auto AC system. I haven't had manual AC on any of my cars in decades. Whenever I rent a car it's always infuriating having to constantly muck with the AC system.
I can’t believe that Tesla still ships cars without a center-press horn button.
I own a Model S Plaid, and the horn button’s location on the yoke can generally only be reached by the driver’s right hand. Even more dangerous, its position in space changes dramatically any time you are in the middle of a turn. The horn button is not easy to press in an emergency.
Same story with the turn signals.
If you are in the middle of a turn and you have rotated the yoke 180-degrees, your turn signal buttons are now upside-down, and on the other side of the yoke. I have owned my car for a year and a half, and there are still times when I have to look at the yoke mid-turn to figure out which turn signal button is which.
100000% this. It's mind boggling that they managed to ship a car without the center horn, and it's even more mind-boggling that the NHTSA let and is still letting them.
I got used to the turn signals and the wipers because I use them a lot. But I still haven't gotten used to the horn and the lights because these functionalities are used very infrequently, so there is no muscle memory for them at all. I've had this car for over a year now.
my current car (tk barina) has two horn buttons just to the left and right of where you expect a centre horn to be and it drives me insane. i dont typically feel the need to use the horn but whenever i do i have to make the conscious decision to press my thumb in on one of those specific spots because theyre also small enough that using the heel of your palm to do it feels wrong
Given that you are most likely to use the horn to prevent an collision, and that during collisions the airbag deploys.. I would say that the center of the wheel is just about the worst place to put the horn button.
Slapping yourself in the face somehow seems worse than the airbag deploying properly.
Volume control is a very commonly used feature in cars. That should definitely should be a physical button. I drive a Lynk & Co (reskinned Volvo XC40) and it has a rotary knob on the center terminal for fan speed, temperature, and volume. Which are all within reach without me having to look or lean over. There's also a volume button on the steering wheel next to my thumb, which is great.
The only annoying part is that the left button pad on the wheel is the absolute worst. It's essentially a d-pad with a center press, but it's one single button cover. Which leads to a lot of wrong clicks.
But you are not legally required to use the volume control regularly in order to drive safely. You are not even legally required to have any kind of volume control in your car.
You are legally required to have and use the turn signals. You are legally required to have and use the windshield wipers (because you need to be able to see the road when it's raining). Same is true for the horn and hazard lights - those are safety-critical features, with their use at least partially regulated by law.
While I agree that volume control should be a physical button due to my personal taste, I would not go so far as to mandate it legally to be a physical button, with the reason being that it is not a safety-critical feature. The market can figure this out by itself. But for safety-critical features whose swift and correct use is mandated and regulated by law, I would absolutely mandate them to be provided to the user in a way that supports the swift and uninterrupting use expected from the driver, and that means: physical controls, placed reasonably reachable.
Is there a car without a physical volume control? Teslas have it on the steering wheel.
What really kills me is my wife's Civic has no pause button at all, physical or otherwise. And it autoplays media on your phone when you get in. Don't want your phone to play whatever random YouTube video you happened to click on hours ago? Gotta pick up your phone to pause it there. And this doesn't happen right away, oh no, it takes at least a minute into your drive for the Bluetooth to wake up.
Properly defrosting/defogging the windows would be more than just a fan control. Ideally you want to ensure the AC compressor and heat are both running and you need to change the vent settings.
Far better to have a dedicated defrost button next to the driver's normal controls that does it all as a single toggle rather than have the driver make multiple adjustments. Which is what I have on both of my cars, one of which people complain about how it's just a giant touchscreen.
If you live in a place where this is frequently required, in a Tesla you can put the defrost button on the shortcut bar at the bottom of the screen, where it only requires a quick glance to align your thumb to activate it. Which is actually easier than many cars with physical controls that may require multiple button presses and/or knob turns to configure all of the correct climate settings for defrosting in the current conditions.
> Tesla is probably at greatest risk here, having recently ditched physical stalks that instead move the turn signal functions to haptic buttons on the steering wheel.
Tesla planned that everything in the car would be automated, including driving. In such case people don't need a thought out UI and responsive controls and all that can be cut down to either save money or to focus on media entertainment for the passengers. That's why they replaced steering wheel with a yoke, buttons with screens etc. Unfortunately they forgot that car need to be fully automated first, and then redesigned later. Not the other way around.
I would call them virtual buttons rather than true physical buttons, as they are capacitive touch buttons that don't depress and are missing a defined physical boundary. Granted, they are fixed in place and don't move. Except that, as you point out, they do move...
You’re supposed to signal before you turn the wheel.
Way too often I see people signaling as they turn, not because they are trying to communicate with other road users but because it’s the law. Indicate your intent first and then take the indicated action.
I want at the least a physical recirculate/bring air from outside button.
The use case is coming up behind a vintage truck that was made before they even thought of pollution standards on a winding mountain road where you can't overtake and you need to pay attention to the road. And you also need to set the a/c to recirculate before you suffocate.
For audio... with radio dying or dead I guess you can just run Spotify the whole trip. I'd still like volume and mute buttons.
My Jeep Wrangler has a physical volume knob that may or may not elicit a change in volume when turned within the first 30 seconds of starting the car. Which can be literally deafening if you had on e.g. a podcast at 75% volume when you turned the car off and it turned back on to the radio. Some of these things need a dedicated circuit.
The 2022 Acura MDX has that too, but it's not a "may or may not", it just doesn't. Thankfully they fixed it in the 2023 model, but I still don't understand why it's not fixed in the 2022 model since it's obviously software and both get OTA updates.
Even if I wouldn't be hating Musk for his position re actual freedom and his apparent respect for murderous dictators, these moves would solidly cement Tesla as a company I wouldn't buy a car from.
Stupid, arrogant moves nobody asked for pushed down the throats of unsuspecting users. A colleague's model 3 died during rain (apparently its such a solidly built car that a bit more than normal amount of rain can kill it for good, got replaced without questions which indicates this is a well known issue). Newer version didn't have physical turn signals. He was almost crying, an early adopter with a lot of love for the company that evaporated in an instance. Its not every day that car manufacturer actively tries to increase chances of people getting killed and acts like all is fine.
I'm going one step further and arguing that if a function has no physical control, it's not essential but just a distraction and should be done away with.
I don't hate that Tesla tried to do something different with indicators. I think there are some issues with how stalks work, and thinking about how to make cars better and safer is good. Complicated stalks that make adjusting your wipers feel like playing a game of Bop-It? Total pain in the ass. And assuming something is well designed because that's how it's been done for decades is obviously silly.
But that doesn't make it wrong to do the research, go through the design process, and come to the conclusion that, in the end, putting blinkers on a stalk is still better than the alternatives proposed. It reeks of change for the sake of being different, rather than an actual innovation.
My biggest issue with the choice is that, on a wheel, indicator buttons are constantly moving. And when the buttons are right next to each other, it makes it significantly easier to indicate the wrong direction. Or have to take your eyes off the road to find the indicator when your wheel isn't straight (suppose you're trying to exit a roundabout)
And then with the lack of dashboard on some teslas, there's the knock on problem of having to look away from the road to see which way you're indicating if you think you've indicated incorrectly, rather than the indicator arrow clearly flashing at the bottom of your field of vision.
Tesla wiper? Just push the wiper button on the left stalk and you can cycle through the speed settings with the left funky switch (multi function button) in addition to the on screen display options that then pop up. Very easy to do.
> Just push the wiper button on the left stalk and you can cycle through the speed settings with the left funky switch
Yes, they added this relatively recently. For the first few years I owned the car this was not possible. Also, guess what, it still sucks! More steps than a physical control, fiddly because of the short timeout, and still requires an extra step of looking at the touchscreen because you can't know which way to push the wheel without finding out the current setting. Is it on "Auto" or "Off"? They're at opposite ends of the menu. Acceptable for something less important like setting the A/C temperature; definitively not acceptable for something safety critical like wipers.
Imagine that someone rents a car and is tired + every manufacturer has their own konami code, or secret button to start the wipers.
That's how accidents happen.
That's just lame, sorry to say it. I'll start with the end by saying that most probably voice command won't work in a downpour, for the simple reason that downpours are usually associated with lots of noise that will cancel out your voice commands. And all the other "options" involve taking your eyes off the road and looking at a big screen in order to adjust wiper speed, all this while there's a potential downpour happening. That is a very big no from me. And, no, "automatic" wipers never do their job perfectly when it comes do downpours, you always have to adjust them in one way or another.
Granted, that guy that posted it was from Australia so that they probably don't have that sort of downpour problem over there (the same goes for places in the US like California or Texas).
No just make buttons. Screens can hickup, scroll weird, etc. also you don't get any tactile feedback.
I don't wan't a touchscreen keyboard on my laptop, and the travel is already small enough - i say bring back tactility! The dead cold glass orb has destroyed so much.
How about the voice commands for these? ("Wipers 1-slash-4"). I just got my first Tesla, MYLR, and even though it's annoying not having the stalks given the rain sensor is absolute junk the voice command seems to work 98% of the time. The voice command is activated from a button on the steering wheel - it may require a network connection though. I haven't tried the fog lights, it may not have a command, but there's apparently a shortcut with the left stalk where you pull or push and a quick light menu comes up - 2 clicks instead of 1 but seems reasonable - I could never find my fog lights quickly enough on most of my previous cars anyway.
My only concern with the wipers would be for an emergency, ie the street washers drive by and suddenly I have no visibility, but for those situations I have the button on the left stalk that fires the wipers on demand.
Let's check all those items with the Tesla Model 3 2024 manual
To engage a turn signal, press the corresponding arrow button on the left side of the steering wheel. (The buttons move on the Highland steering wheel)
Turn signals:
To turn on the hazard warning flashers, press the button on the drive mode selector located on the overhead center. All turn signals flash. Press again to turn off.
Hazard lights:
Overhead console drive mode selector with arrow pointing to hazard warning light button in the middle.
If a severe crash is detected by your vehicle, the hazard warning flashers will automatically turn on and flash quickly to increase visibility. Pressing the hazard warning flashers once will return the lights to their normal cadence. Pressing a second time turns all hazard warning flashers off.
To sound the horn, press and hold the center pad on the steering wheel.
You can access wiper settings by touching the wiper button on the steering wheel
Press the wiper button on the steering wheel to wipe the windshield.
Press and hold the wiper button to spray washer fluid onto the windshield. After releasing the button, the wipers perform two additional wipes then, depending on vehicle and environmental conditions, a third wipe a few seconds later. You can also press and hold the wiper button for a continuous spray of washer fluid—the wipers perform the wipes after you release.
Whenever you press the wiper button on the steering wheel, the touchscreen displays the wiper menu, allowing you to adjust wiper settings. Press the left scroll button on the steering wheel left or right to choose your desired setting.
>> I have no problem whatsoever with fan controls or audio controls or whatever on the touchscreen, as long as it is responsive (of course the vast majority of car touchscreens are not, but some are).
It was -27f/-33c this morning when I started my car. At those temperatures ALL touchscreens generally become slow and unresponsive, especially when wearing mittens. I want the defrost/fan/temperature controls on a physical switch. I also don't want a screen that isn't happy unless it is getting a full 12v/14v. Not all car batteries will give that when cold. Frankly, I'd be happy with a series of valves ... anything other than a touchscreen.
Fyi, automatic wipers are a nightmare in winter. It is very easy for them to break if caked in snow. Standard procedure being to start the car first and let it warm up as you remove the snow and ice. So you need them to be on a physical switch to ensure they are off prior to turning the car on.
A physical control changes position and stays in that position so you can feel it to know if your turn signal is on for example.
Real button changes position when you press it.
Haptic button is flat surface with vibrating motor inside that buzzes so it "feels" like a click. Like in a smartphone.
The ones I have seen have a lag, so you don't immediately know if your button press was registered or not.
Not Teslas, unfortunately. The auto wipers are trash and always will be because Tesla refuses to add a dedicated sensor. It's a double whammy: handicapped auto mode and awful manual controls.
Cars for 15-20 years have had good automatic wipers, they're just becoming more widely available now (and evs are generally in the price range where it's expected). Well... except for Tesla. They decided that a person can tell when wipers are needed just by using their eyes, so certainly they could save a buck or so and do it using just a camera.
> However, the absence of a physical speed control for the windshield wipers is the single worst design flaw of Teslas.
My 2015 Model S has a stalk with a rotary switch for wiper control that includes several automatic and manual modes and speeds.
But I was loaned a Model 3 when my Model S was being repaired and I hated it because most of the stalks had been removed making things like cruise control and the radio much more awkward to use.
Around 10 years ago, I started looking into buying a new car. I couldn't believe the number of cars that switched to touch controls even 10 years ago. It boggles my mind just how car makers thought it was safer/easier to have touch in a car while one is driving. I refused to buy any car that replaced physical buttons with touch controls 10 years ago and I still have this rule today.
Then again, it also boggles my mind how car makers in the US continue to use flashing red lights as the turn signal instead of yellow lights. You can barely see the red light in sunlight and it's harder to tell the red light from brake lights. Furthermore, the same car will have yellow signal lights in the front and side. So yellow signal lights in front and side, red in the back. Just make it all yellow for turn signal!
> It boggles my mind just how car makers thought it was safer/easier to have touch in a car while one is driving.
It is likely that neither safety nor ease of use were part of the automaker's "thought process".
It is much more likely that a first misguided "designer" created the first touch panel control and somehow sold it to "management" as being "futuristic" and/or "ahead of the competition". And once the first car model arrived with one, the rest, like firefox to chrome, felt the need to play the imitation game for fear of being seen as not as "trendy" or "futuristic" as that other guy. I.e., purely the "fashion trend" aspect.
Then, as they proliferated, the reduced BOM costs from removing every other previous mechanical control was reverse justified as the reason for continuing to add them to ever more car models.
My understanding is that the real driver is in being able to decouple the design of the controls from the rest of the interior design. I read somewhere that being able to design those in parallel with fewer dependencies makes a significant different in getting the car into production on time.
There are other reasons of course - planned obsolesence is a big one. Why would they want cars to work after the primary owner is done with it? With software-everything they can lock the car to the first 3 or 4 owners, and then remotely kill it.
It doesn't even have to be actively disabled, just stop providing the replacement head unit as a part because "we don't have that software anymore".
There's a simple selling point to touch panels that most people here seem to be missing: it decouples the software/firmware from the hardware.
Car manufacturers want to be able to change cars after they are sold. This can be in the positive via OTA updates that fix firmware issues or in the negative by providing "subscription" features that provide a passive income beyond the initial sale. Tesla has been paving a path here with its grandiose claims of "full self-driving" and industrial manufacturers like John Deere have been experimenting with bringing smartphone-style DRM and rent-seeking to motor vehicles. Replacing as many "hardcoded" physical controls with flexible and fungible virtual controls is a logical part of the transition.
Why bother producing five different physical "editions" if you can just produce one and then downgrade it in four different ways by gimping the firmware or disabling controls in the UI? This way you can also upsell the features later or put them in a subscription model.
It's the same reason why headlights are white and taillights are not (unless reversing, in which case the tail becomes the head temporarily, and thus white reversing lights.)
I know Technology Connections complains about it all the time, but I don’t feel like he’s even made a case, he just asserts over and over “and we ALL agree it’s awful” as if he asserts it strongly enough it will become true.
Why is it a problem? How is a red blinker actually measurably worse than an amber one?
I have never had any sort of issue interpreting a blinking red taillight as turning? With red, you can more easily tell the direction of travel and the aesthetics of a single color are far nicer. I frankly don’t see the problem.
Commenter a couple levels up says you can’t see red blinkers in the sunlight? I don’t think that’s true on any measurable level, amber is a far closer match in hue to sunlight than red.
> It boggles my mind just how car makers thought it was safer/easier to have touch in a car while one is driving.
Does anyone actually think that though? Or was it considered “good enough” in light of its other benefits like reducing costs, reducing BOM, eliminating part design work, reducing wiring complexity, adding flexibility and customizability, (potentially) increased reliability, making it easier to jam the multitudes of controls and options a modern car has into a more usable and understandable interface, etc.
Don’t get me wrong, when I bought a new car, one of the selling points was the manufacturer was one of the few to still offer physical control and navigation of the touch screens (in fact the touch functionality is completely disabled at any speed faster than 5 mph). But I don’t think “safer and easier to use while driving” has ever been the driver for touch interfaces in cars.
I would the main driver was economics. It would be easier and cheaper to manufacture one big screen in the middle compared to a bunch of physical controls with wiring.
Also makes it easier to change things later in the design if you do not have a bunch of physical controls to move.
Do not forget the massive "tablets are the future of computing" hype because Apple released a thing. Touchscreens were super cool by association. It was all pretty stupid. I say that as someone who creates mostly software for touchscreens... using keyboard and mouse because they are much better input devices. You just need the space and the budget for them.
> Then again, it also boggles my mind how car makers in the US continue to use flashing red lights as the turn signal instead of yellow lights. You can barely see the red light in sunlight and it's harder to tell the red light from brake lights.
I'm also starting to see really thin - single narrow LED strip - turn signals that are barely visible next to the much larger headlight nearby.
are you me? I did the exact same thing in roughly the same timeframe. Went to a toyota dealership, when I realized all the vehicles were touch I asked if I could get one without and they told me they don't do that anymore.
I walked out and just continued driving the corolla I had (still have it to this day). When I needed a minivan I purchased an older honda odyssey and fixed it up.
> You can barely see the red light in sunlight and it's harder to tell the red light from brake lights
I can't say that I've ever had trouble seeing the red turn signals in the sun. Being able to see them in the sun from a few hundred feet away is legally required in most, if not all, states.
Obvious limitation is something like Maps and media.
My guess ones that use mechanical dials (i.e. Lexus until ~ year ago) cause more distraction than touchscreen by simply being harder to use and taking more time to solve your problem.
Given how well chatgpt's voice recognition works - why not just put it on all cars!
I've only used a Lexus that had a touchpad. I do however regularly use a Mazda with its commander knob, and it is far safer than a touchscreen in my opinion. You can do most navigation without looking at the screen, with just an occasional glance to confirm you're doing what you think you're doing. Whereas a touchscreen requires constant attention while you're manipulating the screen.
The only thing that annoys me about Commander Knob + Android Auto is that AA still forces attention breaks as you scroll through big lists (e.g. Spotify playlists) which is really stupid because you're not usually looking at the screen if you know you need to scroll say 75% down. You're just looking occasionally to see how far you've made it. By making the task take longer, it's reducing safety.
The biggest safety issue by far with Mazda+AA is Google's baffling regression in handling voice input for common tasks while driving.
> Obvious limitation is something like Maps and media
I would love to see some data to see how dangerous it is to operate Maps and Media apps on a touch screen while operating a moving vehicle. This is data modern automakers should have access to. I suspect the answer is that it does reduce safety.
Check how Mazda did it with their ring control. I love it in mine. No touch screen needed.
It's amazing that accessibility is such an afterthought that having a physical wheel that tabs forward and backward through a UI as the primary means of using it is unfathomable until it's actually implemented.
I took a ride with an owner of a brand new BMW with glass cockpit and minimal buttons. He complained to the dealer about not being able to find any of the actions in the endlessly nested menus. The dealer's response: Use voice controls.
He tried it, and it's even worse than Siri in terms of reliability. Absolute unmitigated disaster.
Not all drivers can speak. Not all drivers speak in a way a voice control can reliably understand them. Not all drivers are in environments where voice commands can be easily understood, like loud music. If you are driving a car you likely have the ability to push a button.
I'm not entirely sure you've ever used voice controls.
I've never had experience with any car voice controls which didn't make me want to drive my car into a divider just to end the pain. Voice controls are so frustrating to use that I'm sure they are more distracting to use than even a touchscreen. I might be able to keep my eyes on the road easier with voice controls, but, my brain is going to be quickly annoyed and focused on trying to suss out why the voice control system is not understanding me, or am I using the wrong phrase, or do I need to put the windows up (impossible for me 6+ months of the year) so the car can hear me better?
It's like trying to pair bluetooth with a non-carplay (or non-android auto -- which I haven't used but heard good things about) with virtually all OEM and many aftermarket receivers. A uniquely frustrating experience which makes me wonder if QA departments at automakers actually exist.
IMO, voice controls are good additional control modality, but not a good primary one, since the discoverability is zero. (And also they're usually just...not very good.)
Causing drivers to get road rage because they can't figure out the correct phrasing for voice controls probably also isn't a good idea.
Google Assistant still regularly misinterprets what I say <.<
Not to mention most voice assistants are fucking awful slow in language. It's like they pick a rural dweller as their speech model instead of a city slicker.
Just give me a button instead, it'll be quicker and less distracting.
Being able to honk the horn or turn the windshield wipers on from the back seat would certainly be an interesting feature, especially for people with kids.
I've heard some of the newer cars have pretty good voice controls, especially on the more expensive models. However, the companies tend to put these behind a subscription wall, which I hate. I don't want my car to be always connected to the cloud. I'll do my navigation via my phone, and nothing else requires connectivity (except perhaps if I had an EV and wanted to schedule charging stops).
Some reactions are instinctive and don’t require thought.
Imagine mid-sipping a drink and something falls out of a truck… garble garble garble —-crash.
Voice controls in an emergency wouldn’t work unless you require like 500 feet (maybe more) car to car separation. And then you have people with temporary voice conditions (losing voice) and permanent voice conditions (mute/dumb)
Like voice control is a reliable method of communication lol. Have an accent? Sorry can’t use your car.
Mute?
Cough?
Lost your voice at a concert?
Have the windows down?
Come on…
This was the primary reason I bought my 2024 Mazda3, instead of alternatives in market. The Mazda was the only option that had physical controls for everything. In fact it disables the touch screen altogether when you exceed 10mph, forcing the use of physical controls. It works flawlessly with wireless carplay
Yep. My 2011 Mazda3 is great but getting on in age and we'd like to switch to an EV. Sadly Mazda's not in the running at all :( Probably will get either the Ioniq 5 or Kia EV6, whichever has fewer touch screen controls.
I am waiting for the day when mechanical keyboard enthusiasts finally put kailh hot swap sockets into a car's controls. Then we can have debates about whether car controls should be tactile, linear, or clicky. GMK keycaps for German cars. Japanese cars with Topre switches. Anime dye-sub keycaps on ricers. QMK firmware forked and re-written in MISRA-C. It would be grand.
I hate clicky keyboards, because there's usually a pretty quick on-screen result from hitting the button, and you might press keys tens of thousands of times in a day. Love me some tactile.
But in a car when you might interact with controls a couple dozen times per trip? Absolutely clicky.
MG4, when I turn on A/C or defog, the navigation is overlayed by an A/C controls screen, which must be tapped in a specific small area to get rid of it. I still fumble with it every damn time after six months of use.
Not to mention that on cars like Tesla, UI updates will change the location of these buttons.
This drives me INSANE. The other one: some of the Tesla UIs feel like they were made with "minimalism" in mind. For instance the rear defroster vs the windshield defroster. I still, 3 years into my model Y, have no idea which is which, and every time I need to defrost the front windshield it's like a fight against the HVAC system and buttons and touchscreens to make it do anything.
I love my tesla, probably to the point of being annoying, but I **HATE** the ridiculous "minimalist" UI stuff, and I absolutely hate it when they push a UI update which moves things around.
How is it possible to love a car that does things you hate when there are other cars at the same price that does everything the object of your love does, and doesn't do the things you hate?
I don't have a problem so much with the touch screen itself. It's a waste for a lot a things and I frequently just turn my screen off, but it is nice to be able to bring up a map with directions and arrival estimates.
But I am constantly disappointed by just how awful and useless the software is.
Need some directions? Sorry, I can auto-play this music station you haven't used in a week, but if you want those directions you looked up on your way out the best I can do is (maybe) have the address in your recent search history.
Want to resume the music you were streaming from your phone through your media center? Yeah, just give me a few minutes to load up this other UI and...Are you sure you have a music app on your phone? Maybe you just need to add it to the car app? Here, let me bring that up on your phone screen. Hold up. There's some audio coming through the bluetooth, I'll just play that.
Want to see why the "Check Engine" light came on? Oh, well for that you need to buy a $50 dongle with Bluetooth and install an app on your phone.
I hate them in all applications that don't benefit from touch and even in many that do. For example, electric cookers. Despite being easier to clean I still find them absolutely infuriating to interact with, plus cats can activate them.
Most of the time, though, they are implemented simply because it's cheaper. There's no benefit to speak of. In fact, I think the only device for which a touch interface works is a smartphone. I can't think of any others.
For vehicles manufactured as of approximately January 2024: To sound the horn, press the middle of the steering yoke (or steering wheel). For vehicles manufactured prior to approximately January 2024: To sound the horn, press and hold the horn button on the right side of the steering yoke (or steering wheel).
"press and hold" doesn't seem like it'd be easy to do if all you wanted was a quick toot.
It's weird that Tesla is being called out over the horn.
In driver's ed they tell you to not to use your horn when you're annoyed at other drivers - only use it if there's an imminent danger to avoid a crash.
But you better hope it works because if it doesn't, the airbag behind it explodes.
...
I'm not sure Tesla improved the situation, but it definitely seems like the situation has room for improvement.
> And specifically the horn button being capacitive co-located with the voice assistance and windscreen wiper buttons.
... Wait, is this a real thing, or just a joke about them being bad at UX? If a real thing... goodness, I'm quite surprised that doesn't break some mandatory safety rule.
Touché! It's interesting how early vehicles were very different in their controls, but seemed to mostly converge and stabilise for a few decades, before again diverging and changing rapidly.
The Model T (Ford) had a throttle on the steering wheel and 3 pedals, but not the ones you'd expect today:
My 1995 Renault Clio had it as a button on the indicator stalk. Worked very well, in my view. Much easier than pressing the centre of the steering wheel. There's often no need to even move your hand!
My grandmother used to have a car where the horn was a button at the end of one of the stems. I think it was on the same stem that controlled the wipers. I wish I remembered what kind of car it was. I think it was from the 40s.
Tesla Cybertruck uses steer-by-wire with almost no redundancy. Electric power steering was bad enough to cause crashes, this is just ambulance chaser's dream.
Peugeot through the 505 put the horn button on a stalk on the steering column. The 505 ended production for most of the world in the early 90s and I've not seen any of their more modern cars so I've no idea how long that design lasted.
The French made some really… interesting choices with their cars.
Except for radios. It's very annoying that every radio had a different UX, likely in the name of innovation and differentiation. I think that's a safety issue for e.g. rental cars.
The radio is a feature in which a move to change station should not take more than a fraction oft a second. If it takes more you should stop. That is valid for any action but for some reason people start adjusting their entire audio setup while driving...
Electronic power steering already exists. It's used in a lot of cars, and has been for at least 10 years. Your car may have one of these systems in it.
In an electric power steering system there are steering angle and torque sensors that know what direction the wheel is turned an how hard it has turned, and this is connected to an electric motor that powers the gears to move the steering rack.
There are still regulations in place that require a mechanical connection to the steering wheel and rack, but try and turn the wheel with the car off and see if your wheels move... But when the car is running when you turn the wheel you're just a voting remember in the system.
There are no such regulations for throttles. Pretty much every car since the late 80s has electronic throttle control and there are no mechanical linkages from pedal to throttle body.
Experimenting? It’s been around for a long time. My 1999 Jetta had it. It’s smoother and you can control the fuel adder on throttle opening from all angles.
Sure, it’s not instant, but stabbing the gas in a non dbw is not great either.
In electric cars there is no other way than dbw
And in that situation it probably was easy to use because most likely you REALLY needed it, which these laws are trying to make sure happens: it's easily accessible.
Readit News
This is much more reasonable than I assumed. Unlike seemingly most people here I have no problem whatsoever with fan controls or audio controls or whatever on the touchscreen, as long as it is responsive (of course the vast majority of car touchscreens are not, but some are). However, the absence of a physical speed control for the windshield wipers is the single worst design flaw of Teslas. Or at least it was, until they removed the physical turn signal controls. I'm very much in favor of requiring safety critical controls that must be used frequently or urgently to be physical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_S._McCain_and_Alnic_M...
A/C is automatic and I don't need to touch it the vast majority of the time. While driving the most I might want to do is adjust the temperature, and since it's not safety critical I can choose a convenient time. It's at the bottom of the screen so it is easy to do by grabbing behind the bezel and only requires a quick glance to align your thumb. In practice I glance at physical A/C controls when adjusting them too, so I don't see a big difference here.
If you really need to adjust the temperature so often and can't stand the thought of using the touchscreen, you can assign that function to the left scroll wheel.
Yes you can. My last three cars have had a volume knob under the left thumb. My current car has a second volume knob behind the gearstick, and the A/C is the only analog dial along the center console. I can easily adjust both without looking away.
I don't understand how so many people have come across cars with seemingly terrible auto AC systems. Even my old 2000 Honda Accord had a competent auto AC system. I haven't had manual AC on any of my cars in decades. Whenever I rent a car it's always infuriating having to constantly muck with the AC system.
“Hey Google, set the driver’s side heated seat to one”
“Hey Google, turn off the steering wheel heater”
I own a Model S Plaid, and the horn button’s location on the yoke can generally only be reached by the driver’s right hand. Even more dangerous, its position in space changes dramatically any time you are in the middle of a turn. The horn button is not easy to press in an emergency.
Same story with the turn signals.
If you are in the middle of a turn and you have rotated the yoke 180-degrees, your turn signal buttons are now upside-down, and on the other side of the yoke. I have owned my car for a year and a half, and there are still times when I have to look at the yoke mid-turn to figure out which turn signal button is which.
So stupid.
I got used to the turn signals and the wipers because I use them a lot. But I still haven't gotten used to the horn and the lights because these functionalities are used very infrequently, so there is no muscle memory for them at all. I've had this car for over a year now.
The only annoying part is that the left button pad on the wheel is the absolute worst. It's essentially a d-pad with a center press, but it's one single button cover. Which leads to a lot of wrong clicks.
You are legally required to have and use the turn signals. You are legally required to have and use the windshield wipers (because you need to be able to see the road when it's raining). Same is true for the horn and hazard lights - those are safety-critical features, with their use at least partially regulated by law.
While I agree that volume control should be a physical button due to my personal taste, I would not go so far as to mandate it legally to be a physical button, with the reason being that it is not a safety-critical feature. The market can figure this out by itself. But for safety-critical features whose swift and correct use is mandated and regulated by law, I would absolutely mandate them to be provided to the user in a way that supports the swift and uninterrupting use expected from the driver, and that means: physical controls, placed reasonably reachable.
What really kills me is my wife's Civic has no pause button at all, physical or otherwise. And it autoplays media on your phone when you get in. Don't want your phone to play whatever random YouTube video you happened to click on hours ago? Gotta pick up your phone to pause it there. And this doesn't happen right away, oh no, it takes at least a minute into your drive for the Bluetooth to wake up.
Fan controls are important to remove fog on the windows. I should be able to enable it without looking away the road.
Far better to have a dedicated defrost button next to the driver's normal controls that does it all as a single toggle rather than have the driver make multiple adjustments. Which is what I have on both of my cars, one of which people complain about how it's just a giant touchscreen.
> Tesla is probably at greatest risk here, having recently ditched physical stalks that instead move the turn signal functions to haptic buttons on the steering wheel.
The turn signals wasn’t removed, they moved them to the steering wheel as physical buttons. Which ofc isn’t optimal, because you turn it…
Way too often I see people signaling as they turn, not because they are trying to communicate with other road users but because it’s the law. Indicate your intent first and then take the indicated action.
You're supposed to indicate before you turn, to be fair.
I want at the least a physical recirculate/bring air from outside button.
The use case is coming up behind a vintage truck that was made before they even thought of pollution standards on a winding mountain road where you can't overtake and you need to pay attention to the road. And you also need to set the a/c to recirculate before you suffocate.
For audio... with radio dying or dead I guess you can just run Spotify the whole trip. I'd still like volume and mute buttons.
Stupid, arrogant moves nobody asked for pushed down the throats of unsuspecting users. A colleague's model 3 died during rain (apparently its such a solidly built car that a bit more than normal amount of rain can kill it for good, got replaced without questions which indicates this is a well known issue). Newer version didn't have physical turn signals. He was almost crying, an early adopter with a lot of love for the company that evaporated in an instance. Its not every day that car manufacturer actively tries to increase chances of people getting killed and acts like all is fine.
But that doesn't make it wrong to do the research, go through the design process, and come to the conclusion that, in the end, putting blinkers on a stalk is still better than the alternatives proposed. It reeks of change for the sake of being different, rather than an actual innovation.
My biggest issue with the choice is that, on a wheel, indicator buttons are constantly moving. And when the buttons are right next to each other, it makes it significantly easier to indicate the wrong direction. Or have to take your eyes off the road to find the indicator when your wheel isn't straight (suppose you're trying to exit a roundabout)
And then with the lack of dashboard on some teslas, there's the knock on problem of having to look away from the road to see which way you're indicating if you think you've indicated incorrectly, rather than the indicator arrow clearly flashing at the bottom of your field of vision.
Also this: https://youtube.com/shorts/3eKcDOHVZWc?si=-jL4o4Bhu-2y0ibj
Doesn't cover the left multi function button feature after short pressing the wiper button.
(Model 3, 2022, Australia).
Yes, they added this relatively recently. For the first few years I owned the car this was not possible. Also, guess what, it still sucks! More steps than a physical control, fiddly because of the short timeout, and still requires an extra step of looking at the touchscreen because you can't know which way to push the wheel without finding out the current setting. Is it on "Auto" or "Off"? They're at opposite ends of the menu. Acceptable for something less important like setting the A/C temperature; definitively not acceptable for something safety critical like wipers.
Imagine that someone rents a car and is tired + every manufacturer has their own konami code, or secret button to start the wipers. That's how accidents happen.
Granted, that guy that posted it was from Australia so that they probably don't have that sort of downpour problem over there (the same goes for places in the US like California or Texas).
I don't wan't a touchscreen keyboard on my laptop, and the travel is already small enough - i say bring back tactility! The dead cold glass orb has destroyed so much.
Why? What's the difference? You fiddle with these as well while you're driving, and they're also dangerous and distracting.
Normal refresh cycle period for tablets(iPads) is ~5 years.
Normal life of a car is 10 years (2x).
That means that by year 7 or so, multi-touch performance in autos starts to seriously lag consumer tablet market.
Perhaps we need to have a replaceable/swappable infotainment console now
The fog lights are much worse
My only concern with the wipers would be for an emergency, ie the street washers drive by and suddenly I have no visibility, but for those situations I have the button on the left stalk that fires the wipers on demand.
To engage a turn signal, press the corresponding arrow button on the left side of the steering wheel. (The buttons move on the Highland steering wheel)
Turn signals: To turn on the hazard warning flashers, press the button on the drive mode selector located on the overhead center. All turn signals flash. Press again to turn off.
Hazard lights: Overhead console drive mode selector with arrow pointing to hazard warning light button in the middle.
If a severe crash is detected by your vehicle, the hazard warning flashers will automatically turn on and flash quickly to increase visibility. Pressing the hazard warning flashers once will return the lights to their normal cadence. Pressing a second time turns all hazard warning flashers off.
To sound the horn, press and hold the center pad on the steering wheel.
You can access wiper settings by touching the wiper button on the steering wheel
Press the wiper button on the steering wheel to wipe the windshield.
Press and hold the wiper button to spray washer fluid onto the windshield. After releasing the button, the wipers perform two additional wipes then, depending on vehicle and environmental conditions, a third wipe a few seconds later. You can also press and hold the wiper button for a continuous spray of washer fluid—the wipers perform the wipes after you release.
Whenever you press the wiper button on the steering wheel, the touchscreen displays the wiper menu, allowing you to adjust wiper settings. Press the left scroll button on the steering wheel left or right to choose your desired setting.
Off/Auto/Intermittent slow/fast/Continuous slow/fast
It was -27f/-33c this morning when I started my car. At those temperatures ALL touchscreens generally become slow and unresponsive, especially when wearing mittens. I want the defrost/fan/temperature controls on a physical switch. I also don't want a screen that isn't happy unless it is getting a full 12v/14v. Not all car batteries will give that when cold. Frankly, I'd be happy with a series of valves ... anything other than a touchscreen.
Fyi, automatic wipers are a nightmare in winter. It is very easy for them to break if caked in snow. Standard procedure being to start the car first and let it warm up as you remove the snow and ice. So you need them to be on a physical switch to ensure they are off prior to turning the car on.
Real button changes position when you press it. Haptic button is flat surface with vibrating motor inside that buzzes so it "feels" like a click. Like in a smartphone.
The ones I have seen have a lag, so you don't immediately know if your button press was registered or not.
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My 2015 Model S has a stalk with a rotary switch for wiper control that includes several automatic and manual modes and speeds.
But I was loaned a Model 3 when my Model S was being repaired and I hated it because most of the stalks had been removed making things like cruise control and the radio much more awkward to use.
Then again, it also boggles my mind how car makers in the US continue to use flashing red lights as the turn signal instead of yellow lights. You can barely see the red light in sunlight and it's harder to tell the red light from brake lights. Furthermore, the same car will have yellow signal lights in the front and side. So yellow signal lights in front and side, red in the back. Just make it all yellow for turn signal!
It is likely that neither safety nor ease of use were part of the automaker's "thought process".
It is much more likely that a first misguided "designer" created the first touch panel control and somehow sold it to "management" as being "futuristic" and/or "ahead of the competition". And once the first car model arrived with one, the rest, like firefox to chrome, felt the need to play the imitation game for fear of being seen as not as "trendy" or "futuristic" as that other guy. I.e., purely the "fashion trend" aspect.
Then, as they proliferated, the reduced BOM costs from removing every other previous mechanical control was reverse justified as the reason for continuing to add them to ever more car models.
There are other reasons of course - planned obsolesence is a big one. Why would they want cars to work after the primary owner is done with it? With software-everything they can lock the car to the first 3 or 4 owners, and then remotely kill it.
It doesn't even have to be actively disabled, just stop providing the replacement head unit as a part because "we don't have that software anymore".
Car manufacturers want to be able to change cars after they are sold. This can be in the positive via OTA updates that fix firmware issues or in the negative by providing "subscription" features that provide a passive income beyond the initial sale. Tesla has been paving a path here with its grandiose claims of "full self-driving" and industrial manufacturers like John Deere have been experimenting with bringing smartphone-style DRM and rent-seeking to motor vehicles. Replacing as many "hardcoded" physical controls with flexible and fungible virtual controls is a logical part of the transition.
Why bother producing five different physical "editions" if you can just produce one and then downgrade it in four different ways by gimping the firmware or disabling controls in the UI? This way you can also upsell the features later or put them in a subscription model.
Technology Connections channel had a video about that a while back:
https://youtu.be/O1lZ9n2bxWA?si=xKRgMFK1DFBrB3i0
Flashing yellow = car is pointed towards you
It's the same reason why headlights are white and taillights are not (unless reversing, in which case the tail becomes the head temporarily, and thus white reversing lights.)
Why is it a problem? How is a red blinker actually measurably worse than an amber one?
I have never had any sort of issue interpreting a blinking red taillight as turning? With red, you can more easily tell the direction of travel and the aesthetics of a single color are far nicer. I frankly don’t see the problem.
Commenter a couple levels up says you can’t see red blinkers in the sunlight? I don’t think that’s true on any measurable level, amber is a far closer match in hue to sunlight than red.
Does anyone actually think that though? Or was it considered “good enough” in light of its other benefits like reducing costs, reducing BOM, eliminating part design work, reducing wiring complexity, adding flexibility and customizability, (potentially) increased reliability, making it easier to jam the multitudes of controls and options a modern car has into a more usable and understandable interface, etc.
Don’t get me wrong, when I bought a new car, one of the selling points was the manufacturer was one of the few to still offer physical control and navigation of the touch screens (in fact the touch functionality is completely disabled at any speed faster than 5 mph). But I don’t think “safer and easier to use while driving” has ever been the driver for touch interfaces in cars.
I mainly gripe about losing physical buttons for main functions such as temperature control, radio/music control, lights, windshield wipers, etc.
Also makes it easier to change things later in the design if you do not have a bunch of physical controls to move.
But if any car makers had done any proper UX testing, they'd quickly find out that physical buttons in a car is a non-negotiable.
I'm also starting to see really thin - single narrow LED strip - turn signals that are barely visible next to the much larger headlight nearby.
I walked out and just continued driving the corolla I had (still have it to this day). When I needed a minivan I purchased an older honda odyssey and fixed it up.
This is probably a US government regulation thing. Because those same cars sold elsewhere in the world does have flashing yellow lights as indicators.
I can't say that I've ever had trouble seeing the red turn signals in the sun. Being able to see them in the sun from a few hundred feet away is legally required in most, if not all, states.
Do you have trouble seeing brake lights too?
Zero-force, zero-feedback, zero-travel controls should be illegal for such functions.
My guess ones that use mechanical dials (i.e. Lexus until ~ year ago) cause more distraction than touchscreen by simply being harder to use and taking more time to solve your problem.
Given how well chatgpt's voice recognition works - why not just put it on all cars!
The only thing that annoys me about Commander Knob + Android Auto is that AA still forces attention breaks as you scroll through big lists (e.g. Spotify playlists) which is really stupid because you're not usually looking at the screen if you know you need to scroll say 75% down. You're just looking occasionally to see how far you've made it. By making the task take longer, it's reducing safety.
The biggest safety issue by far with Mazda+AA is Google's baffling regression in handling voice input for common tasks while driving.
Because saying "roll down the left window" is still a fucking nuisance compared to a click of a button.
I would love to see some data to see how dangerous it is to operate Maps and Media apps on a touch screen while operating a moving vehicle. This is data modern automakers should have access to. I suspect the answer is that it does reduce safety.
It's amazing that accessibility is such an afterthought that having a physical wheel that tabs forward and backward through a UI as the primary means of using it is unfathomable until it's actually implemented.
He tried it, and it's even worse than Siri in terms of reliability. Absolute unmitigated disaster.
I've never had experience with any car voice controls which didn't make me want to drive my car into a divider just to end the pain. Voice controls are so frustrating to use that I'm sure they are more distracting to use than even a touchscreen. I might be able to keep my eyes on the road easier with voice controls, but, my brain is going to be quickly annoyed and focused on trying to suss out why the voice control system is not understanding me, or am I using the wrong phrase, or do I need to put the windows up (impossible for me 6+ months of the year) so the car can hear me better?
It's like trying to pair bluetooth with a non-carplay (or non-android auto -- which I haven't used but heard good things about) with virtually all OEM and many aftermarket receivers. A uniquely frustrating experience which makes me wonder if QA departments at automakers actually exist.
“Hey car, signal left”
“Hey car, reverse”
You’re kidding, right? Even if this worked far better than Siri, it’s too slow.
Google Assistant still regularly misinterprets what I say <.<
Not to mention most voice assistants are fucking awful slow in language. It's like they pick a rural dweller as their speech model instead of a city slicker.
Just give me a button instead, it'll be quicker and less distracting.
"BREAK!"
"BREAAK!!!!"
"OH GOD PLEASE BRAKE!"
crunch
Problems can occur if it the voice system brakes (pun intended). ;)
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Imagine mid-sipping a drink and something falls out of a truck… garble garble garble —-crash.
Voice controls in an emergency wouldn’t work unless you require like 500 feet (maybe more) car to car separation. And then you have people with temporary voice conditions (losing voice) and permanent voice conditions (mute/dumb)
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It has physical buttons for everything except the radio... much better vehicle.
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But in a car when you might interact with controls a couple dozen times per trip? Absolutely clicky.
- Tap the fan direction button
- wait 2 seconds for it to load
- tap windscreen and feet. Each selection lags at least 1 second
- tap fan speed
- drag a narrow, laggy slider up/down to the desired position
I hate it. The auto setting doesn’t blow the feet hard enough when it’s wet, to dry your feet. It’s wet about 9 months of the year here.
Another bad UX is to change the drive mode:
- press the physical button
- tap the screen to select the desired mode
- tap a tiny back button (there is no timeout to auto go back to previous screen)
You would think the physical button would toggle through the modes, but no !
Of course, you have to do this the "correct way", which in and of itself requires a bit of experimentation to learn.
No amount of interface versatility/flexibility can come close to touching the utility of not having to take your eyes off your subject. NONE.
This drives me INSANE. The other one: some of the Tesla UIs feel like they were made with "minimalism" in mind. For instance the rear defroster vs the windshield defroster. I still, 3 years into my model Y, have no idea which is which, and every time I need to defrost the front windshield it's like a fight against the HVAC system and buttons and touchscreens to make it do anything.
I love my tesla, probably to the point of being annoying, but I **HATE** the ridiculous "minimalist" UI stuff, and I absolutely hate it when they push a UI update which moves things around.
It sounds like an irrational love for the car.
But I am constantly disappointed by just how awful and useless the software is.
Need some directions? Sorry, I can auto-play this music station you haven't used in a week, but if you want those directions you looked up on your way out the best I can do is (maybe) have the address in your recent search history.
Want to resume the music you were streaming from your phone through your media center? Yeah, just give me a few minutes to load up this other UI and...Are you sure you have a music app on your phone? Maybe you just need to add it to the car app? Here, let me bring that up on your phone screen. Hold up. There's some audio coming through the bluetooth, I'll just play that.
Want to see why the "Check Engine" light came on? Oh, well for that you need to buy a $50 dongle with Bluetooth and install an app on your phone.
Most of the time, though, they are implemented simply because it's cheaper. There's no benefit to speak of. In fact, I think the only device for which a touch interface works is a smartphone. I can't think of any others.
Are there really cars where the horn is not a physical button/ring on the steering wheel?
IMHO the driving UX peaked in the 1960s, and was largely unchanged into the 2000s, until touch screens started taking over.
Compare:
https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads...
https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/2010...
https://www.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2017/07/Tesla-Mod...
At least the steering wheel and pedals still behave the same.
And specifically the horn button being capacitive co-located with the voice assistance and windscreen wiper buttons.
Which in a safety situation was difficult to locate and press.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/models/en_us/GUID-DEB259C...
For vehicles manufactured as of approximately January 2024: To sound the horn, press the middle of the steering yoke (or steering wheel). For vehicles manufactured prior to approximately January 2024: To sound the horn, press and hold the horn button on the right side of the steering yoke (or steering wheel).
"press and hold" doesn't seem like it'd be easy to do if all you wanted was a quick toot.
Sometimes even Elon admits he was wrong.
In driver's ed they tell you to not to use your horn when you're annoyed at other drivers - only use it if there's an imminent danger to avoid a crash.
But you better hope it works because if it doesn't, the airbag behind it explodes.
...
I'm not sure Tesla improved the situation, but it definitely seems like the situation has room for improvement.
... Wait, is this a real thing, or just a joke about them being bad at UX? If a real thing... goodness, I'm quite surprised that doesn't break some mandatory safety rule.
Yes: https://antiquecarmuseumofiowa.org/wp-content/uploads/1913-F...
Well ... "are" is kinda stretching it...
The Model T (Ford) had a throttle on the steering wheel and 3 pedals, but not the ones you'd expect today:
https://www.fordmodelt.net/images/ford-model-t-controls_smal...
Don't give them ideas...
The French made some really… interesting choices with their cars.
For a while Ford was putting the horn on the turn signal stalk, I hated it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/l08q...
For now, companies are experimenting with drive by wire. Don't think I like that concept.
In an electric power steering system there are steering angle and torque sensors that know what direction the wheel is turned an how hard it has turned, and this is connected to an electric motor that powers the gears to move the steering rack.
There are still regulations in place that require a mechanical connection to the steering wheel and rack, but try and turn the wheel with the car off and see if your wheels move... But when the car is running when you turn the wheel you're just a voting remember in the system.
There are no such regulations for throttles. Pretty much every car since the late 80s has electronic throttle control and there are no mechanical linkages from pedal to throttle body.
You’ve never had to give someone a “hey don’t back into me” toot in a parking lot?
You’ve never seen your friend Ricky, on the sidewalk?
99% of time there is absolutely no reason to honk. People only do it because the button is there and they're safely insulated from getting punched.
https://youtu.be/lv8wqnk_TsA?si=V4rPj1L3W5uZz_2J
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