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Controlling everything in a car through screens is a safety hazard. It's insane that's even allowed.
I just bought a newish car and would not even consider any without physical buttons for climate. It really helped narrow the options, haha.
There are very few core controls and they should absolutely be physical.
I hate screens as much as anyone but I honestly don't think there's much that can't be put behind one.
Climate controls need to be physical, though.
They are safety critical when your windscreen fogs over.
Radio, too. For emergency broadcasts.
And obviously any driving controls, like lights, indicators, cruise control, wipers, ...
Basically, anything that was present in a car 30 years ago needs to have physical buttons.
Disagree about radio (if itβs really that urgent to receive an emergency broadcast you can pull over for a moment), but yeah the rest seem like itβs best to have physical controls for everything else.
The volume down is important.
That's usually on the steering wheel for a while now. I do agree with more physical buttons though.
just because it is doesnβt mean it shouldnβt be regulated to be
Also, it tends to be easier to find the volume knob or dedicated volume keys than trying to see if the label on the steering wheel is for volume, skip tracks or cruise control. Not as important on your car, but it comes into play for rentals and/or borrowed cars.
That's theoretically correct, however, when picking safety standards you should go by how most people would be expected to act, not by ideal scenarios. Is someone commuting to work going to pull over to change the media source or radio station? Probably not. So the controls should minimize how long the driver will look at the console and have their hand off the steering wheel. Media buttons on the steering wheel can seem superfluous, but it helps keep people less distracted.
It's insane that as of now it's up to manufacturers to self-regulate.
I would also ban touch sensitive fixed controls. My father's Avalon has dedicated controls for the HVAC but they're touch sensitive, so you set the climate controls to 80C and full fan if you just wipe dust off the panel while the car's on.
You should be able to train your hand on the control, get a good grip on it, and then move it in such a way that a control input is realized. It shouldn't have to beep at you to tell you it's done a thing.
I can turn the air conditioner in my pickup on and off by feel alone, same with the basic radio controls.
VW id3, maybe the whole id series, has this bullshit. I test drove the id3 a couple of months ago. Buttons in the wheel are touch, but you can push them as well which feels clunky. rant warning! Giant freaking screen that got mad at me for trying to adjust the ac while driving (supposedly I tap it too fast, and got a time-out). Stupid LEDs under the windshield that tries to communicate stuff by lightning up in either side or move across and shit, that was really confusing. It even had mood lighting. Wtf, in a car?!? Putting the car in sports mode, to get an idea of how it can drain the battery on the motorway, changed the mood from blue to red.
Stupidest fucking car I've ever driven. Went with a fully optioned zoe instead. 5k⬠less for the same year, and actual buttons for stuff. Although I'd like to meet the engineer, who thought sticking buttons behind the wheel where they're hidden, was a good idea.
I want to be able to replace my infotainment system without hassle or loss of functionality
The good old days when the first thing you did when buying that old beater was change the radio to one with CDs or even MP3s... Of course if you didn't have the budget for that you could always get one of these cassettes with a jack cable to plug into your disc man, the only issue is it would skip when you hit a pothole.
Unless you had a fancy discman with anti-skip. Reminds me of driving my dad's 1963 VW Beetle in high school before we restored it.
Also... Good old days? I did that with my minivan barely three years ago with an Alpine ILX-407... But that one doesn't have a CD player because I don't use CDs anymore. I haven't used CDs in a car since high school, now that I think about it... I just kept my iPod connected to that car, hidden from view.
they already did a study that touchscreens are too distracting and dangerous, buttons are more intuitive and quicker to use, without looking at the menu.
2015 Honda - perfect. Buttons when I wanted buttons. Touch when I wanted touch, and I never had to use it when driving.
2023 Ford - Yeah, it's bad and dangerous.
The first time I heard that many car manufacturers are getting rid of traditional buttons and odometers in favour of touchscreens, I already thought that it is dangerous.
As always, corporations don't give af.
I don't see an issue to have digital odometer because you don't interact with it
For real, instrument cluster I'm okay having digital. It's not something I need to touch, usually there's steering wheel buttons to interact with it.
Having your whole radio/climate/etc all on one screen with menus and shit is stupid. You can't just reach over and change a setting without looking. I miss when everything was "analog". My first car was a 91 mazda rx7, and I knew exactly where every control was, didn't have to look at anything to operate it.
Digital is fine for things that don't need to be touched. Arguably, it's better.
Separate analog odometers are better, because it's a single point of failure otherwise. If one breaks, I can still read all other instruments (fuel, engine temp, speed and/or rpm, whichever failed)
My car is pretty old and doesn't have any screens. I was using a rental car last week for a few days and I was definitely missing my physical buttons. I had to ask the guy in the passenger seat to change things for me because whenever I tried to without taking my eyes off the road I'd almost never hit the right buttons. Especially when I was going over bumps on the road.
Ford, in their infinite wisdom, decided to make the touchscreen pressure-sensitive, but the flat physical buttons capacitive. Which means that it's super easy to accidentally turn on the driver's seat heater if you dare use the volume knob, impossible to use any of the physical buttons if you have normal gloves on, and very inaccurate to use the touchscreen with those same gloves on.
They know it, too, because when I had a 2013 Fusion, the overhead console with the dome light buttons was the same capacitive bullshit, and my 2015 Fusion has a regular button. (Apart from these design flaws, I love the car, which is why I replaced one with the other.)
Europe is being awesome once again!
Bring back physical keys!
I don't even mind the option of being controlled in the screen, so long as there are also physical buttons. Radio and climate control should be easily accessible by physical buttons. Also, I really hate the newer aesthetic of looking like someone just jammed a tablet into the consol. There no contouring or anything.
But if thereβs less screens then where will manufacturers put the advertising???
No no no, cars need the least amount of software, no touch and all buttons. And 0 OTA. Zero, Nada. And the only software that should be there is that very minimal radio and some dash functions controllers, that's it. I'm so sick of having a phone on wheels. It's a car, and can be called "death on wheels" and drivers need the most attention they can.
Cars have had a multitude of controllers (which means software) for over 30 years now. It's the cellular connection you don't want or need.
The only way I would ever have a connected car is if the software was under my control and could be self-hosted. Nothing crazy, just stuff like weather, traffic, and maybe remote diagnostics. But that's just my nerdy side coming out.
Both of my cars are fairly modern (2008, 2015), but neither have any sort of connection to the outside world, and despite both having touchscreen interfaces, all critical functions are button-operated.
That's what I meant. I know that there has to be some software. That's why I mentioned zero OTA. So the modem. We don't need that. No one asked for it. They use it to syphon our personal data and sell it to the insurance companies.
good
i kinda wonder if this is motivated as a non tariff trade barrier to chinese cars designed for the china market which loves apps, touch screens and karaoke in your car π€
Maybe but probably not. It's just basic common sense that all car manufacturers need to get on board with. Maybe there's just a coincidence that touchscreens and no physical buttons are cheaper to produce and the Chinese brands that you're referencing are also targeting cheaper production at the cost of road safety.
My experience with country level regulation suggests yes. Usually this sort of thing is targeted at protecting domestic firms from other EU firms. There is always some good sounding reason to do it.
In this case I don't mind at all.
I remember back in the mid 2000s with my flip phone a T9 texting. Could text and drive without looking away from the road because of muscle memory. Once I got a touch screen I realized that wasn't the case anymore. So imagine this anecdote with car buttons to touch screens.
Zero is the correct number of touchscreens for a car. This has seemed obvious to me since the first time I saw one and I've never understood how anybody could think otherwise.
If you want an in-car navigation system, that seems like a good application for touchscreens.
I prefer my 2014 car to anything new i have tried. Buttons are just better.