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this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Some proposed design principles:
I would pay more to get a car with more buttons than you can comprehend and a small little infotainment system that allows you to play music than a super futuristic car with a iPad in the center and nothing else in the center console area.
physical buttons for the important stuff; stuff like setting interior RBG lighting color and intensity? that can go on soft buttons.
If a feature can go on soft buttons, it can stay at the fucking factory.
EQ for the sound system?
My 2004 Honda accord had a good EQ, and it was all controlled with 2 buttons and the radio tuning dial to adjust the levels.
There is no need for a touchscreen in a vehicle. A small screen for displaying information is one thing, but I should not be compelled to play with what amounts to an iPad when I’m driving a car.
If the sound system is why the touchscreen is in the car, the sound system can stay at the factory.
For real if I wanted RGB footwell lighting I would install it myself. And I did, in my first beater car, as a dumb teenager does. I thought it looked pretty cool.
But now as a grown man I want a car to start every time, go fast when I step on the pedal, and have AC like a refrigerator. If it's a truck I want it to pull heavy trailers and not get stuck in mud and THAT'S IT.
Currently driving a 2008 Crown Vic and a 1978 F350 on propane, both of which do exactly what I want.
Mazda. They’ve brought back physical buttons and have support for CarPlay if you want it.
I've also heard they are decent cars, at this point I'll just keep driving what I've got and hope that in a couple years, more manufacturers will return to making most things controllable by physical buttons.
Get a 2004-2009 car, yank the stereo out and throw an aftermarket headunit with android/carplay in. Best of both worlds!
Ugh one of our cars needs a new head unit, as its mid-2000s aftermarket unit has gone bad. But I can only get the dang thing halfway out. I can’t even get to seeing the wires in the back. No idea how it was put in, but it seems the wires are too short, maybe I have to remove the whole dashboard front thing?
2010-2012 will work as well if no tech package. My 2010 Lexus RX350 has no touchscreen, but still has knobs and a backup camera on the back mirror. It's wonderful.
No. 9 but for media volume, touch controls are garbage and gestures are even more garbage.
Looking at you, VAG.
A special place in hell is reserved for whoever the hell keeps putting capacitive buttons on cars, ESPECIALLY when they put them on the steering wheel!
Oh yeah those shitty VAG touch controls. Went to a customer with my employee in summer. When returning home we opened the sunroof to cool the car down quickly. Couldn’t close that mf for 10kms on the autobahn until everything cooled down. Absolutely horrible.
Wouldn't AC cool it down quicker? And more efficiently at autobahn speeds anyway, drag is worse than running AC at speed.
I don't disagree with you on the horribleness of the controls though. Worst part is, MB has gone the same route. I've got the last generation with physical HVAC buttons. I have no idea what my next car will be, but apparently Mercedes doesn't want me to buy their cars anymore. Mazda has come out as anti-touchscreen, which I admire, but it's going to be a hell of an adjustment in terms of suspension and drivetrain comfort.
The plan was to let the heat out for a couple of seconds until the ac was cooled down 😉
Had a Mazda in the past and driving a Honda now. The Japanese cars are often conservative and not as fancy as the European ones but usually they just work in my experience. They are often cheaper and maintenance is also cheaper. My 320HP Civic Type-R has the same maintenance costs then our Fiat Tipo with 120HP. Performance wise it was comparable to a A45 AMG which cost twice as much with maintenance costs about 2-3x of the Honda.
Mazda may be a smaller car brand but their combustion engines are often very innovative.
I mostly drive slightly bigger cars. So while I'm fairly sure the Japanese will beat the A-class in just about every metric, but they don't really have a good answer for C-class and above - outside of maybe Lexus, but a 3 year old Lexus is way more expensive than a 3 year old Mercedes. I buy my cars after a few years of depreciation, so I actually like the fact that German cars depreciate a lot in their first few years. But then Lexus doesn't really have good diesel engines like the Germans do, so fuel consumption differences alone will add up a lot.
To be clear, I don't really need or want any of the fancy features (aside from Carplay, which is starting to be ubiquitous), but just the suspension setup alone between a C-class and a Toyota Camry is vastly different. The 9 speed auto box is also excellent, to the point that I don't even feel like I'm driving a tiny 2 liter diesel with only 190HP.
Thankfully, all cars I've driven that had a touch screen also had some media buttons on the steering wheel. I'd prefer to have good old physical buttons in the center console, but at least you didn't have to use the touch screen.
Buttons on the wheel are better than a touchscreen, but they suffer from being all backwards sometimes, as you use the wheel for it's intended purpose. The old Peugeots had this thing behind the wheel, you can controll the radio with, using just 2 fingers, without looking. It's the peak user experience. Nothing will ever beat it. I feel a suden urge to buy a beer for whoever came up with it.
https://www.cartronics.co.uk/media/Peugeot-207-Double-Din-Radio-Upgrade/Peugeot-207-Steering-Wheel-Controls.jpg
French cars regularly had sometimes strange looking but often quite useful quirks.
...who tf...which car maker has gestures? If you're gonna gesture how about you gesture your damn hand over to the button?
I think mostly VAG (VW-owned brands) and BMW, maybe Mercedes as well. VAG uses them to sense your hand approaching the touchscreen to hide additional items "when you don't need them", BMW uses full-on hand waving to navigate menus.
Dont worry.
They will make it all voice controlled in the future!
"Alexa, take me Starbucks and play latest episode of "Ow, My Balls".
Why 10? It's not like you do that while driving.
Thing is every knob saved saves time and money during manufacturing. So the companies want to put as much as they can on the touch screen. I don't mind if they do that with things I do before driving, I mind a lot if it's something I have to do during the drive.
Yeah they do it to save money, and then charge you out the ass for "oOh LoOk ItS tHe FuTuRe"
Well prices should come down once competition from the Chinese manufacturers picks up. Hopefully at least.
In China you can get a VW ID.3 for 15000€ and a Tesla model 3 for 30.000€.
In China, you can get a VW ID.3 manufactured by a state-owned and subsidized company in China. The same is true for the Tesla Model 3.
Basically, the Chinese government is subsidizing electric car (and battery) production (and enforcing domestic protectionist policies) so of course the same version of the car is cheaper in China. The US goes with a different approach, by providing tax write-offs to people who purchase electric cars which is vastly less efficient (and more expensive to US taxpayers).
China hasn't subsidized the EV industry in years. Don't believe everything you hear from your 60 year old neighbour.
The fact is batteries have come down in price so much that that price of the car is absolutely economically viable. They are just milking us for all we are worth in the west.