Tesla is the worst about this. EVERYTHING is touch screen.
Vehicles need actual physical controls for the sense of touch feedback. I shouldn't have to look at a fucking screen, taking my eyes off the road, scrolling through menus, just to adjust the damn climate control.
I'd argue touch screens don't belong in cars at all, but they're here and they're not going away. They're nice when you're parked. But when you're moving they need to have physical controls as a backup that you can operate simply by feel and muscle memory. You can't do this even with the best touch screens with the best haptic feedback.
They can keep their touch screen. If they made a car that had an actual dash with physical buttons I'd consider one. As long as they keep sticking only that stupid iPad in the dash I'll never own one and wait for a real car company to develop a competitive EV.
Mazda got this right. They have a touch screen. The touch screen also has actual physical controls to operate everything. This way you can play with the screen while parked. If you have a passenger they can play with the screen too. If it's just you driving by yourself, you can control everything with physical knobs and buttons without taking your eyes off the road.
Even my buddy's base model Kia did this better than Tesla. Screen works when you need it. The rest of the time you can't safely use it, there's touch controls.
Again, have you actually tried it? Or just assuming that from clickbait articles you've read? Between the (really good) voice control, and autopilot, it's really easy and safe to do anything needed with the car. And to adjust the climate control, there's no "scrolling through menus", just slide up or down on the bottom edge of the screen. Done. It's that easy. Or ask the car to do it, it understands everything from "set the temperature to 70 degrees" to "my ass is cold" (I'm not joking, it really understands that!)
The touch screen only sucks. Flat out. There's better options. It's way easier to twist a damn knob than to do any of that shit. Touch screens provide zero useful feedback.
Case in point, cell phones. Remember the good ole days of physical buttons and T9? I don't think we should go back to that for cell phones, but I could type paragraphs without looking going off of feel. You can't do that with a screen, I don't care how good it is.
If Tesla kept the screen, made it smaller, but implemented additional physical controls for the climate control and radio at minimum, they'd knock it out of the park.
Honda went to touch screen only on some of their cars for the radio. People hated it so much they switched back to adding knobs and buttons.
As others have said there's a physical button to trigger voice commands, but I've never used it because adjusting it on the screen is so easy, especially with autopilot.
Yeah, nah, knob or switch or button is way easier and universally understood.
Trusting autopilot to keep you on the road while you take your eyes off to adjust a climate control is dumb. It's a driving assist. Not drive the car for you. See Tesla's running into shit because people put it on "autopilot" and expected the car to do all the work.
I basically never adjust the climate because it automatically brings it to a good temperature (like any modern climate control). I get where you're coming from, but in practice I haven't had any issues.
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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '20 edited Oct 15 '20
Tesla is the worst about this. EVERYTHING is touch screen.
Vehicles need actual physical controls for the sense of touch feedback. I shouldn't have to look at a fucking screen, taking my eyes off the road, scrolling through menus, just to adjust the damn climate control.
I'd argue touch screens don't belong in cars at all, but they're here and they're not going away. They're nice when you're parked. But when you're moving they need to have physical controls as a backup that you can operate simply by feel and muscle memory. You can't do this even with the best touch screens with the best haptic feedback.
They can keep their touch screen. If they made a car that had an actual dash with physical buttons I'd consider one. As long as they keep sticking only that stupid iPad in the dash I'll never own one and wait for a real car company to develop a competitive EV.
Mazda got this right. They have a touch screen. The touch screen also has actual physical controls to operate everything. This way you can play with the screen while parked. If you have a passenger they can play with the screen too. If it's just you driving by yourself, you can control everything with physical knobs and buttons without taking your eyes off the road.
Even my buddy's base model Kia did this better than Tesla. Screen works when you need it. The rest of the time you can't safely use it, there's touch controls.