I own a Prius. The center-mounted instruments were weird for about 5 minutes, then a total non-issue. I concur. I've done the button dot thing. Or rather, I di

I own a Prius. The center-mounted instruments were weird for about 5 minutes, then a total non-issue. I concur. I've done the button dot thing. Or rather, I did it with velcro and stickyback sandpaper, because the dash lights in my old Pontiac went out and it was more fun to make it tactile than fix the lights. I realized I could quickly distinguish hook velcro, loop velcro, and 3 grits of sandpaper, so that gave me 5 "colors" to work with. I coded the HVAC controls, the radio presets, and the rear defroster controls. That's about all I used on a regular basis. It was great. Previously I could find these controls without looking, but knowing I was on the right one meant groping to the end of the button row and counting back. My eyes never left the road, but my attention definitely faltered. Once they were tactile-coded, I had instant confirmation, and it took a lot less attention to interact. Modern cars tend to be the complete opposite of this pure-tactile experience. The Lincoln Touch console, with its capacitive controls that activate before you even register that you've touched them, are the absolute worst. You can't grope over to a control without looking, or you'll change a dozen other things on the way. Touchscreens are only slightly better, in that they tend to have borders you can follow with your fingers, and buttons are often placed along the edges. But not always. On the Prius touchscreen, I can get in the ballpark without looking, glance down to fine-adjust my finger placement, and get my eyes back up to the road even as my finger makes the selection. But that only works on the radio presets which are along the edge of the screen. Input source selection goes to a shit-tastic "pretty 3d" screen where the sources' display order can change, so you absolutely have to read the display to make a selection. (The steering-wheel copy of the "mode" button can also cycle between some, but not all, sources. It's worse than useless.) I've spent some time in a Model S and I can't love the touchscreen implementation. It's not the worst I've seen (that trophy goes to Lincoln, hands-down), but it's way more distracting than it needs to be. I feel like it was designed as a showpiece first, an interaction method second, and a reliable cockpit control not at all.