6 ms·

I’m genuinely on board with most of this, but it reads like satire. On topic, it is wild how dated even brand new car consoles feel. Luxury brands do a bit bet

I’m genuinely on board with most of this, but it reads like satire. On topic, it is wild how dated even brand new car consoles feel. Luxury brands do a bit better, but it’s still worse than my phone. Where do I sign up to overhaul vehicle UX?

thatoneuser 7y ago
Last time I got a new car the dipshit at the dealership was trying to get me to pay more cuz the car I wanted had a touchscreen. I told him I'd pay more if he'd take it out and put in one with buttons. Car consoles are such a gimmick...
- Skunkleton 7y ago
  Yeah, but unless you get the screen, you get a shitty sound system and no heated seats.
  - terryschiavo22 7y ago
    EDIT: Man I definitely replied to the wrong comment. Feel free to downvote me to hell.
    - suptroll 7y ago
      Wow, cool troll user name. Making fun of persistent vegetative states. Real nice. Real, real nice.
  - lemoncucumber 7y ago
    Yeah, that's my least favorite part of how buying new cars works. The dealerships have cars on the lot with various semi-arbitrary combinations of options, and if you want some other combination then the process of buying a car gets more complicated and expensive.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      Well, it's not like that just happens. It's a deliberate strategy to enable price discrimination. Calling it "semi-arbitrary" makes it sound like it isn't carefully planned. The whole game is to get everyone to buy either a budget or a luxury model and avoid selling a middle-of-the-road product for a fair price. I have read so many times where car enthusiasts complain that they can't get the options they want with a manual transmission. Well, it's perfectly logical - when one aspect of a product is the deciding factor for a subgroup of customers, and the seller knows it, it's more profitable to give them the worst of everything else. It's nothing personal, just optimization of the business.
      - leetcrew 7y ago
        > I have read so many times where car enthusiasts complain that they can't get the options they want with a manual transmission. Well, it's perfectly logical - when one aspect of a product is the deciding factor for a subgroup of customers, and the seller knows it, it's more profitable to give them the worst of everything else. It's nothing personal, just optimization of the business. I do actually think this is a special case. most people in america can't drive stick and don't want to learn either. for most cars that still have manual as an option, it saves you $800-1200 on the base trim of the car. so I imagine there's a weird bimodal distribution where one group of people wants manual just because it's the cheapest version of the car, while you also have enthusiasts who are willing to purchase a lot of the options (at least the performance related ones). either way, cars with manual transmissions are a fairly low volume market in the US. they can be pretty hard to move.
        whenchamenia 7y ago
        Oddly, I hear more groaning about not being able to buy manuals every day here. It sees more of a metro vs rural thing. Metro folk only want autos because traffic, and rural folk like the control, and feel of manuals more on smaller roads. Living near mountains manuals are hugely popular as they allow much safer driving by engine braking, while many will overheat their brakes. Other than a few fleet style trucks, most manual options in the usa are performance models.
  - thatoneuser 7y ago
    Shitty sound system and no heated seats anyway :/
rossenberg79 7y ago
Have you tried the new Audi A7’s interface? Pretty great, especially with CarPlay.
- NikolaNovak 7y ago
  Seriously? The one with TWO touch screens? If you can honestly make a claim that you can consistently and accurately change climate control on the bottom screen without taking your eyes off the road I will... well I don't even know. Disbelieve? :-/ https://www.caricos.com/cars/a/audi/2019_audi_a7/images/25.html https://www.caricos.com/cars/a/audi/2019_audi_a7/images/25.h...
  - Fins 7y ago
    Good lord, they went for that crap, too?! Damn! On the other hand the new-looking Q5 I got as a loaner couple months ago had a perfectly fine physical button interface, with a little touchpad on the MMI comsole you could use to scroll around (and apparently even write). That was quite good.
  - taurath 7y ago
    Wow they really doubled down (hehe). I wonder if it’s even driver oriented - my biggest pet peeve is a screen that’s low.
  - rossenberg79 7y ago
    Super easy, the buttons are big and easy to touch and provide haptic feedback.
- ken 7y ago
  That's another issue. It used to be that even the most basic car (like the cheap Geo Metro) still had a pretty decent user interface. Now it's: "well, if you don't like the crap at the low end, have you tried the latest $75K luxury sedan?"
usaphp 7y ago
Bmw has the best in business, they left climate, track, volume controls as separate physical buttons and their console is incredibly quick to respond and feels fluid like a phone. New Audi’s really made a bad decision to use two screens without physical buttons, both of the screens are little laggy too.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  I took a ReachNow from the airport and got one of the new 3-series and WOW. The dial in the center console beautifully splits this difference between touch screens and old-school tactile interfaces.
- neogodless 7y ago
  2015 Mazda 3 here. Has touchscreen but I usually forget that, and never use it. Dial is nice, like BMW. But... Laggy, buggy computer. So bad. Fortunately Mazda seems to be listening. 2019 loses the touch panel entirely and relies fully on knob and buttons! In videos, the screen looks super responsive. So at least not all hope is lost with every manufacturer...
- ahartmetz 7y ago
  BMW uses the Qt GUI framework in its center console AFAIK. Ford Sync 3 does, too. Those are some of the better and more responsive car GUIs. Disclaimer: I offer Qt services. And... I actually prefer cars without any screens for my own use.
  - usaphp 7y ago
    Screens are important in cars, for backup camera, bird view camera (incredibly useful), for everything else I use the head up display, I still don’t understand how more companies don’t adopt it, I can’t drive without it anymore, incredibly useful and does not take eyes off the road
saalweachter 7y ago
The new Chevy (Volt) HVAC interface has three separate toggles for panels, feet and defrost, and you can toggle any combination of them you want. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
- Sebguer 7y ago
  The last Chevy Volt.
  - saalweachter 7y ago
    I mean, I assume it is shared across many Chevy product lines, but I haven't done an exhaustive study. If it only existed on the later Volts and then disappears forever with their discontinuation, that makes the loss even sadder.
prawn 7y ago
Paul Graham had a tweet relevant to this recently: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1122803944206544897 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1122803944206544897 --- The two axioms that explain your experience with devices that contain software (except Teslas): I. It takes extraordinary effort to make software that's not horribly difficult to use. II. Companies whose main focus isn't software don't expend extraordinary effort on it. Arguably the reason Tesla is an exception is that it is actually a software company. ---
- ahartmetz 7y ago
  Measured in money and man-hours, car companies actually spend mind-boggling amounts on software. They largely just haven't figured out yet how to do it right. They also think that they are special as in better when they are much, much worse at software than other industries.

thatoneuser 7y ago

Last time I got a new car the dipshit at the dealership was trying to get me to pay more cuz the car I wanted had a touchscreen. I told him I'd pay more if he'd take it out and put in one with buttons. Car consoles are such a gimmick...

Skunkleton 7y ago
Yeah, but unless you get the screen, you get a shitty sound system and no heated seats.
- terryschiavo22 7y ago
  EDIT: Man I definitely replied to the wrong comment. Feel free to downvote me to hell.
  - suptroll 7y ago
    Wow, cool troll user name. Making fun of persistent vegetative states. Real nice. Real, real nice.
- lemoncucumber 7y ago
  Yeah, that's my least favorite part of how buying new cars works. The dealerships have cars on the lot with various semi-arbitrary combinations of options, and if you want some other combination then the process of buying a car gets more complicated and expensive.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    Well, it's not like that just happens. It's a deliberate strategy to enable price discrimination. Calling it "semi-arbitrary" makes it sound like it isn't carefully planned. The whole game is to get everyone to buy either a budget or a luxury model and avoid selling a middle-of-the-road product for a fair price. I have read so many times where car enthusiasts complain that they can't get the options they want with a manual transmission. Well, it's perfectly logical - when one aspect of a product is the deciding factor for a subgroup of customers, and the seller knows it, it's more profitable to give them the worst of everything else. It's nothing personal, just optimization of the business.
    - leetcrew 7y ago
      > I have read so many times where car enthusiasts complain that they can't get the options they want with a manual transmission. Well, it's perfectly logical - when one aspect of a product is the deciding factor for a subgroup of customers, and the seller knows it, it's more profitable to give them the worst of everything else. It's nothing personal, just optimization of the business. I do actually think this is a special case. most people in america can't drive stick and don't want to learn either. for most cars that still have manual as an option, it saves you $800-1200 on the base trim of the car. so I imagine there's a weird bimodal distribution where one group of people wants manual just because it's the cheapest version of the car, while you also have enthusiasts who are willing to purchase a lot of the options (at least the performance related ones). either way, cars with manual transmissions are a fairly low volume market in the US. they can be pretty hard to move.
      - whenchamenia 7y ago
        Oddly, I hear more groaning about not being able to buy manuals every day here. It sees more of a metro vs rural thing. Metro folk only want autos because traffic, and rural folk like the control, and feel of manuals more on smaller roads. Living near mountains manuals are hugely popular as they allow much safer driving by engine braking, while many will overheat their brakes. Other than a few fleet style trucks, most manual options in the usa are performance models.
- thatoneuser 7y ago
  Shitty sound system and no heated seats anyway :/

rossenberg79 7y ago

Have you tried the new Audi A7’s interface? Pretty great, especially with CarPlay.

NikolaNovak 7y ago
Seriously? The one with TWO touch screens? If you can honestly make a claim that you can consistently and accurately change climate control on the bottom screen without taking your eyes off the road I will... well I don't even know. Disbelieve? :-/ https://www.caricos.com/cars/a/audi/2019_audi_a7/images/25.html https://www.caricos.com/cars/a/audi/2019_audi_a7/images/25.h...
- Fins 7y ago
  Good lord, they went for that crap, too?! Damn! On the other hand the new-looking Q5 I got as a loaner couple months ago had a perfectly fine physical button interface, with a little touchpad on the MMI comsole you could use to scroll around (and apparently even write). That was quite good.
- taurath 7y ago
  Wow they really doubled down (hehe). I wonder if it’s even driver oriented - my biggest pet peeve is a screen that’s low.
- rossenberg79 7y ago
  Super easy, the buttons are big and easy to touch and provide haptic feedback.
ken 7y ago
That's another issue. It used to be that even the most basic car (like the cheap Geo Metro) still had a pretty decent user interface. Now it's: "well, if you don't like the crap at the low end, have you tried the latest $75K luxury sedan?"

usaphp 7y ago

Bmw has the best in business, they left climate, track, volume controls as separate physical buttons and their console is incredibly quick to respond and feels fluid like a phone. New Audi’s really made a bad decision to use two screens without physical buttons, both of the screens are little laggy too.

remarkEon 7y ago
I took a ReachNow from the airport and got one of the new 3-series and WOW. The dial in the center console beautifully splits this difference between touch screens and old-school tactile interfaces.
neogodless 7y ago
2015 Mazda 3 here. Has touchscreen but I usually forget that, and never use it. Dial is nice, like BMW. But... Laggy, buggy computer. So bad. Fortunately Mazda seems to be listening. 2019 loses the touch panel entirely and relies fully on knob and buttons! In videos, the screen looks super responsive. So at least not all hope is lost with every manufacturer...
ahartmetz 7y ago
BMW uses the Qt GUI framework in its center console AFAIK. Ford Sync 3 does, too. Those are some of the better and more responsive car GUIs. Disclaimer: I offer Qt services. And... I actually prefer cars without any screens for my own use.
- usaphp 7y ago
  Screens are important in cars, for backup camera, bird view camera (incredibly useful), for everything else I use the head up display, I still don’t understand how more companies don’t adopt it, I can’t drive without it anymore, incredibly useful and does not take eyes off the road

saalweachter 7y ago

The new Chevy (Volt) HVAC interface has three separate toggles for panels, feet and defrost, and you can toggle any combination of them you want. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Sebguer 7y ago
The last Chevy Volt.
- saalweachter 7y ago
  I mean, I assume it is shared across many Chevy product lines, but I haven't done an exhaustive study. If it only existed on the later Volts and then disappears forever with their discontinuation, that makes the loss even sadder.

prawn 7y ago

Paul Graham had a tweet relevant to this recently: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1122803944206544897 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1122803944206544897 --- The two axioms that explain your experience with devices that contain software (except Teslas): I. It takes extraordinary effort to make software that's not horribly difficult to use. II. Companies whose main focus isn't software don't expend extraordinary effort on it. Arguably the reason Tesla is an exception is that it is actually a software company. ---

ahartmetz 7y ago
Measured in money and man-hours, car companies actually spend mind-boggling amounts on software. They largely just haven't figured out yet how to do it right. They also think that they are special as in better when they are much, much worse at software than other industries.