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> As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars. You are viewing the 'need' from the end user per

• TheGRS 7y ago
  Are knobs and plastic moldings that expensive though? I'm not sure this is really a driving factor. Touch screens have marketing appeal (at least from the seller's perspective), I have to think having a shiny touch screen on your new Mazda is simply just trying to get more people to purchase a new car and nothing more.
  • smackay 7y ago
    There are lots of wires and connectors that come with mechanical controls. Everything need to be certified to make sure you don't have a recall of a million or two vehicles because the air-conditioning dials break after 6 months. All that must be crazy expensive compared to solid state electronics.
    • JangoSteve 7y ago
      None of this is untrue with touchscreens. They also have wires and connectors and must be certified.
      • ThePirateofOz 7y ago
        And every single application loaded and installed, software library, SDK and license has to be rolled up into the BOM for every headunit sold/installed.
        • laughinghan 7y ago
          It seems obvious to me that one team of software engineers doing testing and diagnostics on a piece of software is way cheaper than training and then paying entire factories to do testing and diagnostics on each button and knob. (Not to mention we're talking about like, volume controls. Not exactly the most complicated and expensive kind of software to engineer.)
          • bluGill 7y ago
            Not to mention if you screw up the software an update is generally cheap and easy. If your button is messed up you have to pay for a mechanic to tear apart the entire dash. Of course you need to get the touch screen reliable. A touch screen is more complex than a button, but if we call it the cost of 10 buttons, a touch screen replaces more than 10 buttons... For common functions separate buttons are better for UX. However the touch screen is cheaper.
      • laughinghan 7y ago
        They have 2. One for power and one for data. Usually they're replacing a lot more than 2 buttons/knobs.
        • JangoSteve 7y ago
          > They have 2. One for power and one for data. I don't think I've ever seen a touch screen with only two wires. For one thing, even power requires two wires, not one. Data for a touch screen typically requires more than one wire as well, especially considering there are two completely distinct types of data a touchscreen must transmit, those being display output and touch input. Most touch screens I'm aware of have wire connections more like this: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-2-4-color-tft-touchscreen-breakout/resistive-touchscreen https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-2-4-color-tft-touchscree... > Usually they're replacing a lot more than 2 buttons/knobs. Not usually. Other than the Tesla, most cars retain almost all of their knobs/buttons in addition to the touch screen. In fact, the linked article in the OP says they're basically replacing the touch screen input with a single volume knob that lets you additional tilt and push it. Other cars, like BMW with the iDrive, usually have a single knob that lets you rotate and scroll through menus and push to select. Granted, it's not a simple knob, since it requires multiple degrees of input, but even a plastic knob that allows rotating, tilting, and pushing is probably cheaper than a touch screen when shared across models and mass produced. I still think the bigger savings is probably the software updates required to constantly support and make your vehicle's physical input compatible with every new update of Android Auto and Apple Car Play, which the auto-makers have no control over and can only ever play catch-up. At least with a touch screen, they know that's where the Android and Apple engineers spend their own time making compatible. The other place it probably saves is designing and laying out the interior, since it's easier to design an interior with fewer purpose-focused inputs. I'm not sure though if the touch screen would actually be easier though, since it can't be broken up across different small areas, and the entire thing has to be within both reach and active field of view. Especially the screens on top of the dash, since those often are designed to retract, which means the space they retract into needs to be designed around the HVAC and electrical systems between the firewall and dash. Either way, both of these savings though would be on the design and engineering side, not the bill of materials.
  • giobox 7y ago
    I imagine they are that expensive. Even low volume car manufacturers often "borrow" switchgear from mainstream brands to avoid the cost of making custom switches. This is why any reader fortunate enough to afford a modern Aston Martin will find the cabin filled with a lot of Mercedes switchgear, as one example. Go back farther than that and Aston were owned by Ford, which is why mid-2000s Astons are filled with very cheap feeling physical Ford controls from this era. Etc, etc. Parts sharing is critical to affordable production. Touch screens are staggeringly cheap now, as anyone with a Raspberry Pi and too much free time can attest, and fits virtually any car, as opposed to switch gear design which often requires the rest of the dash to fit with the design of the button or knob too. A screen mounting location is usually just a rectangular hole in a dash.
  • jwr 7y ago
    > Are knobs and plastic moldings that expensive though? If you consider the entire cost, yes. Every BOM item has a huge cost associated with it, and it's price only a small fraction. Consider that for every item you need to: * secure supply for the next 10 years or so * organize purchasing and put it into the supply chain * design assembly instructions, teach workers how to assemble it * design and implement testing procedures * design and implement diagnostics to figure out which specific component has failed * maintain it and keep it available for your service network for the next 10-15 years * deal with unexpected failure rates and be ready to re-design in case of problems * also, every knob is actually not one component, because it needs to be connected to something, which implies wires and connectors (the most problematic components in electronics) and multiples all of the above several times. Look at it this way and suddenly you really want to minimize the number of individual components and replace them all with a single touchscreen. Especially given that you can then deliver crappy software and the market will bear it, because we have been trained to expect and accept crappy software. But I do agree that the marketing appeal is there, too, although I think some people are waking up.
    • elihu 7y ago
      > Especially given that you can then deliver crappy software and the market will bear it, because we have been trained to expect and accept crappy software. I'd put it differently; I'd say we've been trained to expect anything with (user-visible) software to be crappy, and to accept it because we have no alternative.
      • dublin 7y ago
        That's especially true for automotive SW and interfaces, which raise dreck to a whole 'nother level. For a whole lot of reasons, I don't expect to ever buy a car much newer than about 2010 for the rest of my life. Avoiding (ob)noxious systems and interfaces is a large part of that reason.
        • patrick5415 7y ago
          I’m with you. Im not that old but new cars really have no appeal to me. Will be interesting to see how it goes hanging onto a 2010 for 50 years
  • pugworthy 7y ago
    They may be cheap to create, but the cost of upgrading is incredibly expensive. It's impossible (without great expense) to add a new physical button to a car as an upgrade. Very easy to push a software update that updates a touch display.
  • jammi 7y ago
    > Are knobs and plastic moldings that expensive though? Yeah, the molding for any typical single component is tens of thousands of dollars per iteration. A car has a lot of those components, so the fewer the better.
  • hnick 7y ago
    It's not just the up front cost. They can roll out updates and patches to change the functionality too. Maybe throw in some cheeky DLC to unlock certain features too ;)
• JangoSteve 7y ago
  This argument doesn't make a ton of sense to me. It seems like an inconsistent comparison to compare a single touchscreen to many customized knobs/buttons/etc., when you could also compare a single set of knobs/buttons/etc. to different screen sizes across models. Car companies don't tend to custom-design knobs/buttons/etc. for each model. They tend to reuse the same ones across many models to save on development and manufacturing costs. They also already modularize these knobs and buttons across different "accessory classes". You can probably see this in your own car even, if you see anywhere on your car's center console or dashboard which has plastic caps where it seems like more buttons or knobs belong. Those are likely buttons/knobs for additional functions in optional feature packages. Also, even for the same screen size across models, you'd still likely need custom bezels since most models are differently sized and thus have different dashboard shapes/sizes within which the screen is mounted. Especially with how high-resolution touchscreens in cars are becoming in new models, I doubt they're cheaper than a handful of plastic knobs and buttons. My guess is that it's exactly what they said. It's probably harder from a software perspective to adapt touch-screen-based interfaces like Android Auto and Apple Car Play to physical controls, and those difficulties probably come up over and over as the versions of these interfaces on the phones are constantly being updated, and the car must continue supporting more and more versions at one time.
  • whyenot 7y ago
    Especially with how high-resolution touchscreens in cars are becoming in new models, I doubt they're cheaper than a handful of plastic knobs and buttons. Every modern car is going to have an infotainment system with a screen. A better question would be whether it is cheaper to have a touch version of that screen or to have buttons for the interface. I suspect that touch would be cheaper than buttons.
    • JangoSteve 7y ago
      Yeah, that's a good point. The question here isn't whether or not to have an infotainment system that integrates with Android Auto and Apple Car Play, it's whether to interface with it via a touch screen or physical input (or both).
• jefurii 7y ago
  I totally understand the business case for touchscreens in cars. It's all about reducing cost to the business, but this usually comes at the expense of safety, which is a totally unacceptable tradeoff.
  • isostatic 7y ago
    That's a rather communist view. The free market allows people to buy cheaper cars at the expense of their safety, what's wrong with that?
    • Steuard 7y ago
      Off the top of my head: * If the design of your car makes you a less safe driver, you are more likely to crash into me. * The US as a society has committed (surprisingly recently) to providing emergency care to anyone who shows up at a hospital before asking whether they can pay. Car accidents are a sadly common reason for people requiring emergency care. That means that reducing car accidents is a public benefit. * Modern societies have made the choice in general to require some baseline level of safety from all sorts of products in order to make commerce more efficient. If consumers feel confident that they can (e.g.) buy a random toy off the shelf for their kid without needing to do a bunch of research on whether it contains lead paint or dangerous parts, that reduces friction and increases sales. The same reasoning can apply to car safety features: it's easier to get people to just buy a car if they have a baseline level of confidence that any car they buy is safe to drive. That's just a few reasons that first came to mind. I've already thought of one or two more that would take a little longer and a little more care to put into words, but I encourage you to think about these questions yourself when they come to mind, too.
      • rbanffy 7y ago
        Poe's Law claims another victim.
      • tracker1 7y ago
        I wouldn't consider 1986 particularly recent, regarding the COBRA/Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act particularly recent. Considering that civil rights was still a large issue well into the early 80's. Not that there aren't civil rights issues today, it's mostly that the outrage is much larger than any actual issues persisting. Consumer protection on the other hand, is quite a bit longer in the tooth. Though did really start after the 50's. I know the original erector sets were particularly bad, as were earlier die cast models, etc.
• leonroy 7y ago
  > The likely driving force that is causing it is the manufacturers BOM costs. Whilst I think this is part of it's about more than just reducing the BOM. There's a trend to move all interfaces from knobs and switches to touch screens even when money isn't the problem. For example the SpaceX Dragon capsule also takes this approach which you can see from the images below: https://www.spacex.com/crew-dragon https://www.spacex.com/crew-dragon A heavily vibrating vehicle which needs to be operated quickly and with 100% reliability by a human operator really should not be operated via a proliferation of touch screens and touch buttons as the images above show. I think current fashions are very much to blame in a lot of cases. A sleek touchscreen operated car in the showroom is a sexier buy than your more traditional button festooned dashboard. Buyer's only get a chance to regret it after they've spent a lot of time with the vehicle.
  • owl57 7y ago
    Buyer's only get a chance to regret it after they've spent a lot of time with the vehicle. Several years ago, probably. Now, when their previous car already has a similar touchscreen?
    • schreiaj 7y ago
      "Oh, I'm sure touchscreens have gotten better"
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • _ZeD_ 7y ago
      They likelly had forgotten how it was before
  • ceejayoz 7y ago
    > A heavily vibrating vehicle which needs to be operated quickly and with 100% reliability by a human operator really should not be operated via a proliferation of touch screens and touch buttons as the images above show. In fairness to SpaceX, Dragon largely isn't designed to be operated by a human. There's a reason that page calls out stuff like "how warm should the cabin be" as the sort of decisions being made with these touchscreens.
• moron4hire 7y ago
  Not to mention that touchscreens rated for passenger vehicles and the extreme environmental changes their interiors go through are not cheap. Look at how many screens Tesla has had to replace in their cars.
• shitgoose 7y ago
  my old mustang had 10 old fashioned buttons under the screen that i could use to dial a phone number. new jeep has a rectangular thingy that could swallow up everything, but somehow it didn't swallow 10 buttons, so i have to pull up the phone to dial a number while driving.
• drderidder 7y ago
  It's not that hard to make programmable / re-assignable physical dials and switches to interface in a tactile way with changing software applications.
• jim-greer 7y ago
  I'd like to see a compromise on this. If there's a passenger, they should be able to use a touchscreen. For someone not used to the car, a scroll wheel is going to feel very weird. And obviously safety isn't much of an issue if the passenger is controlling it. Cars already know whether a passenger is present of course.
• hellbanner 7y ago
  Touch screens are awful for operating while you focus elsewhere. I miss touch typing and I sure like adjusting car controls without looking away. What's that, trust driverless cars you say? Never, and the basilisk be damned.