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Though when you stuff everything except the engine and brakes into the infotainment system, it does put you in a worse spot when your infotainment system locks

Though when you stuff everything except the engine and brakes into the infotainment system, it does put you in a worse spot when your infotainment system locks up. How many other cars do you need to learn a button combination on the steering wheel to reboot the infotainment screen when it crashes while driving, and then while it reboots your turn signals stop making sounds and you don't have a speedometer?

sandworm101 6y ago
Last time I drove a rental car I left the airport driving with only one figure on a burning hot steering wheel. There was no switch. It took me pulling over at a rest stop to break out the PAPER manual to learn how to disable to fire, which was a good thing because by that point my backside was also starting to cook. I'd call that a significant design flaw.
- wlesieutre 6y ago
  Tesla or something else? Every car I've seen with heated seats (admittedly small sample size) had a hardware button with amber indicator LEDs showing you what setting it's on, so I'd certainly agree with not having an obvious switch being problematic. Made even worse by apparently turning it on by default? Moving everything into hidden modal screens of the infotainment system is not a trend I'm excited about.
  - Wistar 6y ago
    Rental Audis with virtual cockpit have caused me to have to pull over in order to figure out how to control features. By comparison, the Teslas I have driven seem fairly straightforward.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Jeep Grand Cherokee.
davedx 6y ago
Yep. As a new Model 3 owner, this is definitely an issue and a huge drawback of them not having a smaller dashboard screen for critical functionality like the speedo. The "black screen" issue is very real and affects lots of people. I've already experienced it twice within the first month of driving, if it happens a few more times it's off to the service centre with it. All in all I'm extremely happy with the car, it's an amazing drive, but the centre screen is definitely an issue.
- bbarnett 6y ago
  I still don't get night driving + rural. In the city, there is a lot of light. It's not really ever truly dark. In rural areas, on a dark night, especially with no moon, your eyes can adjust to the darkness... I tend to turn all light off inside my car when driving rural at night. That won't work though, if you have a massive, huge LCD with backlight constantly throwing white light at your eyes. Worse is if it 'shuts off', then you do something (change radio channel/interact) and blinding light smashes into your eyes. An OLED would help. A 'red only' theme would be even better. Smaller displays better beyond that. I get that Tesla rethought auto design. That's cool. But it seems like it only rethought from a very urban, perfect-eyesight, 20 something perspective.
  - bdamm 6y ago
    I've done rural night driving in my Tesla Model 3. Yes, the display can be dimmed down well below the headlight reflection luminosity. The display also switches into night-mode automatically at sunset, where the colors become grey-on-black instead of black-on-white. You're right about the red theme, it would be welcome.
    - bbarnett 6y ago
      I still don't like any internal light, and a white blacklight seems... silly. Even if dimmed down, it's still there. (I have owned cars with LCDs before, and it's annoying if I can't completely shut them off). OLED would at least have no backlight.
core-questions 6y ago
This is why I'm going to keep buying Mazdas - a hard push away from using a screen to display anything beyond nav/radio stuff. It's hard to beat a nice conventional gauge for at-a-glane readability.

sandworm101 6y ago

Last time I drove a rental car I left the airport driving with only one figure on a burning hot steering wheel. There was no switch. It took me pulling over at a rest stop to break out the PAPER manual to learn how to disable to fire, which was a good thing because by that point my backside was also starting to cook. I'd call that a significant design flaw.

wlesieutre 6y ago
Tesla or something else? Every car I've seen with heated seats (admittedly small sample size) had a hardware button with amber indicator LEDs showing you what setting it's on, so I'd certainly agree with not having an obvious switch being problematic. Made even worse by apparently turning it on by default? Moving everything into hidden modal screens of the infotainment system is not a trend I'm excited about.
- Wistar 6y ago
  Rental Audis with virtual cockpit have caused me to have to pull over in order to figure out how to control features. By comparison, the Teslas I have driven seem fairly straightforward.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Jeep Grand Cherokee.

davedx 6y ago

Yep. As a new Model 3 owner, this is definitely an issue and a huge drawback of them not having a smaller dashboard screen for critical functionality like the speedo. The "black screen" issue is very real and affects lots of people. I've already experienced it twice within the first month of driving, if it happens a few more times it's off to the service centre with it. All in all I'm extremely happy with the car, it's an amazing drive, but the centre screen is definitely an issue.

bbarnett 6y ago
I still don't get night driving + rural. In the city, there is a lot of light. It's not really ever truly dark. In rural areas, on a dark night, especially with no moon, your eyes can adjust to the darkness... I tend to turn all light off inside my car when driving rural at night. That won't work though, if you have a massive, huge LCD with backlight constantly throwing white light at your eyes. Worse is if it 'shuts off', then you do something (change radio channel/interact) and blinding light smashes into your eyes. An OLED would help. A 'red only' theme would be even better. Smaller displays better beyond that. I get that Tesla rethought auto design. That's cool. But it seems like it only rethought from a very urban, perfect-eyesight, 20 something perspective.
- bdamm 6y ago
  I've done rural night driving in my Tesla Model 3. Yes, the display can be dimmed down well below the headlight reflection luminosity. The display also switches into night-mode automatically at sunset, where the colors become grey-on-black instead of black-on-white. You're right about the red theme, it would be welcome.
  - bbarnett 6y ago
    I still don't like any internal light, and a white blacklight seems... silly. Even if dimmed down, it's still there. (I have owned cars with LCDs before, and it's annoying if I can't completely shut them off). OLED would at least have no backlight.

core-questions 6y ago

This is why I'm going to keep buying Mazdas - a hard push away from using a screen to display anything beyond nav/radio stuff. It's hard to beat a nice conventional gauge for at-a-glane readability.