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Having recently sold my Tesla Model 3 I can say there is a lot to be desired with that car. The biggest lesson from Tesla is that cars are not cellphones. Havin

Having recently sold my Tesla Model 3 I can say there is a lot to be desired with that car. The biggest lesson from Tesla is that cars are not cellphones. Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car. I hope that Apple learns that lesson. I think if they had gone first they might have made that mistake too, but now that it's been tried they can find interesting ways to innovate that don't break the experience. I also don't think they will try for self-driving out of the gate. I know a good number of the experts in this field and no one thinks full autonomy is ready. The moat that Waymo has built with their particular kind of testing and iteration is diametrically opposed to how companies like Tesla, Lyft, Uber etc have tried to do self-driving. Even they are going to be restricted to the easiest of locals for years.

modeless 6y ago
> Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car I have to strongly disagree with this. The touchscreen is great for the vast majority of things it replaces. The only physical controls I ever miss are for temperature (which is a very minor complaint) and windshield wipers (though I would also accept auto wipers that actually work). I do think the UI smoothness and touch latency could be slightly improved, and Apple would do better, but Tesla is already so far ahead of every other car manufacturer there that it's not even funny.
- dwighttk 6y ago
  Man I don’t drive with a passenger enough to care about ui animations on my car. I just want to set the fan speed and move on... preferably without looking.
  - andreilys 6y ago
    When I rented a Tesla I recall being able to set all these controls with my voice.
    - themaninthedark 6y ago
      How well does voice control handle outside noise? Torrential downpours, sleet/hail? If the windows start to fog during one of those situations, taking your attention off the road to look and swipe is very dangerous. Edit to add: Is the voice processing being handled on board? If not, then if your signal fails....
      - light_hue_1 6y ago
        > How well does voice control handle outside noise? Torrential downpours, sleet/hail? The Model 3 at least is remarkably quiet; hard rain and street noise and dampened a lot. To the point where we felt it was almost eerie the first time we took it home. Voice recognition has been perfect in all conditions.
        kingnothing 6y ago
        Do you have a 2021 model with dual pane windows? The Model 3 objectively has a noisier cabin at highway speed than anything else in its class.
      - marvin 6y ago
        I turned the wipers on with my first try, wearing a face mask, without knowing what the voice command was, and English isn't my native language. You do need to speak loudly, and there's an unfamiliar concentration aspect to using a voice command rather than a switch.
    - pmontra 6y ago
      Probably not the best place to ask this, but how well does it understand languages different from English?
      - sam_bristow 6y ago
        Or even English with something other than a North American accent?
  - adrr 6y ago
    Fan isn’t that bad because you can change it when it’s safe to do so. Changing the windshield wiper speed because you can barely see is my biggest issue. I always forget which way to swipe while trying focus on seeing out the window. It was worse when auto wipers feature just didn’t work and now it kinda works.
- haberman 6y ago
  Somewhat ironically, the physical controls for the turns signals are by far the worst part of the whole Tesla UI. I've had my Model 3 for over two years now, and I still cannot reliably cancel a turn signal, or "soft push" the signal so it only blinks 3 times. It's infuriating to inadvertently signal left, then right, then left again, as you frantically try to just cancel the turn signal. I'm broadcasting confusion and incompetence to the outside world, when inside the car I know exactly what I'm trying to do.
  - modeless 6y ago
    I give the "worst" award to the wiper controls, but I do dislike the mushy feel of the control stalks and the way turn signal cancellation works. Last time I drove a BMW I recall it working similarly though, so maybe it's just the style now?
    - haberman 6y ago
      Perhaps it is just a defect in my hardware, but on mine it is nearly impossible to reliably "soft" press in either direction. Every motion either registers as nothing or hard press.
      - eightails 6y ago
        Yeah could be worth bringing that up during next service. I haven't really had an issue with the two-stage indicators, once I got used to the concept.
      - ridged 6y ago
        I had this issue with mine ( 2018 M3 ). It is a known issue and the service center fixed it.
    - argonaut 6y ago
      BMW switched back to normal turn stalks in more recent cars.
  - killion 6y ago
- colordrops 6y ago
  You can activate the wipers with one of the control sticks, at least on the model 3.
  - modeless 6y ago
    You can only "activate" them to wipe a single time with the button on the stalk. Not useful in rain unless you like pressing a button every three seconds for the entire time you're driving.
- prepend 6y ago
  I suppose it’s personal preference but the touchscreen is probably the single biggest factor why I didn’t buy a Tesla recently. I think it will be great when self driving works, but for driving it’s hard to try to touch parts of a flat screen. Here’s an example of various controls I fiddle with while driving: temperature control through a little knob that sticks out; Heated seats through a button with sight curve around borders; Apple CarPlay through a knob. There’s also no heads up display to present speed and nav onto the windshield. All these things are good for me to look at the road and not have to precisely touch something with at least a few seconds of focus. I have friends who love their Tesla and love the touch screen so it may just be my control style that doesn’t work. I suspect Apple would get this stuff better.
krrrh 6y ago
> I think if they had gone first they might have made that mistake too, but now that it's been tried they can find interesting ways to innovate that don't break the experience. I’m just hoping that they don’t relegate a lot of stuff like climate control to a Siri-only interface.
- visarga 6y ago
  butterfly keyboard buttons maybe or a circular touchbar on the wheel?
  - mackrevinack 6y ago
    or maybe a line of keys, f1 to f12
- dageshi 6y ago
  I don't honestly think I'd mind. I think they should prioritise physical controls for stuff you use regularly and I'd be happy to have voice on controls for stuff I use very infrequently. Like putting the rear window wiper on, barely use it and half the time I accidentality turn it on (or someone else using the car does) and I have no clue how to get it off again. Just saying "siri clean the rear window" or "turn the rear window wiper off" would honestly just be easier.
aaomidi 6y ago
Fwiw I love nothing being in the way of me and the road except the wheel. I wouldn't have minded a HUD that I could turn on and off though.
light_hue_1 6y ago
> The biggest lesson from Tesla is that cars are not cellphones. Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car. This is both the most functional and most beautiful design choice I've ever experienced. My favorite part of my Model 3. You quickly come to realize that voice control does everything and that you should never have to reach for a button or fiddle with climate controls, etc. Tesla realized what all other car manufacturers failed to see, you don't need physical buttons because you don't need buttons of any kind. I'm never buying another antiquated car with physical buttons again.
- ianai 6y ago
  And I view the voice command thing as a thing to be avoided in most or all cases. I simply don’t want to talk to electronics. The privacy implications alone scare me away. No thanks.
  - light_hue_1 6y ago
    > I simply don’t want to talk to electronics. The privacy implications alone scare me away. No thanks. I think you should consider the tradeoffs here. Practical safety on the road today, where I don't die because I'm fiddling with buttons, trumps theoretical unmeasurable fearmongering about vague privacy concerns. The reality is that if Tesla were to record every command I ever give the car and post them online against my will, no one will not learn much about me aside how aggressive I want the windshield wipers to be and that I enjoy having a warm butt when I drive.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - africanboy 6y ago
      Practical safety is a car that slows down when I'm moving too fast toward an obstacle because I am distracted. Talking to electronics does not increase practical safety.
wefarrell 6y ago
I was under the impression that Lyft wasn't building self-driving in house and was instead partnering with Waymo. It looks like they do have in house self driving: https://self-driving.lyft.com/level5/ https://self-driving.lyft.com/level5/ But they also have an extensive partnership with Waymo: https://self-driving.lyft.com/riders/ https://self-driving.lyft.com/riders/ I also know that both Alphabet and GM have large stakes in Lyft. I bought stock in Lyft with the expectation that they will one day be acquired by one of their partners.
- tananaev 6y ago
  Lyft has both own self-driving project and integration with multiple third party vendors.
Shivetya 6y ago
I disagree with your assessment of the one screen driving experience. First and foremost the use of the screen is incidental to driving. Just the normal eye travel one has when checking the mirrors is more than sufficient to pick up your speed and outside of that the glance time is insignificant. If you really want to make this fun, you don't even need to know as you can use traffic aware cruise control, a feature many cars have, to set and forget your speed on any road. I have two issues with the UI/Human interface that Telsa has followed. First, their automatic wiper solution is dreadful and while you can instant a wipe action by pressing the button on the end of the stalk I believe the variable rate should be available on the stalk. The second is that I think the steering wheel would be better served with buttons dedicated to cell phone use, namely accept, ignore, mute, and hangup. However it should be noted the cars voice controls respond very well and you can easily change the temperature should you want that way, there are a lot of settings easily changed by voice but Tesla does not alert you to them. The best way to grade their UI though is that I can muscle memory activate many features including one level down options. Of course you can just let the car drive and play with the screen all you want, something I have done to prove a point but the simple fact is... I rarely if ever, as in nearly never, need to access anything through the screen as its all set and forget. Now I get into other cars and think, damn this has enough buttons and screens to be an airliner. It won't be but a generation before we look back and wonder how anyone though six gauges, forty buttons, and three or more levers, were ease of operation, Not all cars will be as simple as a Tesla but the age of forty buttons is going away. (Seriously, count how many buttons are in your car - then try to remember how often you use them)
- africanboy 6y ago
  I don't own a car anymore, but the Car2go I rent has five (maybe 6) buttons total
- sroussey 6y ago
  This sounds like something someone would write when they are young and don’t have issues with focusing near and far. Having speed off to the side is terrible. End. Stop.
  - 6y ago
yreg 6y ago
>Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car. It also totally sounds like something Apple would do.
- bredren 6y ago
  They did not make this choice with touch on Airpods Max, instead opting for the digital crown.
  - yreg 6y ago
    Still, Marco has been complaining[0] about the lack of a separate play/pause/skip button that's not integrated into the digital crown. The solution Apple chose is (a) a bit finnicky (b) makes you unintentionally change the volume while doing other actions. [0] ATP 409 https://atp.fm/409 https://atp.fm/409
akeck 6y ago
I'm waiting for a good PEV from Mazda. They announced a policy of no touch screens.
- meddlepal 6y ago
  I leased a 2020 Mazda 3 precisely for this reason... I want tactile feedback from my car's controls so I can keep my eyes on the road.
- m463 6y ago
  So here's the thing - there is nothing wrong with touchscreens. But they have to be used appropriately. A touchscreen for wiper control, or to turn on defrost, or to flash your headlights at another car is NOT appropriate. A touchscreen for a nav display, or to set infrequently used preferences is very appropriate.
tdesilva 6y ago
The fact that everything is on the center display is the biggest reason keeping me from seriously considering buying a Tesla. Distractions don't belong in a car.
- dawnerd 6y ago
  You get over it in the first week and it really isn't as bad as you'd think.
mjhagen 6y ago
Apple's been reasonably good with the buttons they do make, like the crown on both the watch and their new headphones. Also, a dedicated silence switch on the phone is something not every manufacturer thinks is important.
m463 6y ago
I do like tesla, but I strongly agree about the display. I test drove a model 3 and ... couldn't buy one because of the dash. I think there should be - always - status in line of sight of the driver. The model 3 dashboard in the center of the car is just a bunch of bathwater with no baby. Some people won't care. I've had friends say they got used to it. I can... almost... think of it like an off-road motorcycle with a handlebar and no instruments. But personally I couldn't buy in. Related, I think the controls on the model 3 have also been over-minimized. The scroll wheels have the feel of a $3 computer mouse, and autopilot overloaded on the gear selector is cheap, not elegant.
nickik 6y ago
> The moat that Waymo has built with their particular kind of testing and iteration is diametrically opposed to how companies like Tesla, Lyft, Uber etc have tried to do self-driving. Even they are going to be restricted to the easiest of locals for years. Nobody has figured it out out yet, and a 'moat' for a market that is basically impossible to a big money-maker is not a 'moat' at all. The quest for self driving is not the same as the quest for the first commercial deployment. Solving general self-driving is the real quest. And I don't trust any experts to predict this correctly, as nobody knows yet what the solution actually is. Some experts say one thing, others say other things.

modeless 6y ago

> Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car I have to strongly disagree with this. The touchscreen is great for the vast majority of things it replaces. The only physical controls I ever miss are for temperature (which is a very minor complaint) and windshield wipers (though I would also accept auto wipers that actually work). I do think the UI smoothness and touch latency could be slightly improved, and Apple would do better, but Tesla is already so far ahead of every other car manufacturer there that it's not even funny.

dwighttk 6y ago
Man I don’t drive with a passenger enough to care about ui animations on my car. I just want to set the fan speed and move on... preferably without looking.
- andreilys 6y ago
  When I rented a Tesla I recall being able to set all these controls with my voice.
  - themaninthedark 6y ago
    How well does voice control handle outside noise? Torrential downpours, sleet/hail? If the windows start to fog during one of those situations, taking your attention off the road to look and swipe is very dangerous. Edit to add: Is the voice processing being handled on board? If not, then if your signal fails....
    - light_hue_1 6y ago
      > How well does voice control handle outside noise? Torrential downpours, sleet/hail? The Model 3 at least is remarkably quiet; hard rain and street noise and dampened a lot. To the point where we felt it was almost eerie the first time we took it home. Voice recognition has been perfect in all conditions.
      - kingnothing 6y ago
        Do you have a 2021 model with dual pane windows? The Model 3 objectively has a noisier cabin at highway speed than anything else in its class.
    - marvin 6y ago
      I turned the wipers on with my first try, wearing a face mask, without knowing what the voice command was, and English isn't my native language. You do need to speak loudly, and there's an unfamiliar concentration aspect to using a voice command rather than a switch.
  - pmontra 6y ago
    Probably not the best place to ask this, but how well does it understand languages different from English?
    - sam_bristow 6y ago
      Or even English with something other than a North American accent?
- adrr 6y ago
  Fan isn’t that bad because you can change it when it’s safe to do so. Changing the windshield wiper speed because you can barely see is my biggest issue. I always forget which way to swipe while trying focus on seeing out the window. It was worse when auto wipers feature just didn’t work and now it kinda works.
haberman 6y ago
Somewhat ironically, the physical controls for the turns signals are by far the worst part of the whole Tesla UI. I've had my Model 3 for over two years now, and I still cannot reliably cancel a turn signal, or "soft push" the signal so it only blinks 3 times. It's infuriating to inadvertently signal left, then right, then left again, as you frantically try to just cancel the turn signal. I'm broadcasting confusion and incompetence to the outside world, when inside the car I know exactly what I'm trying to do.
- modeless 6y ago
  I give the "worst" award to the wiper controls, but I do dislike the mushy feel of the control stalks and the way turn signal cancellation works. Last time I drove a BMW I recall it working similarly though, so maybe it's just the style now?
  - haberman 6y ago
    Perhaps it is just a defect in my hardware, but on mine it is nearly impossible to reliably "soft" press in either direction. Every motion either registers as nothing or hard press.
    - eightails 6y ago
      Yeah could be worth bringing that up during next service. I haven't really had an issue with the two-stage indicators, once I got used to the concept.
    - ridged 6y ago
      I had this issue with mine ( 2018 M3 ). It is a known issue and the service center fixed it.
  - argonaut 6y ago
    BMW switched back to normal turn stalks in more recent cars.
- killion 6y ago
colordrops 6y ago
You can activate the wipers with one of the control sticks, at least on the model 3.
- modeless 6y ago
  You can only "activate" them to wipe a single time with the button on the stalk. Not useful in rain unless you like pressing a button every three seconds for the entire time you're driving.
prepend 6y ago
I suppose it’s personal preference but the touchscreen is probably the single biggest factor why I didn’t buy a Tesla recently. I think it will be great when self driving works, but for driving it’s hard to try to touch parts of a flat screen. Here’s an example of various controls I fiddle with while driving: temperature control through a little knob that sticks out; Heated seats through a button with sight curve around borders; Apple CarPlay through a knob. There’s also no heads up display to present speed and nav onto the windshield. All these things are good for me to look at the road and not have to precisely touch something with at least a few seconds of focus. I have friends who love their Tesla and love the touch screen so it may just be my control style that doesn’t work. I suspect Apple would get this stuff better.

krrrh 6y ago

> I think if they had gone first they might have made that mistake too, but now that it's been tried they can find interesting ways to innovate that don't break the experience. I’m just hoping that they don’t relegate a lot of stuff like climate control to a Siri-only interface.

visarga 6y ago
butterfly keyboard buttons maybe or a circular touchbar on the wheel?
- mackrevinack 6y ago
  or maybe a line of keys, f1 to f12
dageshi 6y ago
I don't honestly think I'd mind. I think they should prioritise physical controls for stuff you use regularly and I'd be happy to have voice on controls for stuff I use very infrequently. Like putting the rear window wiper on, barely use it and half the time I accidentality turn it on (or someone else using the car does) and I have no clue how to get it off again. Just saying "siri clean the rear window" or "turn the rear window wiper off" would honestly just be easier.

aaomidi 6y ago

Fwiw I love nothing being in the way of me and the road except the wheel. I wouldn't have minded a HUD that I could turn on and off though.

light_hue_1 6y ago

> The biggest lesson from Tesla is that cars are not cellphones. Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car. This is both the most functional and most beautiful design choice I've ever experienced. My favorite part of my Model 3. You quickly come to realize that voice control does everything and that you should never have to reach for a button or fiddle with climate controls, etc. Tesla realized what all other car manufacturers failed to see, you don't need physical buttons because you don't need buttons of any kind. I'm never buying another antiquated car with physical buttons again.

ianai 6y ago
And I view the voice command thing as a thing to be avoided in most or all cases. I simply don’t want to talk to electronics. The privacy implications alone scare me away. No thanks.
- light_hue_1 6y ago
  > I simply don’t want to talk to electronics. The privacy implications alone scare me away. No thanks. I think you should consider the tradeoffs here. Practical safety on the road today, where I don't die because I'm fiddling with buttons, trumps theoretical unmeasurable fearmongering about vague privacy concerns. The reality is that if Tesla were to record every command I ever give the car and post them online against my will, no one will not learn much about me aside how aggressive I want the windshield wipers to be and that I enjoy having a warm butt when I drive.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - africanboy 6y ago
    Practical safety is a car that slows down when I'm moving too fast toward an obstacle because I am distracted. Talking to electronics does not increase practical safety.

wefarrell 6y ago

I was under the impression that Lyft wasn't building self-driving in house and was instead partnering with Waymo. It looks like they do have in house self driving: https://self-driving.lyft.com/level5/ https://self-driving.lyft.com/level5/ But they also have an extensive partnership with Waymo: https://self-driving.lyft.com/riders/ https://self-driving.lyft.com/riders/ I also know that both Alphabet and GM have large stakes in Lyft. I bought stock in Lyft with the expectation that they will one day be acquired by one of their partners.

tananaev 6y ago
Lyft has both own self-driving project and integration with multiple third party vendors.

Shivetya 6y ago

I disagree with your assessment of the one screen driving experience. First and foremost the use of the screen is incidental to driving. Just the normal eye travel one has when checking the mirrors is more than sufficient to pick up your speed and outside of that the glance time is insignificant. If you really want to make this fun, you don't even need to know as you can use traffic aware cruise control, a feature many cars have, to set and forget your speed on any road. I have two issues with the UI/Human interface that Telsa has followed. First, their automatic wiper solution is dreadful and while you can instant a wipe action by pressing the button on the end of the stalk I believe the variable rate should be available on the stalk. The second is that I think the steering wheel would be better served with buttons dedicated to cell phone use, namely accept, ignore, mute, and hangup. However it should be noted the cars voice controls respond very well and you can easily change the temperature should you want that way, there are a lot of settings easily changed by voice but Tesla does not alert you to them. The best way to grade their UI though is that I can muscle memory activate many features including one level down options. Of course you can just let the car drive and play with the screen all you want, something I have done to prove a point but the simple fact is... I rarely if ever, as in nearly never, need to access anything through the screen as its all set and forget. Now I get into other cars and think, damn this has enough buttons and screens to be an airliner. It won't be but a generation before we look back and wonder how anyone though six gauges, forty buttons, and three or more levers, were ease of operation, Not all cars will be as simple as a Tesla but the age of forty buttons is going away. (Seriously, count how many buttons are in your car - then try to remember how often you use them)

africanboy 6y ago
I don't own a car anymore, but the Car2go I rent has five (maybe 6) buttons total
sroussey 6y ago
This sounds like something someone would write when they are young and don’t have issues with focusing near and far. Having speed off to the side is terrible. End. Stop.
- 6y ago

yreg 6y ago

>Having one display off to the side, without buttons, that does everything is an awful experience in a car. It also totally sounds like something Apple would do.

bredren 6y ago
They did not make this choice with touch on Airpods Max, instead opting for the digital crown.
- yreg 6y ago
  Still, Marco has been complaining[0] about the lack of a separate play/pause/skip button that's not integrated into the digital crown. The solution Apple chose is (a) a bit finnicky (b) makes you unintentionally change the volume while doing other actions. [0] ATP 409 https://atp.fm/409 https://atp.fm/409

akeck 6y ago

I'm waiting for a good PEV from Mazda. They announced a policy of no touch screens.

meddlepal 6y ago
I leased a 2020 Mazda 3 precisely for this reason... I want tactile feedback from my car's controls so I can keep my eyes on the road.
m463 6y ago
So here's the thing - there is nothing wrong with touchscreens. But they have to be used appropriately. A touchscreen for wiper control, or to turn on defrost, or to flash your headlights at another car is NOT appropriate. A touchscreen for a nav display, or to set infrequently used preferences is very appropriate.

tdesilva 6y ago

The fact that everything is on the center display is the biggest reason keeping me from seriously considering buying a Tesla. Distractions don't belong in a car.

dawnerd 6y ago
You get over it in the first week and it really isn't as bad as you'd think.

mjhagen 6y ago

Apple's been reasonably good with the buttons they do make, like the crown on both the watch and their new headphones. Also, a dedicated silence switch on the phone is something not every manufacturer thinks is important.

m463 6y ago

I do like tesla, but I strongly agree about the display. I test drove a model 3 and ... couldn't buy one because of the dash. I think there should be - always - status in line of sight of the driver. The model 3 dashboard in the center of the car is just a bunch of bathwater with no baby. Some people won't care. I've had friends say they got used to it. I can... almost... think of it like an off-road motorcycle with a handlebar and no instruments. But personally I couldn't buy in. Related, I think the controls on the model 3 have also been over-minimized. The scroll wheels have the feel of a $3 computer mouse, and autopilot overloaded on the gear selector is cheap, not elegant.

nickik 6y ago

> The moat that Waymo has built with their particular kind of testing and iteration is diametrically opposed to how companies like Tesla, Lyft, Uber etc have tried to do self-driving. Even they are going to be restricted to the easiest of locals for years. Nobody has figured it out out yet, and a 'moat' for a market that is basically impossible to a big money-maker is not a 'moat' at all. The quest for self driving is not the same as the quest for the first commercial deployment. Solving general self-driving is the real quest. And I don't trust any experts to predict this correctly, as nobody knows yet what the solution actually is. Some experts say one thing, others say other things.