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> 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 experienc

> 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.
    - TheDong 6y ago
      Safety is multi-faceted. Yes, a car that can slow down to avoid collisions is a form of safety. Seatbelts are another form. A car that does various things to avoid driver distraction is another form of safety. Just because you can think of a more immediate safety system does not make other increases to safety in some way "not practical" or "not real increases". There are many things, small and large, that go into practical safety of a car
      - africanboy 6y ago
        Safety is engineered, it's not about throwing as many devices you can to a car hoping that something sticks and improve safety by chance. Safety belts work even if I am unconscious, a car that slows down works even if I am unconscious, airbags work even if I am unconscious, so they are 100% safety devices, as in "they keep me safe when everything else failed and things are already out of my control". Hands-free calls are a safety feature because they are designed to eliminate the distraction of operating a phone. But they are a workaround, the real safety feature is "operating a phone while driving is prohibited by the law" because the simple act of talking is a distraction. Voice commands are a workaround because the real safety feature is "touch screens are a distraction and you shouldn't use them while driving" If we remove touch screens from cars, there is no need for voice commands. Most of the sources of distraction in modern cars are caused by functions that do not belong to cars and are hard to operate. I work for a large insurance company based in Europe whose primary business is car insurance (>10 million clients). We launched a two-year program to monitor the distractions of our customers (we especially monitored the phone's activity, thinking it was a major issue) and the primary sources of distraction while driving are (in reverse order of importance) - adjusting settings or operating car controls: less than 1% - eating or drinking: 2-3% - reaching for things: 2-3% - talking: 4-5% - multitasking: 5% - looking at the GPS display: 10% - texting and driving: 10% - using a smartphone: 15% - not looking at the road for too long: ~50% there are subcategories for each one of the macro-categories above. For example: Adjusting car settings like mirrors, seats, the heater is basically risk-free, more than half of the distractions in this category are caused by adjusting the audio volume. It makes sense, muscle memory for settings helps us to not think too much when doing it. Regulating the audio volume usually follows some unexpected event that forces us to change it. Still only 1/200 distractions are caused by it. Eating or drinking is mostly eating here, I guess in the USA it would be the opposite. Bringing hot beverages inside the car is quite common there, here is quite rare. People spill the coke on their shirts or choke on the water anyway. It is also very common to frequently stop at motorway restaurants here to eat, drink, use the toilets, rest a little bit and eventually refuel. It helps to keep this kind of distractions to a minimum. Reaching for things is less dangerous when the driver picks up things from the driver's or the passenger's seat, opening the glove compartment is two times as dangerous, picking up something from the pedals area is the most dangerous of them all. Talking is interesting because there's no difference between people talking with other occupants and people talking on the phone. What's less interesting and probably obvious is that 8/10 happen when people are arguing. But 2/10 are people talking normally like they would to a car to activate the wiper. Multitasking is when people do other things unrelated to driving the car itself. For example, handling pets is more dangerous than applying makeup that is more dangerous than handling children. The good news is when people carry kids around they drive more carefully. The GPS display is a major source of distraction, no matter what voice people chose to give them directions, the tendency to not trust other people's instructions makes people look at the screen to confirm what they heard. Also, there are times, not rare, when the instructions are not clear or haven't been updated to the actual road conditions (a roadblock for example. Despite the technological improvements, texting and driving is still very popular, especially among younger generations. More importantly, we counted using chat apps in this category and it's not surprisingly the vast majority of the cases. Using a smartphone is an interesting one: while the "phone" part of the smartphone has been standardized and is easy to remote nowadays, most of the time people use the "smart" part of the smartphone, which cannot be remoted. They scroll the Instagram feed, they take pictures, make videos, and, despite having the freehands at their disposal, people prefer to send voice messages. Which involves removing your hands from the wheel. Did you notice how many times talking and/or hearing voices caused a distraction? But the most important of them all is not looking at the road. It sounds obvious once you hear it, but it happens a lot more than people think, 100 times more than turning the volume up or down. It could be an external event like an accident, an emergency vehicle passing by, a fire, or something that attracted the driver's attention like a billboard or a beautiful person walking on the sidewalk - it happens more often than you can imagine -. These are the "good" ones, often they don't last enough to cause severe accidents and people just end up rear-ending each other at the traffic lights. The real killer is being lost in one's thoughts, zoning out, keep driving on autopilot while you are not there anymore, and don't realize you are still in a car moving at 50km/h. That's how accidents happen most of the time. That's why I think that cars that slow down automatically or correct your errors are a breakthrough, they already exist on the market, have no voice control but they can alert you with a warning sound if they detect that you are distracted behind the wheel. A car that adjusts the temperature of the heather using voice commands is not equally useful, I would argue that is completely useless unless fixing the temperature in the car will become a dangerous activity in the future, but honestly, I don't see that happening very soon. So yes, small things are important, but BIG things are even more important. Let's fix those before thinking that cars need UI/UX designers more than safety engineers. Before "disrupting" the car industry for the sake of changing things and adding the cool factor to something that doesn't really need it. p.s.: My opinion is based on the experience gathered doing my job, I'm not against voice commands because I don't like them, but because they can be a source of distraction per sé. p.p.s.: it took me time to put this together, so please if you don't like it don't downvote it without leaving a comment. Thanks.
  - est31 6y ago
    > The reality is that if Tesla were to record every command I ever give the car and post them online against my will The way echo speakers are implemented is that the device only determines if you used the wake word and then sends it to the cloud service. However this wake word detection is sloppy and turns on more often than it should. It's filtered out on the cloud service side, but it creates a situation where extremely private moments are uploaded. For end users this means that you can't be certain when it's recording vs when it isn't.... IDK how it's implemented in cars, but the STT features I've seen require the explicit press of a button and IIRC it's inferenced locally on the car's hardware. Which is possible thanks to the car's high energy usage and price. But it might depend on implementation and it might send telemetry back to the manufacturer.
  - mackrevinack 6y ago
    how well do voice commands work if there is loud music playing? what about when you are having a conversation with someone and you are the person talking? having to stop mid sentence to demist your windows or whatever sounds annoying
- cesarvarela 6y ago
  You sound like a grandpa, but kids that grow talking with Alexa and Siri will find buttons antiquated.
africanboy 6y ago
The thing is the car is not my butler. I shouldn't say to my car what I want the car to do, I should do it. Also, I listen to loud music when I drive. Imagine you are driving and the kids start activating car functions because it's fun. Thanks but no thanks.
- TheDong 6y ago
  Just so you know, the way you talk to a tesla is via a physical button on the steering wheel. When you press it, music pauses/dims, so loud music isn't going to get in the way of you being heard. Kids can't just yell "car, do X" because they can't hit the button on the steering wheel. There are valid reasons to dislike voice-controls, but the ones you've picked are not issues with the specific system in question.
- sib 6y ago
  You realize that with the drive-by-wire systems in (most) modern cars, when you press the accelerator, you are sending an electronic message that "asks" a computer to increase the speed of the car - there's no mechanical linkage from the pedal to a carburetor and/or fuel pump, right? Similarly in many cases with windshield wipers, headlights, windows, temperature controls, etc.
  - africanboy 6y ago
    Ask yourself why Tesla didn't introduce drive by voice, but still relies on your foot to do the right thing... Drive by wire systems are simply not completely mechanical anymore, but you don't have to ask them to do something for you, they translate a mechanical input into an electric signal and then in a mechanical output. There is no understanding involved. I hope you realize that. Th gas pedal is still a moderately precise mechanical actuator that can be easily and accurately measured regardless of who uses it, you can also use a stick or a brick to accelerate, the car doesn't care as long as you move the pedal. You can also be a mute and use it. big difference uh?
michaelt 6y ago
Tesla's touchscreen is so functional it made you change to voice control, you say?

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.
  - TheDong 6y ago
    Safety is multi-faceted. Yes, a car that can slow down to avoid collisions is a form of safety. Seatbelts are another form. A car that does various things to avoid driver distraction is another form of safety. Just because you can think of a more immediate safety system does not make other increases to safety in some way "not practical" or "not real increases". There are many things, small and large, that go into practical safety of a car
    - africanboy 6y ago
      Safety is engineered, it's not about throwing as many devices you can to a car hoping that something sticks and improve safety by chance. Safety belts work even if I am unconscious, a car that slows down works even if I am unconscious, airbags work even if I am unconscious, so they are 100% safety devices, as in "they keep me safe when everything else failed and things are already out of my control". Hands-free calls are a safety feature because they are designed to eliminate the distraction of operating a phone. But they are a workaround, the real safety feature is "operating a phone while driving is prohibited by the law" because the simple act of talking is a distraction. Voice commands are a workaround because the real safety feature is "touch screens are a distraction and you shouldn't use them while driving" If we remove touch screens from cars, there is no need for voice commands. Most of the sources of distraction in modern cars are caused by functions that do not belong to cars and are hard to operate. I work for a large insurance company based in Europe whose primary business is car insurance (>10 million clients). We launched a two-year program to monitor the distractions of our customers (we especially monitored the phone's activity, thinking it was a major issue) and the primary sources of distraction while driving are (in reverse order of importance) - adjusting settings or operating car controls: less than 1% - eating or drinking: 2-3% - reaching for things: 2-3% - talking: 4-5% - multitasking: 5% - looking at the GPS display: 10% - texting and driving: 10% - using a smartphone: 15% - not looking at the road for too long: ~50% there are subcategories for each one of the macro-categories above. For example: Adjusting car settings like mirrors, seats, the heater is basically risk-free, more than half of the distractions in this category are caused by adjusting the audio volume. It makes sense, muscle memory for settings helps us to not think too much when doing it. Regulating the audio volume usually follows some unexpected event that forces us to change it. Still only 1/200 distractions are caused by it. Eating or drinking is mostly eating here, I guess in the USA it would be the opposite. Bringing hot beverages inside the car is quite common there, here is quite rare. People spill the coke on their shirts or choke on the water anyway. It is also very common to frequently stop at motorway restaurants here to eat, drink, use the toilets, rest a little bit and eventually refuel. It helps to keep this kind of distractions to a minimum. Reaching for things is less dangerous when the driver picks up things from the driver's or the passenger's seat, opening the glove compartment is two times as dangerous, picking up something from the pedals area is the most dangerous of them all. Talking is interesting because there's no difference between people talking with other occupants and people talking on the phone. What's less interesting and probably obvious is that 8/10 happen when people are arguing. But 2/10 are people talking normally like they would to a car to activate the wiper. Multitasking is when people do other things unrelated to driving the car itself. For example, handling pets is more dangerous than applying makeup that is more dangerous than handling children. The good news is when people carry kids around they drive more carefully. The GPS display is a major source of distraction, no matter what voice people chose to give them directions, the tendency to not trust other people's instructions makes people look at the screen to confirm what they heard. Also, there are times, not rare, when the instructions are not clear or haven't been updated to the actual road conditions (a roadblock for example. Despite the technological improvements, texting and driving is still very popular, especially among younger generations. More importantly, we counted using chat apps in this category and it's not surprisingly the vast majority of the cases. Using a smartphone is an interesting one: while the "phone" part of the smartphone has been standardized and is easy to remote nowadays, most of the time people use the "smart" part of the smartphone, which cannot be remoted. They scroll the Instagram feed, they take pictures, make videos, and, despite having the freehands at their disposal, people prefer to send voice messages. Which involves removing your hands from the wheel. Did you notice how many times talking and/or hearing voices caused a distraction? But the most important of them all is not looking at the road. It sounds obvious once you hear it, but it happens a lot more than people think, 100 times more than turning the volume up or down. It could be an external event like an accident, an emergency vehicle passing by, a fire, or something that attracted the driver's attention like a billboard or a beautiful person walking on the sidewalk - it happens more often than you can imagine -. These are the "good" ones, often they don't last enough to cause severe accidents and people just end up rear-ending each other at the traffic lights. The real killer is being lost in one's thoughts, zoning out, keep driving on autopilot while you are not there anymore, and don't realize you are still in a car moving at 50km/h. That's how accidents happen most of the time. That's why I think that cars that slow down automatically or correct your errors are a breakthrough, they already exist on the market, have no voice control but they can alert you with a warning sound if they detect that you are distracted behind the wheel. A car that adjusts the temperature of the heather using voice commands is not equally useful, I would argue that is completely useless unless fixing the temperature in the car will become a dangerous activity in the future, but honestly, I don't see that happening very soon. So yes, small things are important, but BIG things are even more important. Let's fix those before thinking that cars need UI/UX designers more than safety engineers. Before "disrupting" the car industry for the sake of changing things and adding the cool factor to something that doesn't really need it. p.s.: My opinion is based on the experience gathered doing my job, I'm not against voice commands because I don't like them, but because they can be a source of distraction per sé. p.p.s.: it took me time to put this together, so please if you don't like it don't downvote it without leaving a comment. Thanks.
- est31 6y ago
  > The reality is that if Tesla were to record every command I ever give the car and post them online against my will The way echo speakers are implemented is that the device only determines if you used the wake word and then sends it to the cloud service. However this wake word detection is sloppy and turns on more often than it should. It's filtered out on the cloud service side, but it creates a situation where extremely private moments are uploaded. For end users this means that you can't be certain when it's recording vs when it isn't.... IDK how it's implemented in cars, but the STT features I've seen require the explicit press of a button and IIRC it's inferenced locally on the car's hardware. Which is possible thanks to the car's high energy usage and price. But it might depend on implementation and it might send telemetry back to the manufacturer.
- mackrevinack 6y ago
  how well do voice commands work if there is loud music playing? what about when you are having a conversation with someone and you are the person talking? having to stop mid sentence to demist your windows or whatever sounds annoying
cesarvarela 6y ago
You sound like a grandpa, but kids that grow talking with Alexa and Siri will find buttons antiquated.

africanboy 6y ago

The thing is the car is not my butler. I shouldn't say to my car what I want the car to do, I should do it. Also, I listen to loud music when I drive. Imagine you are driving and the kids start activating car functions because it's fun. Thanks but no thanks.

TheDong 6y ago
Just so you know, the way you talk to a tesla is via a physical button on the steering wheel. When you press it, music pauses/dims, so loud music isn't going to get in the way of you being heard. Kids can't just yell "car, do X" because they can't hit the button on the steering wheel. There are valid reasons to dislike voice-controls, but the ones you've picked are not issues with the specific system in question.
sib 6y ago
You realize that with the drive-by-wire systems in (most) modern cars, when you press the accelerator, you are sending an electronic message that "asks" a computer to increase the speed of the car - there's no mechanical linkage from the pedal to a carburetor and/or fuel pump, right? Similarly in many cases with windshield wipers, headlights, windows, temperature controls, etc.
- africanboy 6y ago
  Ask yourself why Tesla didn't introduce drive by voice, but still relies on your foot to do the right thing... Drive by wire systems are simply not completely mechanical anymore, but you don't have to ask them to do something for you, they translate a mechanical input into an electric signal and then in a mechanical output. There is no understanding involved. I hope you realize that. Th gas pedal is still a moderately precise mechanical actuator that can be easily and accurately measured regardless of who uses it, you can also use a stick or a brick to accelerate, the car doesn't care as long as you move the pedal. You can also be a mute and use it. big difference uh?

michaelt 6y ago

Tesla's touchscreen is so functional it made you change to voice control, you say?