10 ms·

Generally speaking the horrifying quality of Ford's electronics have been enough to keep me away from even considering purchasing one. Absolutely nothing works

Generally speaking the horrifying quality of Ford's electronics have been enough to keep me away from even considering purchasing one. Absolutely nothing works right and certainly nothing works well. It may or may not be able to connect bluetooth, it may or may not acknowledge a USB device, it may or may not start blaring whatever FM station was last tuned in for no reason on startup, or start playing the first album on your phone. Phone audio will sometimes play as media, and sometimes show up as phone calls. And of course, cripplingly slow, which for a touchscreen is deadly -- you have no idea whether or not the system even realized that you pressed it, and when you mash the button more than once you may find that you've clicked a button on a not-yet-visible-screen. Absolute garbage. Mazda is apparently taking the right approach here -- increasing the tactile buttons on the dash and console, and ditching touchscreens. Really, cars should just have a built-in phone mount and connectors, and just let the phone do pretty much everything. If Ford wants to have a map of charging stations, partner with Apple or Google (or Waze) or build their own OSM-based maps app. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are okay-ish, but frankly I find the experience of just having the phone on a mount and using that as the display to be far superior in almost every way.

codazoda 4y ago
This happens in every car I own. Chevy. Kia. Ram. I agree the phone should do everything. The equivalent of an old aux cord (maybe via BT) would be enough. My Kia does have CarPlay, which is very nice for maps and audio, but that’s all I really use. It still has all kinds of issues. My wife plugs in her phone (cable) and it takes over, then suddenly mine wins it back, she flicks some stuff on her screen to get it back again. Pretty messy in all cars I’ve used.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I have had no issues with wired CarPlay. Do you have wireless CarPlay? I have not heard of that being reliable yet. If both of you are wiring into CarPlay, I do not see why Kia would allow two wired connections to CarPlay.
  - mh- 4y ago
    Wireless CarPlay hasn't been reliable in my experience either, which is unfortunate. Even if it's not flaky (it is), the audio quality of music being played sounds highly compressed compared to plugging in.
  - andrewla 4y ago
    The issue is that the car tries to decide which phone to have take over CarPlay. I actually have a cigarette lighter USB adapter so at least a second person can charge without confusing the poor car. I generally find CarPlay to be annoying -- it is too limiting a version of what is offered on the phone itself. Notably the last time I tried to use it, it did not have Google Play Music support (now that product is dead, and I suppose by now they probably do support Youtube Music), and it refused to let me use maps in a "north-up" orientation, which is just a non-starter for me.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      If Apple Maps does not let you navigate in north up orientation, then another navigation app should be able to. It does not seem like that would be a CarPlay specific restriction, but rather something the app makers did not implement. And there are a lot more apps that work with CarPlay nowadays. I think it just took a few years for all of them to roll out.
      - andrewla 4y ago
        I use Google Maps even with non-CarPlay interaction because Apple Maps does not do north-up. At the time, Google Maps didn't do north-up in CarPlay mode. Maybe it's time I give it another try. Last I tried it, I found generally that things worked less good in CarPlay than they did on the phone itself, and decided to mostly treat the infotainment system as a nice set of speakers for my phone.
    - parineum 4y ago
      > Notably the last time I tried to use it, it did not have Google Play Music support (now that product is dead... I can't speak to CarPlay but Android Auto has changed a ton in that time frame. I think both options are just reaching an actual maturity recently as there is both decent support in a number of vehicles and a notable user base that actually uses the technology. You were certainly an early adopter, code for beta tester.
- bayindirh 4y ago
  Then, I invite you to drive a Renault Taliant which has no screen and delegates everything to your phone. Plug it in and fix your phone to the supplied mount, open nav. Your phone is a throttling, OLED dimming, overheating fireball from all the processing it has to do with the summer sun beaming onto it, broiling and killing it in the process. I don't recommend this. The car has a terrific iPod interface built into it though. One of the best working ones.
  - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
    That model probably wouldn't be legal in the US where all new vehicles are required to have a video screen for a rearview camera. Since they're already required to have the screen for that purpose, it ends up being used to eliminate other controls.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      It doesn't have to be a touchscreen, nor part of the infotainment. The inexpensive compliant solution is a rearview mirror with embedded 2 or 3 inch LCD.
- andrewla 4y ago
  I currently have a Subaru, which almost gets it right. It does switch me over to radio, but if you set it to the Sirius "unit id" channel it is at least silent while you fix it, and really you press one button (the "media" button that is a physical button) and everything works again. Bluetooth is spotty, so I mostly use a USB cable. Ford Sync, on the other hand, once it decides that it is trying to connect to bluetooth, will often completely lock up the system for minutes while it tries unsuccessfully to make things work, and then you have to navigate through their UI to get back to a good state, which means that if it decides to glitch while you're driving, you're just out of luck. If you have a little bit of luck your phone will just play the driving directions out of its internal speaker.
- mbesto 4y ago
  > Chevy. Kia. Ram. I'm pretty sure every single one of these just outsource to Aptiv (fka Delphi Automotive) for electronics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptiv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptiv
- tlear 4y ago
  Interesting in Nissan CarPlay seems to work perfectly. Sometimes driving directions take some time to appear but other than that it works. It is all I use, the native stuff in the car does something.. I am not sure what :) AC being controlled through touch screen is just nuts. I will never buy a car that does not physical dial for that
anderspitman 4y ago
Honestly I've been pretty impressed with the software overall. I bought a used 2012 F-150 last year. There was something weird with the Bluetooth. I was able to update it to run the latest version of Sync which resolved the issue (it was a bit annoying to find/format a USB drive that worked). What makes this even more impressive is the newer software is designed to run on a completely different UI with a fancy screen, but they still support my older system just fine.
pkulak 4y ago
Doesn't the article literally mentioning them partnering with Google and using Android Automotive instead of their own UI? I'd guess they know all too well about everything you mentioned and have given up.
- NotYourLawyer 4y ago
  They may have given up, but you can’t buy the new version yet.
toast0 4y ago
I've got a 2013 Ford with the much derided Sync 2. Everything pretty much works, it's just the UX is really slow, and the colors aren't pretty. Also, inputs queue up which is weird with a touch screen. It adds up to infotainment being hard to use while driving, but the buttons pretty much work, and the radio stays off if it was off before turning off the car (if you were on Bluetooth before, and your phone isn't present when you start up again, it will try for a while and then fail back to radio, and if your bluetooth audio level is lower than radio, that could be loud... but bluetooth audio levels is a cross car issue) Compared to my 2017 Chrysler which can't really turn off the radio, only mute it, which doesn't hold across start cycles, and refused to work with my wife's phone for 6 months (probably a Nokia Android firmware issue, because it stopped working with a phone update and started working again with a phone update, but it worked on the Ford the whole time), and the head unit has crashed while in motion a handful of times, the Ford isn't so bad. But everything is terrible, and I look forward to a future where the phone does most of the work. Although, my (couple of years ago) experience with Android Auto is I'd rather use Android directly, and not let it know it's in a car.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Anything compared to a Chrysler is not so bad.
rmatt2000 4y ago
I used to own a Ford Fusion with an early version of Sync. The car itself was great. The Sync software by Microsoft, however, was not. One of the innumerable bugs was in the voice recognition system. No matter what song I requested, about half the time it played "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John. I was demonstrating this bug to a friend who asked "What happens when you request Tiny Dancer?" Sure enough, it played something else.
- NobodyNada 4y ago
  I bought a Focus with Sync 1 last year, and it was infuriating. The most infuriating part was that every time the car starts it defaulted to aux in mode, and there’s no button on the panel to switch to Bluetooth — if I wanted to listen to music from my phone, it took about 8 or 9 button presses to navigate through three levels of nested menus to get to the “media source” option. Every time I got in the car. I finally ripped the thing out and replaced it with a cheap Chinese CarPlay head unit that I got on clearance because it shipped with defective software (there was a firmware update available to fix it). I could not be happier with it.
  - hoten 4y ago
    I know exactly what you mean. I didn't replace it, but instead in my muscle memory (and part of my car "boot sequence") is pressing a button, precisely turning a knob twice and pressing a button again. I've done it thousands of times now. Ford Fusion 2012 BTW
    - hoten 4y ago
      Ah, the combo is actually different, and longer. Funny how you can do something so many times but fail to explain it accurately. I guess that's muscle memory for you.
  - genewitch 4y ago
    what year was Sync 1? My 2013 f-150 has sync, i think, no touchscreen or anything, and for bluetooth i do have to push the "talk to car" button on the steering wheel and wait 3 seconds for it to talk to me, then say "bluetooth audio". But i use siriusXM or USB 99% of the time anyhow. There is a bug in my version though, sometimes it resets to Aux, which is funny, because if you have a USB stick in it, you cannot switch to aux without unplugging it - yet if it bugs out to aux, you can just switch back to usb by saying "USB". I'm just glad i don't have a touchscreen. I'm not looking forward to a future car purchase where i don't have a choice.
PaulWaldman 4y ago
>Mazda is apparently taking the right approach here -- increasing the tactile buttons on the dash and console, and ditching touchscreens. Huh? After using both Ford's (2022 Explorer) and Mazda's (2022 CX-7) infotainment systems recently for several weeks, I couldn't disagree more. Android Auto and CarPlay interfaces were designed for touchscreen control. Mazda forcing the use of a wheel, like a joystick is a safety hazard. Turing the wheel unpredictably selects objects on the screen, forcing you to keep your eyes off the road while you keep turning the wheel until the item you need is selected. In Ford's system, a quick glace us all that's required. What good is tactile feedback when you have no idea what you're adjusting without staring at the screen?
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
  > Turing the wheel unpredictably selects objects on the screen, forcing you to keep your eyes off the road while you keep turning the wheel until the item you need is selected. You shouldn't need to do anything requiring the wheel while you're driving though. All the controls that you would want to have accessible while you're driving are physical (climate control, basic media/phone controls.) For everything else you should be setting that up while you're parked.
  - karamanolev 4y ago
    Yet, it's not what people are doing. The UIs of cars and other objects should take into account how they're going to be used, not how they are designed to be used. It's been proven again and again that you can only marginally educate or tell people how to behave. It's better to make a system that is safe 7/10 in real world usage, instead of one designed for 9/10, but actually getting 5/10.
    - stonogo 4y ago
      The solution to "stupid people won't keep their eyes on the road while driving" is not "force everyone else to take their eyes off the road as well."
    - lttlrck 4y ago
bergenty 4y ago
No, CarPlay is king and the best way to interact with it is a touchscreen.
walrus01 4y ago
> Generally speaking the horrifying quality of Ford's electronics have been enough to keep me away from even considering purchasing one. well it certainly is reassuring to know that not much has changed at all since my boomer-generation older relatives warned me away from ever buying a north american made car, instead recommending honda/toyota/mazda/nissan sedans, 30 years ago. what is old is new again.
bearcobra 4y ago
I think Ford is on the right track of having a large touch screen with an actual physical dial that just acts as a kind of stylus. The ability for the screen to dynamically adapt to different use cases is huge, but in an automotive context having tactile feedback is also so important. If they could add a couple more of the dials that could be used for climate controls or radio stations and then some buttons that users could set up as shortcuts more people would be happy.
- genewitch 4y ago
  2016 ford escape has both manual clicky buttons and dials for the radio and the HVAC, but also completely navigable by taking your eyes off the road and attempting to tap a touchscreen that isn't calibrated for use by someone off to the f'n side of the display. it's one of the dozen or so reasons i rarely drive my spouse's car.
ubermonkey 4y ago
>Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are okay-ish, but frankly I find the experience of just having the phone on a mount and using that as the display to be far superior in almost every way. That's super confusing to me. How is that superior to the larger presentation of (e.g.) CarPlay that has (a) bigger touch targets and (b) an automatically filtered presentation of apps relevant to driving? I find CarPlay to be so good that I will not consider an automobile that lacks it. I've never used the Android equivalent, but I just assume it's on par.
- cheschire 4y ago
  I think GP finds the tactile buttons more worthwhile than the larger screen, and the small phone screen is "good enough" for all the rest.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  I can understand the large screen, but really, it should just be a normal external screen your phone can output to.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    > I can understand the large screen, but really, it should just be a normal external screen your phone can output to. CarPlay is so good (and far safer) because it doesn't just mirror your phone's landscape view, but presents a driving-specific experience. Not-mirroring has another advantage in that your phone can still be used (by a passenger, of course) to do whatever while CarPlay continues to do its thing.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
      Can’t you just add a “driving mode” that changes the view or displays a different view to the phone? If you externalise the smarts, all you need is external input and output support which all exists. Then any car can have better GPS. This way, I need a car that specifically has this extra cruft and probably can’t get upgrades easily. It’s the car equivalent to a smart TV.
Aloha 4y ago
I've rented a bunch of cars, pretty much everything with a jog-dial type setup, sucks - just plain sucks, too much visual interaction is required for me to operate while driving. Ford and older GM products both has severe issues with lag, the Audi I rented seemed okay, but was maximally unintuitive, the Volvo I rented took me 15 min to figure out how to turn the radio off, the Mazda was pretty good, but again, jog-dial-bad. The only one I found that I actually liked was the Chrysler/Mopar UConnect, it was intuitive, easy to use, and performed about as well as one would expect any infotainment system to - its the only one I found easy to use too. It was one of the driving factors when I bought a new car, I bought a Chrysler 300S with it for that reason. I even like the inbuilt nav, even if I only use it on long trips for city to city driving because frankly, entering address data is hard.
- mymythisisthis 4y ago
  I really want simple to use, nicely labeled, buttons for windshield wipers and high-beams. I've given up on anything being usable in a car's interface.
  - Aloha 4y ago
    The 300 has that, multi-function switch on the drivers side of the wheel for all of that (as is typical in american cars) clear either icons or text labels.
AceJohnny2 4y ago
FWIW, I have a 2020 Escape hybrid, and I've been overall quite satisfied with the infotainment system. I'm particularly fond of its UX that favors physical buttons. (Perhaps my biggest gripe is that the USB plug has a bit of wiggle which can cause occasional disconnects when I move the cable (but no issue on the USB-C plug) The funny thing is that I've been thinking of upgrading to a bigger vehicle, and for a similar infotainment system on the other cars. But no: the Edge (and heaven forbid the monster Expedition) went for a all-touchscreen infotainment system, which is the stupidest UX design.

codazoda 4y ago

This happens in every car I own. Chevy. Kia. Ram. I agree the phone should do everything. The equivalent of an old aux cord (maybe via BT) would be enough. My Kia does have CarPlay, which is very nice for maps and audio, but that’s all I really use. It still has all kinds of issues. My wife plugs in her phone (cable) and it takes over, then suddenly mine wins it back, she flicks some stuff on her screen to get it back again. Pretty messy in all cars I’ve used.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
I have had no issues with wired CarPlay. Do you have wireless CarPlay? I have not heard of that being reliable yet. If both of you are wiring into CarPlay, I do not see why Kia would allow two wired connections to CarPlay.
- mh- 4y ago
  Wireless CarPlay hasn't been reliable in my experience either, which is unfortunate. Even if it's not flaky (it is), the audio quality of music being played sounds highly compressed compared to plugging in.
- andrewla 4y ago
  The issue is that the car tries to decide which phone to have take over CarPlay. I actually have a cigarette lighter USB adapter so at least a second person can charge without confusing the poor car. I generally find CarPlay to be annoying -- it is too limiting a version of what is offered on the phone itself. Notably the last time I tried to use it, it did not have Google Play Music support (now that product is dead, and I suppose by now they probably do support Youtube Music), and it refused to let me use maps in a "north-up" orientation, which is just a non-starter for me.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    If Apple Maps does not let you navigate in north up orientation, then another navigation app should be able to. It does not seem like that would be a CarPlay specific restriction, but rather something the app makers did not implement. And there are a lot more apps that work with CarPlay nowadays. I think it just took a few years for all of them to roll out.
    - andrewla 4y ago
      I use Google Maps even with non-CarPlay interaction because Apple Maps does not do north-up. At the time, Google Maps didn't do north-up in CarPlay mode. Maybe it's time I give it another try. Last I tried it, I found generally that things worked less good in CarPlay than they did on the phone itself, and decided to mostly treat the infotainment system as a nice set of speakers for my phone.
  - parineum 4y ago
    > Notably the last time I tried to use it, it did not have Google Play Music support (now that product is dead... I can't speak to CarPlay but Android Auto has changed a ton in that time frame. I think both options are just reaching an actual maturity recently as there is both decent support in a number of vehicles and a notable user base that actually uses the technology. You were certainly an early adopter, code for beta tester.
bayindirh 4y ago
Then, I invite you to drive a Renault Taliant which has no screen and delegates everything to your phone. Plug it in and fix your phone to the supplied mount, open nav. Your phone is a throttling, OLED dimming, overheating fireball from all the processing it has to do with the summer sun beaming onto it, broiling and killing it in the process. I don't recommend this. The car has a terrific iPod interface built into it though. One of the best working ones.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  That model probably wouldn't be legal in the US where all new vehicles are required to have a video screen for a rearview camera. Since they're already required to have the screen for that purpose, it ends up being used to eliminate other controls.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    It doesn't have to be a touchscreen, nor part of the infotainment. The inexpensive compliant solution is a rearview mirror with embedded 2 or 3 inch LCD.
andrewla 4y ago
I currently have a Subaru, which almost gets it right. It does switch me over to radio, but if you set it to the Sirius "unit id" channel it is at least silent while you fix it, and really you press one button (the "media" button that is a physical button) and everything works again. Bluetooth is spotty, so I mostly use a USB cable. Ford Sync, on the other hand, once it decides that it is trying to connect to bluetooth, will often completely lock up the system for minutes while it tries unsuccessfully to make things work, and then you have to navigate through their UI to get back to a good state, which means that if it decides to glitch while you're driving, you're just out of luck. If you have a little bit of luck your phone will just play the driving directions out of its internal speaker.
mbesto 4y ago
> Chevy. Kia. Ram. I'm pretty sure every single one of these just outsource to Aptiv (fka Delphi Automotive) for electronics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptiv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptiv
tlear 4y ago
Interesting in Nissan CarPlay seems to work perfectly. Sometimes driving directions take some time to appear but other than that it works. It is all I use, the native stuff in the car does something.. I am not sure what :) AC being controlled through touch screen is just nuts. I will never buy a car that does not physical dial for that

anderspitman 4y ago

Honestly I've been pretty impressed with the software overall. I bought a used 2012 F-150 last year. There was something weird with the Bluetooth. I was able to update it to run the latest version of Sync which resolved the issue (it was a bit annoying to find/format a USB drive that worked). What makes this even more impressive is the newer software is designed to run on a completely different UI with a fancy screen, but they still support my older system just fine.

pkulak 4y ago

Doesn't the article literally mentioning them partnering with Google and using Android Automotive instead of their own UI? I'd guess they know all too well about everything you mentioned and have given up.

NotYourLawyer 4y ago
They may have given up, but you can’t buy the new version yet.

toast0 4y ago

I've got a 2013 Ford with the much derided Sync 2. Everything pretty much works, it's just the UX is really slow, and the colors aren't pretty. Also, inputs queue up which is weird with a touch screen. It adds up to infotainment being hard to use while driving, but the buttons pretty much work, and the radio stays off if it was off before turning off the car (if you were on Bluetooth before, and your phone isn't present when you start up again, it will try for a while and then fail back to radio, and if your bluetooth audio level is lower than radio, that could be loud... but bluetooth audio levels is a cross car issue) Compared to my 2017 Chrysler which can't really turn off the radio, only mute it, which doesn't hold across start cycles, and refused to work with my wife's phone for 6 months (probably a Nokia Android firmware issue, because it stopped working with a phone update and started working again with a phone update, but it worked on the Ford the whole time), and the head unit has crashed while in motion a handful of times, the Ford isn't so bad. But everything is terrible, and I look forward to a future where the phone does most of the work. Although, my (couple of years ago) experience with Android Auto is I'd rather use Android directly, and not let it know it's in a car.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
Anything compared to a Chrysler is not so bad.

rmatt2000 4y ago

I used to own a Ford Fusion with an early version of Sync. The car itself was great. The Sync software by Microsoft, however, was not. One of the innumerable bugs was in the voice recognition system. No matter what song I requested, about half the time it played "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John. I was demonstrating this bug to a friend who asked "What happens when you request Tiny Dancer?" Sure enough, it played something else.

NobodyNada 4y ago
I bought a Focus with Sync 1 last year, and it was infuriating. The most infuriating part was that every time the car starts it defaulted to aux in mode, and there’s no button on the panel to switch to Bluetooth — if I wanted to listen to music from my phone, it took about 8 or 9 button presses to navigate through three levels of nested menus to get to the “media source” option. Every time I got in the car. I finally ripped the thing out and replaced it with a cheap Chinese CarPlay head unit that I got on clearance because it shipped with defective software (there was a firmware update available to fix it). I could not be happier with it.
- hoten 4y ago
  I know exactly what you mean. I didn't replace it, but instead in my muscle memory (and part of my car "boot sequence") is pressing a button, precisely turning a knob twice and pressing a button again. I've done it thousands of times now. Ford Fusion 2012 BTW
  - hoten 4y ago
    Ah, the combo is actually different, and longer. Funny how you can do something so many times but fail to explain it accurately. I guess that's muscle memory for you.
- genewitch 4y ago
  what year was Sync 1? My 2013 f-150 has sync, i think, no touchscreen or anything, and for bluetooth i do have to push the "talk to car" button on the steering wheel and wait 3 seconds for it to talk to me, then say "bluetooth audio". But i use siriusXM or USB 99% of the time anyhow. There is a bug in my version though, sometimes it resets to Aux, which is funny, because if you have a USB stick in it, you cannot switch to aux without unplugging it - yet if it bugs out to aux, you can just switch back to usb by saying "USB". I'm just glad i don't have a touchscreen. I'm not looking forward to a future car purchase where i don't have a choice.

PaulWaldman 4y ago

>Mazda is apparently taking the right approach here -- increasing the tactile buttons on the dash and console, and ditching touchscreens. Huh? After using both Ford's (2022 Explorer) and Mazda's (2022 CX-7) infotainment systems recently for several weeks, I couldn't disagree more. Android Auto and CarPlay interfaces were designed for touchscreen control. Mazda forcing the use of a wheel, like a joystick is a safety hazard. Turing the wheel unpredictably selects objects on the screen, forcing you to keep your eyes off the road while you keep turning the wheel until the item you need is selected. In Ford's system, a quick glace us all that's required. What good is tactile feedback when you have no idea what you're adjusting without staring at the screen?

genocidicbunny 4y ago
> Turing the wheel unpredictably selects objects on the screen, forcing you to keep your eyes off the road while you keep turning the wheel until the item you need is selected. You shouldn't need to do anything requiring the wheel while you're driving though. All the controls that you would want to have accessible while you're driving are physical (climate control, basic media/phone controls.) For everything else you should be setting that up while you're parked.
- karamanolev 4y ago
  Yet, it's not what people are doing. The UIs of cars and other objects should take into account how they're going to be used, not how they are designed to be used. It's been proven again and again that you can only marginally educate or tell people how to behave. It's better to make a system that is safe 7/10 in real world usage, instead of one designed for 9/10, but actually getting 5/10.
  - stonogo 4y ago
    The solution to "stupid people won't keep their eyes on the road while driving" is not "force everyone else to take their eyes off the road as well."
  - lttlrck 4y ago

bergenty 4y ago

No, CarPlay is king and the best way to interact with it is a touchscreen.

walrus01 4y ago

> Generally speaking the horrifying quality of Ford's electronics have been enough to keep me away from even considering purchasing one. well it certainly is reassuring to know that not much has changed at all since my boomer-generation older relatives warned me away from ever buying a north american made car, instead recommending honda/toyota/mazda/nissan sedans, 30 years ago. what is old is new again.

bearcobra 4y ago

I think Ford is on the right track of having a large touch screen with an actual physical dial that just acts as a kind of stylus. The ability for the screen to dynamically adapt to different use cases is huge, but in an automotive context having tactile feedback is also so important. If they could add a couple more of the dials that could be used for climate controls or radio stations and then some buttons that users could set up as shortcuts more people would be happy.

genewitch 4y ago
2016 ford escape has both manual clicky buttons and dials for the radio and the HVAC, but also completely navigable by taking your eyes off the road and attempting to tap a touchscreen that isn't calibrated for use by someone off to the f'n side of the display. it's one of the dozen or so reasons i rarely drive my spouse's car.

ubermonkey 4y ago

>Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are okay-ish, but frankly I find the experience of just having the phone on a mount and using that as the display to be far superior in almost every way. That's super confusing to me. How is that superior to the larger presentation of (e.g.) CarPlay that has (a) bigger touch targets and (b) an automatically filtered presentation of apps relevant to driving? I find CarPlay to be so good that I will not consider an automobile that lacks it. I've never used the Android equivalent, but I just assume it's on par.

cheschire 4y ago
I think GP finds the tactile buttons more worthwhile than the larger screen, and the small phone screen is "good enough" for all the rest.
2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
I can understand the large screen, but really, it should just be a normal external screen your phone can output to.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > I can understand the large screen, but really, it should just be a normal external screen your phone can output to. CarPlay is so good (and far safer) because it doesn't just mirror your phone's landscape view, but presents a driving-specific experience. Not-mirroring has another advantage in that your phone can still be used (by a passenger, of course) to do whatever while CarPlay continues to do its thing.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    Can’t you just add a “driving mode” that changes the view or displays a different view to the phone? If you externalise the smarts, all you need is external input and output support which all exists. Then any car can have better GPS. This way, I need a car that specifically has this extra cruft and probably can’t get upgrades easily. It’s the car equivalent to a smart TV.

Aloha 4y ago

I've rented a bunch of cars, pretty much everything with a jog-dial type setup, sucks - just plain sucks, too much visual interaction is required for me to operate while driving. Ford and older GM products both has severe issues with lag, the Audi I rented seemed okay, but was maximally unintuitive, the Volvo I rented took me 15 min to figure out how to turn the radio off, the Mazda was pretty good, but again, jog-dial-bad. The only one I found that I actually liked was the Chrysler/Mopar UConnect, it was intuitive, easy to use, and performed about as well as one would expect any infotainment system to - its the only one I found easy to use too. It was one of the driving factors when I bought a new car, I bought a Chrysler 300S with it for that reason. I even like the inbuilt nav, even if I only use it on long trips for city to city driving because frankly, entering address data is hard.

mymythisisthis 4y ago
I really want simple to use, nicely labeled, buttons for windshield wipers and high-beams. I've given up on anything being usable in a car's interface.
- Aloha 4y ago
  The 300 has that, multi-function switch on the drivers side of the wheel for all of that (as is typical in american cars) clear either icons or text labels.

AceJohnny2 4y ago

FWIW, I have a 2020 Escape hybrid, and I've been overall quite satisfied with the infotainment system. I'm particularly fond of its UX that favors physical buttons. (Perhaps my biggest gripe is that the USB plug has a bit of wiggle which can cause occasional disconnects when I move the cable (but no issue on the USB-C plug) The funny thing is that I've been thinking of upgrading to a bigger vehicle, and for a similar infotainment system on the other cars. But no: the Edge (and heaven forbid the monster Expedition) went for a all-touchscreen infotainment system, which is the stupidest UX design.