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This is coming largely from Tesla-envy, and for them it made sense… In 2016, They thought they were going to be pushing level 4 self-driving capability to thei

This is coming largely from Tesla-envy, and for them it made sense… In 2016, They thought they were going to be pushing level 4 self-driving capability to their cars in 2021. As soon as a car has true self driving, a giant screen makes the most sense. But now we are getting a bunch of cars which still require traditional steering and that’s obviously much worse.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
And I think Tesla could get away with it, because to a point they were trying to be like Apple for cars, and Apple has reinvented some user interfaces very successfully - including touch screen interfaces in favor of physical buttons. It can work. I remember so many people sticking with their Blackberry for so long because it had physical buttons. And to be honest, I'm still not comfortable with touch screen keyboards. However, I can see a lot of benefits in having a touch screen for text input; predictive text, language switching, character set switching, 3rd party keyboards to combine emoji into monstrosities (https://emoji.supply/kitchen/ https://emoji.supply/kitchen/), etc. The cost was ergonomics; the gain was dynamic options as described above. Anyway, I think that's what Tesla was aiming for, I don't know if they or other car manufacturers have achieved it. I don't have experience with it myself, only drove a VW for a while that had a screen for the gauges so you could change the styling and get some sweet animations; I didn't mind that, it was workable enough, and allowed for more efficient use of available real estate.
- master_crab 4y ago
  Dynamic keyboards are great but the main reason physical keys lost out on phones was because the space trade off wasn’t worth the extra screen real estate afforded by virtual keyboards. That’s not a problem with cars. Particularly American ones. “Acres” of dashboard to work with there.
neither_color 4y ago
I tried to be open-minded with Tesla but way too many features are in 2nd & 3rd level menus and it's just plain annoying. Their UI sucks I need a sub menu to switch the headlights to parking lights I need a sub menu to adjust the mirrors I need a sub menu to open the glove box Not knowing for sure if your car is locked when you get in or having to walk several feet away before it auto-locks is really bad if you live or stop in sketchy areas. Instead of a quick lock button you have to go into... you guessed it: sub menus. This may seem benign but let's say you walk out of your house a couple minutes before your passenger and you're waiting for them. When they get to the passenger door is it open or not? With a Tesla you don't really know until they try to open it. Now what if you're in a sketchy block and you just got in? You also don't know. There's no quick "lock all doors" button. If you want to idle/wait in your car somewhere with everything off you have to go into sub menus and power the AC and headlights off one by one. It's not like an ICE car where you just flick the key back until only the radio is on. I thought voice commands would redeem it: "turn on parking lights" "set lights to parking" unknown command It's worse than siri. Car UI designers need to understand that we are not online shoppers needing to be funneled into a single call to action. We are operating complex machinery in sometimes life-or-death situations - minimalism and machinery are a bad combination. Even if we achieve full self driving in 10 years we'll still be piloting our cars not just sitting in them waiting for the AI to guess what we want. We need instrument panels too.
- zaroth 4y ago
  You don’t have to go to a submenu to lock and unlock the car. Just tap the padlock status indicator. It will also tell you if the doors are locked or not. It’s right there in the top row! The mirrors are automatic and set themselves for you as soon as you sit down based on the profile tied to your phone. Changing driver profiles is super slick in the Tesla and way easier than any other car. I’ll take the glovebox being behind a second tap because I also get to put access to the glovebox behind a PIN.
rsynnott 4y ago
> In 2016, They thought they were going to be pushing level 4 self-driving capability to their cars in 2021 I can't imagine anyone in Tesla _actually_ thought that.
trixie_ 4y ago
I do over 100 miles a day in a Tesla on autopilot. Touchscreen works fine.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

And I think Tesla could get away with it, because to a point they were trying to be like Apple for cars, and Apple has reinvented some user interfaces very successfully - including touch screen interfaces in favor of physical buttons. It can work. I remember so many people sticking with their Blackberry for so long because it had physical buttons. And to be honest, I'm still not comfortable with touch screen keyboards. However, I can see a lot of benefits in having a touch screen for text input; predictive text, language switching, character set switching, 3rd party keyboards to combine emoji into monstrosities (https://emoji.supply/kitchen/ https://emoji.supply/kitchen/), etc. The cost was ergonomics; the gain was dynamic options as described above. Anyway, I think that's what Tesla was aiming for, I don't know if they or other car manufacturers have achieved it. I don't have experience with it myself, only drove a VW for a while that had a screen for the gauges so you could change the styling and get some sweet animations; I didn't mind that, it was workable enough, and allowed for more efficient use of available real estate.

master_crab 4y ago
Dynamic keyboards are great but the main reason physical keys lost out on phones was because the space trade off wasn’t worth the extra screen real estate afforded by virtual keyboards. That’s not a problem with cars. Particularly American ones. “Acres” of dashboard to work with there.

neither_color 4y ago

I tried to be open-minded with Tesla but way too many features are in 2nd & 3rd level menus and it's just plain annoying. Their UI sucks I need a sub menu to switch the headlights to parking lights I need a sub menu to adjust the mirrors I need a sub menu to open the glove box Not knowing for sure if your car is locked when you get in or having to walk several feet away before it auto-locks is really bad if you live or stop in sketchy areas. Instead of a quick lock button you have to go into... you guessed it: sub menus. This may seem benign but let's say you walk out of your house a couple minutes before your passenger and you're waiting for them. When they get to the passenger door is it open or not? With a Tesla you don't really know until they try to open it. Now what if you're in a sketchy block and you just got in? You also don't know. There's no quick "lock all doors" button. If you want to idle/wait in your car somewhere with everything off you have to go into sub menus and power the AC and headlights off one by one. It's not like an ICE car where you just flick the key back until only the radio is on. I thought voice commands would redeem it: "turn on parking lights" "set lights to parking" unknown command It's worse than siri. Car UI designers need to understand that we are not online shoppers needing to be funneled into a single call to action. We are operating complex machinery in sometimes life-or-death situations - minimalism and machinery are a bad combination. Even if we achieve full self driving in 10 years we'll still be piloting our cars not just sitting in them waiting for the AI to guess what we want. We need instrument panels too.

zaroth 4y ago
You don’t have to go to a submenu to lock and unlock the car. Just tap the padlock status indicator. It will also tell you if the doors are locked or not. It’s right there in the top row! The mirrors are automatic and set themselves for you as soon as you sit down based on the profile tied to your phone. Changing driver profiles is super slick in the Tesla and way easier than any other car. I’ll take the glovebox being behind a second tap because I also get to put access to the glovebox behind a PIN.

rsynnott 4y ago

> In 2016, They thought they were going to be pushing level 4 self-driving capability to their cars in 2021 I can't imagine anyone in Tesla _actually_ thought that.

trixie_ 4y ago

I do over 100 miles a day in a Tesla on autopilot. Touchscreen works fine.