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Wonderful. I recently rented a model 3 and found it incredibly frustrating that it required multiple touches to adjust settings that would be a single button pr
by cdepman 4y ago
Wonderful. I recently rented a model 3 and found it incredibly frustrating that it required multiple touches to adjust settings that would be a single button press on a more traditional car. Don’t even get me started on the windshield wipers - a total nightmare in winter storms and located on the left stalk? These are safety concerns. As long as humans are operating these dangerous vehicles, I vote for fewer driver distractions.
- redindian75 4y agomodel 3 has voice control "turn on wipers" "set AC to 68" "drive home" - at the press of a button, the music fades and it listens like "hey Siri"
- Slava_Propanei 4y ago[dead]
- biofox 4y agoThat sounds like a poor solution to a problem of their own making
- colordrops 4y agoAs an owner it works great. Windshield wipers have a sensor for automatic control, and if you want to manually adjust, voice recognition is highly accurate these days. I switch between my Prius and Tesla all the time as my wife shares the vehicles, and I much prefer the Tesla controls. But I'll get off of your lawn if you'd like.
- wlesieutre 4y agoAnecdotally the owner I’ve asked about it said it sucks. And he’s a native English speaker. How’s it do with accents? Maybe it’s been improved with hardware upgrades? His is around a 2017 I think.
- judge2020 4y agoAn update came out around November of last year that vastly improved auto high-beams, and somewhat improved automatic windshield wiper performance.
- wlesieutre 4y agoI mean the voice control features specifically. Didn’t hear anything about the auto high beams and wipers which could imply they worked better than the voice recognition.
- colordrops 4y agoI'm a native speaker, maybe I have good enunciation. I'm amazed at how accurate the voice recognition is. It almost never makes a mistake, even with obscure location names. It displays on the screen what it thinks you said and even updates it as more heavy duty ML requests come back with better results.
- orthoxerox 4y agoI imagine it works as well as the famous voice-activated elevator in Scotland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8
- cyberax 4y agoI'm usually listening to audiobooks. Right now Tesla doesn't support any audiobook reader, so voice commands momentarily mute the book without pausing. Next issue is the quality of voice recognition. It just sucks. Oh, and wipers are a pure fucking BS in Teslas. They removed a $5 infrared precipitation sensor, and it STILL doesn't work well.
- davchana 4y agoI don't own Tesla, I have a strong Punjabi Accent when i speak English. Many bigger companies phone trees based on voice "commands" are useless for me. It never understands me. My Ford Sync voice controls too struggle to understand me. I prefer buttons.
- selimthegrim 4y agoLike Zail Singh with Reagan, you will just have to teach it Punjabi :)
- piyh 4y agoAt least it's hands free unlike the pile of shit that is Subaru Outback's infotainment. Takes upwards of 20 seconds to change any settings after the car turns on because it lags so bad.
- Loughla 4y agoJesus Fuck is the Subaru infotainment system just an absolute nightmare. I love Subaru cars. I have owned several. My most recent (23 Impreza) was the first with full-blownsies infotainment. It is just an absolute shitshow. Slow, laggy, buggy, hard to understand menus. It randomly turns black and takes a minute or two to turn back on when starting driving. If you get in turn the car on, and put it into a gear without waiting for 20-30 seconds, the screen and therefore radio will be completely unusable for anywhere from 30 seconds up to five minutes afterwards. It is just awful. Awful.
- dybber 4y agoIt will probably make production costs cheaper in the long run to avoid as many buttons as possible, unless legislation forbids it due to safety concerns. I’m on team Hyundai in this case, but if you want to produce the cheapest possible car, you will have to reduce the amount of components that needs to be installed.
- cdepman 4y agoIt was doing its best on automatic but the wipers were sporadic at best. This was a major winter storm and visibility was awful …the model 3 had no idea where the lane lines were and apparently no idea how bad the precipitation was.
- zxexz 4y agoI think I’m just going to keep buying and driving 15 year old cars until the new cars are an order of magnitude better. I can buy 10 half decent 15 year old cars for the price of new Tesla! (15 years old is the magic number in MA where the car no longer has to pass emissions checks during inspection)
- smaudet 4y agoPlus, you can probably fix them yourself! None of this "hack it yourself and void the warranty, or pay a goon to hookup a computer to your car to 'fix' it." I wonder how long it will take for people to start selling jailbroken cars...
- gbin 4y agoTo me, this is definitely a major safety hazard to rely on voice command. If you just get splashed and in a stressed out voice you ask for wipers and your car might not understand you.
- lukas099 4y agoAbsolutely. Not to mention the needless inaccessibility.
- millzlane 4y agoIt would def draw a pause if I were driving a Turo rental. It's great to have the option of voice. But I can actuate the wipers much quicker with a hand stalk than I can speak it.
- judge2020 4y agoThe way to do it is to press the wiper button (press in on the stalk button) to swipe one and then it gives you options for manual wiper speed selection via an on-screen control.
- Stratoscope 4y agoSo I use a touchscreen to adjust the wiper speed and delay? In the worst kind of weather where I really need it? Sign me up! This is a huge improvement over my 2008 Kia where I twist the stalk and don't have to look at it and I can keep my eyes on the road. OTOH, my old Kia doesn't have Full Self Driving. Ah well.
- nixass 4y ago> my old Kia doesn't have Full Self Driving Don't worry, neither does Tesla :)
- serpix 4y agoin every other car on the planet it is the right stalk down. They had to go and reinvent this.
- lukas099 4y ago> the music fades Disgusting.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y agoLove when the music fades for like 5 seconds to play a 250ms chime.
- marlor 4y agoI can’t even get Siri to reliably play a song or skip a track, let alone anything useful. Must be my accent. I’d hate to try to operate vehicle controls with the same hit-and-miss interface. Give me tactile controls any time.
- dymk 4y agoThe voice control is shit
- gambiting 4y agoCool, and if you have a strong accent then what?
- NotYourLawyer 4y agoAnd navigating a software menu (which changes at random times when it updates itself) just to open the fucking glove compartment. What was wrong with a physical latch?
- judge2020 4y agoIt allows you to lock it with a pin. I don't want to carry keys.
- recursivequine 4y agoExactly, it's super useful & frictionless.
- NotYourLawyer 4y agoFine, then have a lock that's accessible electronically. The usual case of just opening the glove compartment when it's not locked can still just be a physical latch.
- afavour 4y agoIt’s entirely possible to do both.
- djha-skin 4y agoThere are so many good reasons to carry keys. Why carry a yubikey, or a license for that matter? Because good security is about what you have, not just what you know. It's about authentication. In the spirit of the present article, mechanical locks (especially for anything car related) are better. You can't hack into them. If you force or break them, you are forced to leave physical evidence behind that you did so. Not so for a Bluetooth or WiFi hack. This is why I will not enable my smart garage door opener. I don't even have pay by phone, because they offer an attack vector via NFC directly to my bank account. I carry credit cards instead. Sure, carrying all those pieces of metal is annoying. I got a KeySmart to help mitigate this. I carry my car key in my wallet with my cards. It's worth it, and there are ways around the costs.
- wongarsu 4y ago
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y agoAt least you only rented it. I've never driven a Tesla but I don't have to to know that would be horrible.
- speedgoose 4y agoYou better not drive one because you may be surprised.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y agoSurprised good or surprised bad? It's probably fun to drive but the screen I'm not interested in.
- speedgoose 4y agoThe screen is surprisingly good. I feel like a lot of the comments there are a bit like when smartphones changed from buttons blackberry style to touchscreens iPhone style. For sure buttons are better for some use cases but a touchscreen is nice too. It’s okay that you have to press the touchscreen to configure the automatic AC. It’s not something you do often anyway. However you may use the navigation or the media player more often. The model 3/y also has nice buttons on the wheel anyway, not some cheap touch buttons. With the exception of the wipers speed selector. They fucked up on this.
- EricE 4y agoPhysical buttons on the blackberry were far superior - except for the space they took. So a touchscreen on something that has a physical constraint is a reasonable trade off. There are ZERO constraints preventing them from still including physical buttons except for impractical hipster design philosophies. Want to have touch screen in addition to physical buttons? Knock yourself out. But I will never buy a car with pure touchscreen controls.
- rippercushions 4y agoI almost didn't buy a Tesla because of my concerns over the lack of controls, but turns out that while driving, it's rarely if ever necessary to touch the screen, because there's voice commands for everything (navigate to X, climate control off, etc). Plus often you don't need to do anything at all: the lights switch on automatically if it's dark, the windshield wipers activate automatically if there's moisture, etc. For me, the weirdest/most dangerous quirk is that the 'gears' (drive/reverse) are located on the right stalk, on several occasions I've toggled it in the wrong direction.
- rytis 4y ago> voice commands for everything how do they work in small spaces when there's active noise around (small children screaming for example)?
- smaudet 4y agoThey probably don't - it's what you get when a sociopath designs cars and doesn't think of anyone but himself.
- andrewfong 4y agoYMMV I suppose but the "auto" options for climate + wipers do not work well for me. Single droplet in the right spot => furious wiping. 100 droplets in the wrong spots => no wipe. Climate - My preferred mode is to have the A/C on but not actually directed straight at me (so through the windshield vents), but auto also blasts through the front.
- quonn 4y agoMy only request would be an option to override the auto wipers (even on autopilot) and without the touchscreen. This could be done effectively by adding a double press action and auditive feedback to the left stalk button.
- pleb_nz 4y agoA voice command takes longer to execute than a press or flick of a finger IMO. It would be interesting to see what the cognitive loads are between a physical movement and a set of voice commands. I remember reading a study that found talking to another person in the vehicle was the equivalent to having had a certain amount of alcohol. I'm sure there's a difference between voice.commands and conversation, but interesting nome the less.
- davchana 4y agoIs (among other things) having windshield wipers control on left stalk being a dangerous thing? That cars I had in other countries (with opposite side driving) had signals on right & wipers on left stalk.
- tom_ 4y agoThe cars I've driven in the UK have varied. The only ones I remember for certain are Nissan Micra (indicators on the right) and BMW 3 series (indicators on the left), and the others have varied. My fingers only seem to know which is which when the car is driving, and I still sometimes hit the wrong stalk if the car is stationary. Compared to putting the steering wheel on the wrong side it seems like a minor point.
- andylynch 4y agoNot really - just mildly embarrassing, like spilling your coffee when opening a door. Where I come from imported cars vary left or right stalk. So it’s common to see people accidentally washing windows especially in rentals. No great harm and mostly amusement value since it’s very obvious to everyone, everybody’s done it, and nine times out of time they just try again the other way and get it right after that.
- alistairSH 4y agoProbably not. You'd figure it out pretty quickly the first time you need to go around a corner or change lanes. FWIW, ever car I've ever owned or driven in the US has left stalk for turn signals and right stalk for wipers. Headlights are often on the left stalk as well, but sometimes a physical on the dash (usually to the left of steering wheel). Regardless, I have a strong dislike of touchscreen UIs in cars. Fine for the main radio, as long as I have physical controls on the steering wheel. But for open the globe box, or adjust the seat, or changing the wiper speed? GTFO, that's asinine.
- wildzzz 4y agoWipers on the left stalk is entirely normal for cars that have column shifters since those are always on the right. There's plenty of new trucks using column shifters, mostly on those with bench front seats. I'd honestly prefer a column shifter (and therefore wipers on the left side) if it gives me more real estate on the center console. New automatic shifters are sometimes entirely electronic so there's no constraints on where it can go. Having a center console electronic shifter is a skeuomorphic design. Wasting space on something you touch a few times every trip and only when completely stopped seems unnecessary.