6 ms·

I think one of the most frustrating aspects of this whole kerfluffle is the automakers' longstanding willingness to ignore customers and double down at any push

I think one of the most frustrating aspects of this whole kerfluffle is the automakers' longstanding willingness to ignore customers and double down at any pushback. It's downright stupid that it has taken this level of screaming from customers to roll back a design choice that should never have been made.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zeedude 3y ago
It’s all about the bottom line. Touch screens consolidate a ton of otherwise expensive switch gear. Going back to physical knobs and buttons means going back to paying for engineering, assembling, testing, etc.
- civilized 3y ago
  Profiting off of a less safe product that kills people could be seen as an egregious moral deficiency.
  - xpe 3y ago
    Indeed. Not uncommon but still unacceptable.
  - yellowapple 3y ago
    Corporations, being paperclip-maximizing automata, don't have morals in the first place, so no deficiency is possible.
    - branko_d 3y ago
      But... but... corporation are people! Aren’t they? Mitt Romney, have you lied to me??
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago
  From a product and even financial standpoint, the trade-off doesn’t make sense. All the litigation that could occur due to accidents caused by a less safe design plus the reputational damage that an inexcellent product could cause to the brand sounds so expensive to me.
  - ultrarunner 3y ago
    It seems carmakers have situated themselves fairly comfortably regarding liability. If a car hits someone in "the road" the victim immediately becomes a "jay walker" and it's their fault. Otherwise the driver made a mistake. Otherwise the DOT is at fault. It's nearly impossible to blame automakers for the damage their products do. A good example of this might be the lack of intuitive feedback regarding headlights. More and more, dash lights stay on despite exterior lights being off, giving the driver the impression that everything is normal. IIRC several countries including Canada are moving to require exterior lights to be on at all times now, but it boggles my mind that such a simple to understand phenomenon with so many straightforward solutions has to be solved through regulation instead of the automakers just, you know… doing better. Still, despite a clear design defect and recognition by regulator agencies, no litigation is likely to occur.
    - Zak 3y ago
      > Still, despite a clear design defect and recognition by regulator agencies, no litigation is likely to occur. I'm inclined to think it shouldn't. Cars are highly regulated. There are a great many very specific standards cars have to meet to be legal to sell for road use in most countries. There's stuff we all know about like crash testing for occupants, and more recently for pedestrians, but there's also weird stuff like cars not being allowed to have required lighting on movable bodywork in the US market[0]. I'd set a much higher bar for defective product claims when the design of the product is already subject to a great deal of specific regulation. Courts do not have expertise in car design and are probably worse at specifying design standards for cars than regulatory agencies staffed with experts and dedicated to that task. As you mention, there's a regulatory solution to the problem you're describing already in use in some countries. [0] Exceptions to that one are occasionally granted on a case by case basis
- tshaddox 3y ago
  If it was just about the bottom line, and consumers actually cared enough to be willing to pay for physical controls, then why wouldn’t there be plenty of options on the market?
  - thfuran 3y ago
    Designing two different sets of controls costs even more.
    - tshaddox 3y ago
      Then are you still saying that, adjusted by willingness to pay, consumers actually tend to prefer touch controls?
yellowapple 3y ago
It ain't just cars. I can't think of very many people who genuinely enjoy the "smart" aspect of "smart TVs", for example; nearly everyone I know who owns a TV also owns some device that not only does everything the TV's "smarts" can do but does them consistently better and can be trivially replaced should that ever change.
- cdot2 3y ago
  In both cases it's a cost/finance reason. "Smart" TVs can profit from selling customer data and touch screen cars save some cost over tactile interfaces.
  - bick_nyers 3y ago
    Everyone always says this, but how much do they actually make per unit sale. I buy $2k+ TVs, are they making $50 off of my data, or $5? Does it even pay for the department they hired to write the software that collects the data?
    - YetAnotherNick 3y ago
      Same for car. It's hard to imagine manufacturers would care to reduce cost by $5(20 tactile buttons likely costs lesser than that) on a $10k car, but what would I know.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  >I can't think of very many people who genuinely enjoy the "smart" aspect of "smart TVs", for example Count me in the camp that does. My TV runs GoogleOS (Android), and it's great, because I don't need some other device plugged in to do what I want to do with it. There's only 2 things I want from this thing: 1. Playing external media. It has a USB port, so I can plug in thumb drives and play video files from them. The built-in OS works fine for this, and seems to handle any media file or codec I throw at it. 2. Playing YouTube with a good player. Since it's Android, I can load APKs from wherever I want, and so I installed "SmartTubeNext", which blocks ads and sponsor segments automatically. It works almost too well. I think the mistake most other people make with smart TVs is that they get ones with crappy proprietary OSes, so with those you have no control over anything and can't run any 3rd-party software like SmartTubeNext. Of course, eventually this model could lose support from the mfgr, causing security issues or not being compatible with the apps I want, but for now it's quite nice.
modzu 3y ago
in every large business there is a very simple formula for decision making: what option maximizes profit? if we have to kill 100,000 cyclists and pedestrians in the process, who gives a shit, people die every day for no damn reason at all. lets kill em all, bastards arent our customers anyway
- oblio 3y ago
  Case in point: SUVs and trucks.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  Tobacco companies have no problem killing their customers. People dying is just the cost of doing business.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zeedude 3y ago

It’s all about the bottom line. Touch screens consolidate a ton of otherwise expensive switch gear. Going back to physical knobs and buttons means going back to paying for engineering, assembling, testing, etc.

civilized 3y ago
Profiting off of a less safe product that kills people could be seen as an egregious moral deficiency.
- xpe 3y ago
  Indeed. Not uncommon but still unacceptable.
- yellowapple 3y ago
  Corporations, being paperclip-maximizing automata, don't have morals in the first place, so no deficiency is possible.
  - branko_d 3y ago
    But... but... corporation are people! Aren’t they? Mitt Romney, have you lied to me??
rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago
From a product and even financial standpoint, the trade-off doesn’t make sense. All the litigation that could occur due to accidents caused by a less safe design plus the reputational damage that an inexcellent product could cause to the brand sounds so expensive to me.
- ultrarunner 3y ago
  It seems carmakers have situated themselves fairly comfortably regarding liability. If a car hits someone in "the road" the victim immediately becomes a "jay walker" and it's their fault. Otherwise the driver made a mistake. Otherwise the DOT is at fault. It's nearly impossible to blame automakers for the damage their products do. A good example of this might be the lack of intuitive feedback regarding headlights. More and more, dash lights stay on despite exterior lights being off, giving the driver the impression that everything is normal. IIRC several countries including Canada are moving to require exterior lights to be on at all times now, but it boggles my mind that such a simple to understand phenomenon with so many straightforward solutions has to be solved through regulation instead of the automakers just, you know… doing better. Still, despite a clear design defect and recognition by regulator agencies, no litigation is likely to occur.
  - Zak 3y ago
    > Still, despite a clear design defect and recognition by regulator agencies, no litigation is likely to occur. I'm inclined to think it shouldn't. Cars are highly regulated. There are a great many very specific standards cars have to meet to be legal to sell for road use in most countries. There's stuff we all know about like crash testing for occupants, and more recently for pedestrians, but there's also weird stuff like cars not being allowed to have required lighting on movable bodywork in the US market[0]. I'd set a much higher bar for defective product claims when the design of the product is already subject to a great deal of specific regulation. Courts do not have expertise in car design and are probably worse at specifying design standards for cars than regulatory agencies staffed with experts and dedicated to that task. As you mention, there's a regulatory solution to the problem you're describing already in use in some countries. [0] Exceptions to that one are occasionally granted on a case by case basis
tshaddox 3y ago
If it was just about the bottom line, and consumers actually cared enough to be willing to pay for physical controls, then why wouldn’t there be plenty of options on the market?
- thfuran 3y ago
  Designing two different sets of controls costs even more.
  - tshaddox 3y ago
    Then are you still saying that, adjusted by willingness to pay, consumers actually tend to prefer touch controls?

yellowapple 3y ago

It ain't just cars. I can't think of very many people who genuinely enjoy the "smart" aspect of "smart TVs", for example; nearly everyone I know who owns a TV also owns some device that not only does everything the TV's "smarts" can do but does them consistently better and can be trivially replaced should that ever change.

cdot2 3y ago
In both cases it's a cost/finance reason. "Smart" TVs can profit from selling customer data and touch screen cars save some cost over tactile interfaces.
- bick_nyers 3y ago
  Everyone always says this, but how much do they actually make per unit sale. I buy $2k+ TVs, are they making $50 off of my data, or $5? Does it even pay for the department they hired to write the software that collects the data?
  - YetAnotherNick 3y ago
    Same for car. It's hard to imagine manufacturers would care to reduce cost by $5(20 tactile buttons likely costs lesser than that) on a $10k car, but what would I know.
midoridensha 3y ago
>I can't think of very many people who genuinely enjoy the "smart" aspect of "smart TVs", for example Count me in the camp that does. My TV runs GoogleOS (Android), and it's great, because I don't need some other device plugged in to do what I want to do with it. There's only 2 things I want from this thing: 1. Playing external media. It has a USB port, so I can plug in thumb drives and play video files from them. The built-in OS works fine for this, and seems to handle any media file or codec I throw at it. 2. Playing YouTube with a good player. Since it's Android, I can load APKs from wherever I want, and so I installed "SmartTubeNext", which blocks ads and sponsor segments automatically. It works almost too well. I think the mistake most other people make with smart TVs is that they get ones with crappy proprietary OSes, so with those you have no control over anything and can't run any 3rd-party software like SmartTubeNext. Of course, eventually this model could lose support from the mfgr, causing security issues or not being compatible with the apps I want, but for now it's quite nice.

modzu 3y ago

in every large business there is a very simple formula for decision making: what option maximizes profit? if we have to kill 100,000 cyclists and pedestrians in the process, who gives a shit, people die every day for no damn reason at all. lets kill em all, bastards arent our customers anyway

oblio 3y ago
Case in point: SUVs and trucks.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
Tobacco companies have no problem killing their customers. People dying is just the cost of doing business.