7 ms·

I drive a Toyota that is nearly old enough to run for US Senator. Every control in the car is visible, clearly labeled and is distinct to the touch - at all tim

I drive a Toyota that is nearly old enough to run for US Senator. Every control in the car is visible, clearly labeled and is distinct to the touch - at all times. The action isn't impeded by routine activity or maintenance (ex:battery change). Because it can be trivially duplicated, this is minimally capable engineering. Yet automakers everywhere lack even this level of competence. By reasonable measure, they are poor at their job.

staplers 1y ago
Because it can be trivially duplicated While I agree with your sentiment, designing and manufacturing custom molds for each knob and function (including premium versions) instead of just slapping a screen on the dash does have a cost.
- marginalia_nu 1y ago
  Has this cost risen? Why is this so expensive it can't even be put into a premium car today when it used to be ubiquitous in even the cheapest hardware a few decades ago?
  - cortesoft 1y ago
    No, but every cost cut is additional profit
  - const_cast 1y ago
    Because most companies are ruthless penny-pinchers and over-optimizers. They're willing to burn dollars to save pennies. The reason is that they're trading things they can measure for things they can't. Basically, if you remove the knobs you can save, say, 10 dollars on every vehicle. In return, you have made your car less attractive and will lose a small number of sales. You will never, ever be able to quantify that loss in sales. So, on paper, you've saved money for "free". Typically, opportunity cost is impossible or close to impossible to measure. What these companies think they are doing is minimizing cost. Often, they are just maximizing opportunity cost of various decisions. Everyone is trying to subtly cut quality over time. Going from A quality to B quality is pretty safe, it's likely close to zero consumers will notice. But then you say "well we went from A to B and nobody noticed, so nobody will notice B to C!". So you do it again. Then over and over. And, eventually, you go from a brand known for quality to cheap bargain-bin garbage. And it happened so slowly that leadership is left scratching their heads. Sometimes the company then implodes spontaneously, other times it slowly rots and loses to competitors. It's so common it feels almost inevitable. Really, most companies don't have to do much to stay successful. For a lot of markets, they just have to keep doing what they're doing. Ah, but the taste of cost-cutting is much too seductive. They do not understand what they are risking.
    - rileymat2 1y ago
      > Basically, if you remove the knobs you can save, say, 10 dollars on every vehicle. In return, you have made your car less attractive and will lose a small number of sales. Is there evidence that fancy looking screens don't show better in the showroom than legacy looking knobs and buttons? Where under use, they may be better, I am not sure all that sells better.
      - const_cast 1y ago
        No, there isn't. Like I said, the opportunity cost is invisible and impossible to measure. All I know is personal anecdotes from people I talk to. I know a couple people who have a Mercedes EQS - they've all said the same thing: the big screen is cool for a little bit, then it's just annoying. I think it will take a generation or two of cars before some consumers start holding back on purchases because of this. For now, they don't know better. But I'm sure after owning a car and being pissed off at it, they'll think a little bit harder on their next purchase. I think consumers are highly impacted by these types of things - small cuts that aren't bad, per se, but are annoying. Consumers are emotional, they hold grudges, they get pissed off. I sort of feel the same way about fix-a-flat kits. Once people actually have the experience of trying to use a fix-a-flat kit, they'll start asking car salesmen if the car comes with a spare...
        elwebmaster 1y ago
        And not every consumer has to feel the pain to know. Many, like myself, have seen others suffer and have made their mind of not buying such a car.
      - troupo 1y ago
        The problem isn't just that. These screens are actual safety hazards. Whatever you display in a showroom doesn't justify this: https://grumpy.website/1665 https://grumpy.website/1665
  - criddell 1y ago
    Because cars have long design times and a big touchscreen have generally been seen as more premium than a bunch of push buttons and dials. I think the tide has turned somewhat, but it’s going to take some time.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    It was always expensive. Car makers need their cars to last (the used market is imbortant since few can afford a new car the scrap in 3 years) so they are not buying the cheap switches. a cherry mx will run near a dollar each in quantity. Then you put the cap an it plus wires and it adds up fast per switch. A touch screen is $75 in quantity and replaces many switches.
  - jama211 1y ago
    Because being more expensive than a competitor for something most consumers don’t care about is a hit to sales.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
  > designing and manufacturing custom molds for each knob and function ... dash does have a cost. Manufacturing car components already involves designing and custom molds, does it not? Compared to the final purchase price, the cost of adding knobs to that stack seems inconsequential.
  - antisthenes 1y ago
    Yeah, seems like a really weird cope to defend the automakers. Your average transmission will have an order of magnitude more parts that also needed to be designed and produced with much higher precision. The interior knob controls are just a rounding error in the cost structure.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Yes, but the touch screen is one large mold. The button needs a custom mold for each button. The touch screen also has large flat areas with reduces cost since is prevents extra cost round shapes.
aikinai 1y ago
It's cost, not competence. These days making a touch screen is easier and cheaper than manufacturing and assembling lots of little buttons and knobs.
- gaudystead 1y ago
  One of the reasons I purchased a (newer but used Mazda) was because it still has buttons and knobs right next to the driver's right hand in the center console. I can operate parts of the car without even having to look. (another reason was because it still has a geared transmission instead of a CVT, but that's a separate discussion)
  - bluGill 1y ago
    My newer phev saves me a large pile of money ever month in gas. Not as much as payments, but closer than you would think.
    - sokoloff 1y ago
      At an average 14K miles per year and a guessed 25 mpg, that’s 560 gallons/year. At $4/gallon (guessed and well over the US average), that’s $2240/yr. If you exclusively charged with completely free electricity and still managed to drive that 14K miles in a year, you’d save $187/mo. If it moved you from 25mpg to 40mpge, it’d save you a little over $70/mo. Our two cars are a BEV and a hybrid, so I’m no battery-hater, but neither is cheaper than a reasonable gas-only equivalent would be.
      - bluGill 1y ago
        that is a large pile of money saved there, but not as much as payments. Still cars don't last forever - my pervious minivan needed a transmission rebuild so we can cut the cost of the replacement by 10000 since either way that money is spent and now the newer van is break even on payments and it should still work after it is paid off for a few years.
  - grugagag 1y ago
aspenmayer 1y ago
Power abhors a vacuum. Choosing to not change is viewed as failure to innovate, even if the design suffers. Planned obsolescence is as old as the concept of yearly production models themselves, and likely older, going back to replacement parts manufacturing and standardized production overtaking piecework. It’s a race to the bottom to be the least enshittified versus your market competitors. Usability takes a backseat to porcine beauty productization.
makeitdouble 1y ago
I'm sympathetic , but think it's a disservice to the designers to present it like that: > Every control in the car is visible No. And that would be horrible. Every control _critically needed while driving_ is visible and accessible. Controls that matter less can be smaller and more convoluted, or straight hidden. The levers to adjust seat high and positions are hidden while still accessible. The latch to open the car good can (should ?) be less accessible and can be harder to find. There are a myriad of subtle and opinionated choices to make the interface efficient. There's nothing trivial or really "simple" about that design process, and IMHO brushing over that is part of what leads us to the current situation where car makers just ignore these considerations.
- ringeryless 1y ago
  i disagree. i only want minimalist functionality and therefore it's reasonable to have ALL controls always present and physical. someone needs to have the courage to say no to features that will get people killed. a simple gun doesn't jam in the heat of battle. u my 1989 Toyota corolla has manual windows and that is great.
  - freddie_mercury 1y ago
    Simple guns jam all the time bro. Even 100 year old super simple designs jam.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      All guns can jam. However a simpler design has less potential to jam.
      - okanat 1y ago
        I think this is a bad analogy made with good intentions. Guns jam because the physical nature of the material is simply degradation. You need to actively fight against it by producing higher precision guns, use more advanced / tougher materials and come up with mechanisms that would reduce the possibility. That's far from simple.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
citizenpaul 1y ago
I commented on here about the surge in US car mfg recruiters contacting me about working on their new car systems. The HN opinion seemed to that they are complete disasters and stay away if I value my sanity.
_kidlike 1y ago
I had similar discussions with my father who started his career in the 80s as an engineer, and has been a CEO for the last ~15 years. The discussion was a bit broader, about engineering and quality/usability in everything. His perspective was that companies were "run" by engineers first, then a few decades later by managers, and then by marketing. Who knows what's next, maybe nothing (as in all decisions are accidentally made by AI because everyone at all levels just asks AI). Could be better than our current marketing-driven universe.
- amelius 1y ago
  The free market does not optimize for quality.
swiftcoder 1y ago
The good news over here is that the European NCAP is now mandating they put a bunch of those physical controls back if they want a 5-star safety rating. Would not be sorry to say good bye to the awful touchscreen UI in my car...
- Marazan 1y ago
  Now they just need to fix their testing of pedestrian collisions with SUVs and I can go back to praising EuroNCAP.
  - Xss3 1y ago
    Don't forget the headlight regulations desperately need an update. RAC survey said 89% think some are too bright, 30% think *most* are too bright. Insane.
BrtByte 1y ago
It's wild how we've come full circle. It's baffling how something so simple and effective has been abandoned in favor of glossy screens and guesswork
animal531 1y ago
Youtuber/Engineer William Osman had a great rant some time back when he bought a new microwave and it came with a ton of buttons, his argument being that a microwave only really needs one (and ideally its just a dial instead of a button). My previous one lasted more than 20 years, from when my parents bought it for me when I went to study until some time in my 40s. It was still functional, but its dial had become loose and it didn't look that great anymore. The one I bought after that follows the new pattern, it has buttons up the wazoo and who even knows what they do? To be honest I just need one power setting with a time and maybe a defrost option?
- yoz-y 1y ago
  When I was looking to buy a microwave myself I wanted to buy one that has exactly two dials and two buttons. Power, time, start, stop. It turns out that luckily there is one like that made. The Y4ZM25MMK. Also as bonus no clock. That said, I realized only very late that the function dial actually has a marker to show which function it selects. An extremely shallow colorless groove.
- rekabis 1y ago
  > a microwave only really needs one (and ideally its just a dial instead of a button). The 1967 Amana Radarange (https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/08/28/microwave_custom-7768a45563a6543e1de3e2c844998439af343703.jpg https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/08/28/microwave_custom...) had two dials: short duration under 5 minutes and a long duration out to something like 30 minutes. My parents still have theirs. It needs some resto love, but it’s still fully functional. I’ve already put my foot down in terms of who’s inheriting it.
- tikhonj 1y ago
  I have a commercial microwave with exactly one dial[1]. It's great. It's more expensive than a "normal" microwave, but the UI is great, the construction is really solid and it's easy to clean. There's no external moving parts—no annoying rotating tray on the inside, and no visible latch on the door. It's clearly meant to take some abuse. At first it was a bit annoying because frozen meals sometimes want you to run it at lower power and this microwave has no power setting. If that's a problem, I imagine there's some other similar model that does. But in practice, just running it at full power for shorter seems to work just as well. It would look much nicer if it didn't have a cooking guide printed on it. In Europe, I saw some consumer-grade microwaves with similarly minimalist designs, like these Gorenje microwaves[2] with two dials. I'd have gotten one of those, but I couldn't easily find them in the US. But I also did not look especially hard. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZTVIPZ2?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2&th=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZTVIPZ2?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_... [2]: https://international.gorenje.com/products/cooking-and-baking/microwave-ovens/OVEN-MW-M20XYZ-MO20E1WH-GOR/p/000000000000740248 https://international.gorenje.com/products/cooking-and-bakin...
CommenterPerson 1y ago
Lots of comments that a few plastic knobs, switches, wiring add to the cost. Yes. But buttons and knobs are more intuitive, less distracting, can be operated blind while keeping eyes on the road. So guess what Mr.Auto Manufacturer, you can keep your hifi $30K-70K touchscreen surveillance machine on your lot. I'll keep driving my 20+ year old Corolla until you learn to do better.
regnull 1y ago
I notice an interesting phenomenon here and elsewhere. There is this complaint where everyone agrees that the current state of affairs sucks. There are some (perhaps limited, but still) ways to improve it, and yet, they don’t get much traction. My very brief research produced this list of cars with limited touch screens: Toyota 4Runner, Toyota Tacoma, Jeep Wrangler, Nissan Frontier, Ford Maverick, Ford Bronco, Jeep Gladiator, Mazda MX-5 Miata I wonder what kind of cars do you guys drive. Stranger still, if someone comes up with an idea of how to improve that thing that sucks, frequently the reaction is very negative. Sadly, the whole thing more and more gets into “old man yelling at the cloud” territory.
dfxm12 1y ago
By reasonable measure, they are poor at their job. I don't think you can make this assertion without knowing what they were tasked with doing. I very much doubt they were tasked with making the most user friendly cockpit possible. I suspect they were required to minimize moving parts (like switches and buttons) and to enable things like Sirius, iPhone and Android integration, etc.

staplers 1y ago

Because it can be trivially duplicated While I agree with your sentiment, designing and manufacturing custom molds for each knob and function (including premium versions) instead of just slapping a screen on the dash does have a cost.

marginalia_nu 1y ago
Has this cost risen? Why is this so expensive it can't even be put into a premium car today when it used to be ubiquitous in even the cheapest hardware a few decades ago?
- cortesoft 1y ago
  No, but every cost cut is additional profit
- const_cast 1y ago
  Because most companies are ruthless penny-pinchers and over-optimizers. They're willing to burn dollars to save pennies. The reason is that they're trading things they can measure for things they can't. Basically, if you remove the knobs you can save, say, 10 dollars on every vehicle. In return, you have made your car less attractive and will lose a small number of sales. You will never, ever be able to quantify that loss in sales. So, on paper, you've saved money for "free". Typically, opportunity cost is impossible or close to impossible to measure. What these companies think they are doing is minimizing cost. Often, they are just maximizing opportunity cost of various decisions. Everyone is trying to subtly cut quality over time. Going from A quality to B quality is pretty safe, it's likely close to zero consumers will notice. But then you say "well we went from A to B and nobody noticed, so nobody will notice B to C!". So you do it again. Then over and over. And, eventually, you go from a brand known for quality to cheap bargain-bin garbage. And it happened so slowly that leadership is left scratching their heads. Sometimes the company then implodes spontaneously, other times it slowly rots and loses to competitors. It's so common it feels almost inevitable. Really, most companies don't have to do much to stay successful. For a lot of markets, they just have to keep doing what they're doing. Ah, but the taste of cost-cutting is much too seductive. They do not understand what they are risking.
  - rileymat2 1y ago
    > Basically, if you remove the knobs you can save, say, 10 dollars on every vehicle. In return, you have made your car less attractive and will lose a small number of sales. Is there evidence that fancy looking screens don't show better in the showroom than legacy looking knobs and buttons? Where under use, they may be better, I am not sure all that sells better.
    - const_cast 1y ago
      No, there isn't. Like I said, the opportunity cost is invisible and impossible to measure. All I know is personal anecdotes from people I talk to. I know a couple people who have a Mercedes EQS - they've all said the same thing: the big screen is cool for a little bit, then it's just annoying. I think it will take a generation or two of cars before some consumers start holding back on purchases because of this. For now, they don't know better. But I'm sure after owning a car and being pissed off at it, they'll think a little bit harder on their next purchase. I think consumers are highly impacted by these types of things - small cuts that aren't bad, per se, but are annoying. Consumers are emotional, they hold grudges, they get pissed off. I sort of feel the same way about fix-a-flat kits. Once people actually have the experience of trying to use a fix-a-flat kit, they'll start asking car salesmen if the car comes with a spare...
      - elwebmaster 1y ago
        And not every consumer has to feel the pain to know. Many, like myself, have seen others suffer and have made their mind of not buying such a car.
    - troupo 1y ago
      The problem isn't just that. These screens are actual safety hazards. Whatever you display in a showroom doesn't justify this: https://grumpy.website/1665 https://grumpy.website/1665
- criddell 1y ago
  Because cars have long design times and a big touchscreen have generally been seen as more premium than a bunch of push buttons and dials. I think the tide has turned somewhat, but it’s going to take some time.
- bluGill 1y ago
  It was always expensive. Car makers need their cars to last (the used market is imbortant since few can afford a new car the scrap in 3 years) so they are not buying the cheap switches. a cherry mx will run near a dollar each in quantity. Then you put the cap an it plus wires and it adds up fast per switch. A touch screen is $75 in quantity and replaces many switches.
- jama211 1y ago
  Because being more expensive than a competitor for something most consumers don’t care about is a hit to sales.
WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
> designing and manufacturing custom molds for each knob and function ... dash does have a cost. Manufacturing car components already involves designing and custom molds, does it not? Compared to the final purchase price, the cost of adding knobs to that stack seems inconsequential.
- antisthenes 1y ago
  Yeah, seems like a really weird cope to defend the automakers. Your average transmission will have an order of magnitude more parts that also needed to be designed and produced with much higher precision. The interior knob controls are just a rounding error in the cost structure.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Yes, but the touch screen is one large mold. The button needs a custom mold for each button. The touch screen also has large flat areas with reduces cost since is prevents extra cost round shapes.

aikinai 1y ago

It's cost, not competence. These days making a touch screen is easier and cheaper than manufacturing and assembling lots of little buttons and knobs.

gaudystead 1y ago
One of the reasons I purchased a (newer but used Mazda) was because it still has buttons and knobs right next to the driver's right hand in the center console. I can operate parts of the car without even having to look. (another reason was because it still has a geared transmission instead of a CVT, but that's a separate discussion)
- bluGill 1y ago
  My newer phev saves me a large pile of money ever month in gas. Not as much as payments, but closer than you would think.
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    At an average 14K miles per year and a guessed 25 mpg, that’s 560 gallons/year. At $4/gallon (guessed and well over the US average), that’s $2240/yr. If you exclusively charged with completely free electricity and still managed to drive that 14K miles in a year, you’d save $187/mo. If it moved you from 25mpg to 40mpge, it’d save you a little over $70/mo. Our two cars are a BEV and a hybrid, so I’m no battery-hater, but neither is cheaper than a reasonable gas-only equivalent would be.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      that is a large pile of money saved there, but not as much as payments. Still cars don't last forever - my pervious minivan needed a transmission rebuild so we can cut the cost of the replacement by 10000 since either way that money is spent and now the newer van is break even on payments and it should still work after it is paid off for a few years.
- grugagag 1y ago

aspenmayer 1y ago

Power abhors a vacuum. Choosing to not change is viewed as failure to innovate, even if the design suffers. Planned obsolescence is as old as the concept of yearly production models themselves, and likely older, going back to replacement parts manufacturing and standardized production overtaking piecework. It’s a race to the bottom to be the least enshittified versus your market competitors. Usability takes a backseat to porcine beauty productization.

makeitdouble 1y ago

I'm sympathetic , but think it's a disservice to the designers to present it like that: > Every control in the car is visible No. And that would be horrible. Every control _critically needed while driving_ is visible and accessible. Controls that matter less can be smaller and more convoluted, or straight hidden. The levers to adjust seat high and positions are hidden while still accessible. The latch to open the car good can (should ?) be less accessible and can be harder to find. There are a myriad of subtle and opinionated choices to make the interface efficient. There's nothing trivial or really "simple" about that design process, and IMHO brushing over that is part of what leads us to the current situation where car makers just ignore these considerations.

ringeryless 1y ago
i disagree. i only want minimalist functionality and therefore it's reasonable to have ALL controls always present and physical. someone needs to have the courage to say no to features that will get people killed. a simple gun doesn't jam in the heat of battle. u my 1989 Toyota corolla has manual windows and that is great.
- freddie_mercury 1y ago
  Simple guns jam all the time bro. Even 100 year old super simple designs jam.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    All guns can jam. However a simpler design has less potential to jam.
    - okanat 1y ago
      I think this is a bad analogy made with good intentions. Guns jam because the physical nature of the material is simply degradation. You need to actively fight against it by producing higher precision guns, use more advanced / tougher materials and come up with mechanisms that would reduce the possibility. That's far from simple.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

citizenpaul 1y ago

I commented on here about the surge in US car mfg recruiters contacting me about working on their new car systems. The HN opinion seemed to that they are complete disasters and stay away if I value my sanity.

_kidlike 1y ago

I had similar discussions with my father who started his career in the 80s as an engineer, and has been a CEO for the last ~15 years. The discussion was a bit broader, about engineering and quality/usability in everything. His perspective was that companies were "run" by engineers first, then a few decades later by managers, and then by marketing. Who knows what's next, maybe nothing (as in all decisions are accidentally made by AI because everyone at all levels just asks AI). Could be better than our current marketing-driven universe.

amelius 1y ago
The free market does not optimize for quality.

swiftcoder 1y ago

The good news over here is that the European NCAP is now mandating they put a bunch of those physical controls back if they want a 5-star safety rating. Would not be sorry to say good bye to the awful touchscreen UI in my car...

Marazan 1y ago
Now they just need to fix their testing of pedestrian collisions with SUVs and I can go back to praising EuroNCAP.
- Xss3 1y ago
  Don't forget the headlight regulations desperately need an update. RAC survey said 89% think some are too bright, 30% think *most* are too bright. Insane.

BrtByte 1y ago

It's wild how we've come full circle. It's baffling how something so simple and effective has been abandoned in favor of glossy screens and guesswork

animal531 1y ago

Youtuber/Engineer William Osman had a great rant some time back when he bought a new microwave and it came with a ton of buttons, his argument being that a microwave only really needs one (and ideally its just a dial instead of a button). My previous one lasted more than 20 years, from when my parents bought it for me when I went to study until some time in my 40s. It was still functional, but its dial had become loose and it didn't look that great anymore. The one I bought after that follows the new pattern, it has buttons up the wazoo and who even knows what they do? To be honest I just need one power setting with a time and maybe a defrost option?

yoz-y 1y ago
When I was looking to buy a microwave myself I wanted to buy one that has exactly two dials and two buttons. Power, time, start, stop. It turns out that luckily there is one like that made. The Y4ZM25MMK. Also as bonus no clock. That said, I realized only very late that the function dial actually has a marker to show which function it selects. An extremely shallow colorless groove.
rekabis 1y ago
> a microwave only really needs one (and ideally its just a dial instead of a button). The 1967 Amana Radarange (https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/08/28/microwave_custom-7768a45563a6543e1de3e2c844998439af343703.jpg https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/08/28/microwave_custom...) had two dials: short duration under 5 minutes and a long duration out to something like 30 minutes. My parents still have theirs. It needs some resto love, but it’s still fully functional. I’ve already put my foot down in terms of who’s inheriting it.
tikhonj 1y ago
I have a commercial microwave with exactly one dial[1]. It's great. It's more expensive than a "normal" microwave, but the UI is great, the construction is really solid and it's easy to clean. There's no external moving parts—no annoying rotating tray on the inside, and no visible latch on the door. It's clearly meant to take some abuse. At first it was a bit annoying because frozen meals sometimes want you to run it at lower power and this microwave has no power setting. If that's a problem, I imagine there's some other similar model that does. But in practice, just running it at full power for shorter seems to work just as well. It would look much nicer if it didn't have a cooking guide printed on it. In Europe, I saw some consumer-grade microwaves with similarly minimalist designs, like these Gorenje microwaves[2] with two dials. I'd have gotten one of those, but I couldn't easily find them in the US. But I also did not look especially hard. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZTVIPZ2?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2&th=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZTVIPZ2?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_... [2]: https://international.gorenje.com/products/cooking-and-baking/microwave-ovens/OVEN-MW-M20XYZ-MO20E1WH-GOR/p/000000000000740248 https://international.gorenje.com/products/cooking-and-bakin...

CommenterPerson 1y ago

Lots of comments that a few plastic knobs, switches, wiring add to the cost. Yes. But buttons and knobs are more intuitive, less distracting, can be operated blind while keeping eyes on the road. So guess what Mr.Auto Manufacturer, you can keep your hifi $30K-70K touchscreen surveillance machine on your lot. I'll keep driving my 20+ year old Corolla until you learn to do better.

regnull 1y ago

I notice an interesting phenomenon here and elsewhere. There is this complaint where everyone agrees that the current state of affairs sucks. There are some (perhaps limited, but still) ways to improve it, and yet, they don’t get much traction. My very brief research produced this list of cars with limited touch screens: Toyota 4Runner, Toyota Tacoma, Jeep Wrangler, Nissan Frontier, Ford Maverick, Ford Bronco, Jeep Gladiator, Mazda MX-5 Miata I wonder what kind of cars do you guys drive. Stranger still, if someone comes up with an idea of how to improve that thing that sucks, frequently the reaction is very negative. Sadly, the whole thing more and more gets into “old man yelling at the cloud” territory.

dfxm12 1y ago

By reasonable measure, they are poor at their job. I don't think you can make this assertion without knowing what they were tasked with doing. I very much doubt they were tasked with making the most user friendly cockpit possible. I suspect they were required to minimize moving parts (like switches and buttons) and to enable things like Sirius, iPhone and Android integration, etc.