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Comment by brian-armstrong | Hacker News Reader

Why are touchscreens in cars touted as innovation? They are a usability disaster. It is much easier to, say, change the A/C power when the control is a physical control I can reach for and identify by touch.

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I know that I successfully used hybrid button-touchscreen interface for my Prius for over a decade. It was great and resulted in no accidents or even distractions.

It's modular so additional features can be integrated by pure software so upgrades are possible.

Sure 90% touchscreen (some stuff is still manual) sounds crazy but Model3 owners don't seem to complain too much. I'd bet an 80% interface would work great today.

Enter a perfected voice control and L4 auto drive and we'll officially be living in the future.

90%? There really aren't very many controls in a car, does that mean headlightd and windshield wipers are not on stalks but in a touchscreen?

Yes both on touchscreen headlight is automatic same with wipers thought.there are also keybindings to the multi way scroll wheels on the steering wheel. It also modify bindings based on last action.if you manually had to enable wipers it switches the scroll wheels to activate it.

Anyone else wonder if Tesla is going to overcome this lack of touch issue by introducting voice controls?

Voice control still sucks hard. And I'm a Canadian born English speaker with deep knowledge of ML trying to predict what queries will be simple enough for Siri to understand. Sometimes Siri will understand the query; but just say:

> I understand you, but I can't do that task. Sorry.

Nothing is more frustrating than a computer telling you it understands what you want it to do, and that want you want to do is reasonable / authorized, but refusing to do it anyway.

I have found it to actually not be a problem at all in my wife's Model 3. Almost everything you normally do while driving is one or two taps away and doesn't require as much cognitive load as you would think (Mirror adjustment sucks though). Mapping/Directions on the big touch screen is amazing. The radio/volume controls are on the steering wheel just like most cars.

Most modern cars use digital displays for AC now anyway and it requires you to look down to see what it is set to. My Audi looks like this:

https://cevpu.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/2018-Audi-A5-Ca...

The BMW 4 series was similar:

https://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/10/2016/05/2016-bmw-...

The Porche Macan I test drove was a UX atrocity:

https://www.autocar.co.uk/sites/autocar.co.uk/files/styles/g...

All digital displays.

In all of the cars I test drove, the controls for AC/Radio/etc were all very low, tiny text, and require me to take my eyes completely off the road. At least with the model 3 display I can kind of keep the road in my peripheral vision.

In counterpoint, I've had a Model 3 for two weeks now, and can't operate the touchscreen at all while the car is moving. I can't hit the small buttons at arm's length while the car is bouncing around. The first (and last) time I tried to turn on the fog lights, I turned off the headlights instead.

So my personal rule now is, don't touch the screen while the car is moving.

Never drive a Macan, but unless Audi completely borked the UX (unlikely), first any adjustment to AC will be overlaid on the MMI/Navi screen, so you don't need to look down, and the process of "make it colder/warmer" involves nothing more than reaching to a physical button (easy to grab even in a moving car) and giving it a few clicks in one or another direction.

Saying that "one or two taps away" is in any way comparable in either usability or safety seems rather like saying that a coal-powered steam car form 100 years ago is as clean as that Tesla.

It is a little premature. I think it will make much more sense in two or three decades (?) *when we can get self driving mostly working.

This may be unpopular but control knobs are silly. How often do you reach for that climate control knob? Why can't the car just do the right thing? Why does the knob need to exist?

My opinion is that doing away with knobs we don't need to be persistent is a good thing. Now, in a car today with no real self driving, we want the brakes to be accessible by a persistent control and it is in all cars. I just think tweaking climate control isn't that high in the list of priorities.

I feel like I reach for climate control all the time. Cars have tiny enclosed cabins and they go from cold to hot quickly depending on sun/shade etc. And how would it do the right thing? The right temperature is pretty subjective.

You set the temperature you like once. It can use that as the default. That will cover most climate control cases, and then there's an override value for when you have passengers. Since there would be someone in the passenger seat then, they can do it whilst the driver drives. The override gets reset every 6 hours.

Theoretical way it could work; unsure how much of that applies to Tesla.

Temperature doesnt take in to account radiant heat (or lack thereof). If the sun is shining on you, and the cabin is set to 20, you'll be hot. If it's a cloudless winter night and -20 out, setting to 20 will be frigid cold. I mean just yesterday, I had to alternate between 18 and 22 depending whether the sun was shining on me, or was behind the car shining in the rear window (curvy road)

Good point. I wonder if that could be detected and compensated for, though?

Absolutely. My brain tells me I'm hot, and my motor system activates to move my arm, which adjusts the climate controls, bringing the temperature back within tolerance. It's pretty sophisticated.

Also could be done by the car's software thermostat determining how much resistance it is up against in keeping the car to a particular temperature and adjusting that way.

Lots of resistance => Lots of sun hitting the vehicle => Set the temperature a bit lower.

My (2011) car manual claims that there is a sun sensor that is used to control climate system, so I would assume that yes, it can.

Well, OK, but what makes a touchscreen an improvement? Why is it good to take knobs away? The number of 10 year old devices with knobs that still function is way higher than the number of 10 year old devices with touchscreens that still function, for many reasons.

Also, the volume and radio controls are high on the list of "things I like to control without taking my eyes off the road"

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