Turning on windscreen heater, heating, and all that stuff is pretty straightforward, the on-screen buttons are always in the same place and are next to the bezel so you can anchor your hand. Plus cabin heating can be controlled via clickwheels on the steering wheel.
I think maybe the seat heaters are a little distracting. You can only tell their state by looking at the screen, and they cycle through settings. That's something I'd like a button for, or at least to be able to control via the clickwheels.
Edit
Studied HCI and Usability Engineering at university, did my dissertation in usability of web systems, and generally share your concerns. Not aiming to dismiss them, more say that in my experience it's not as bad as one might expect.
Let's not suggest that Autopilot is safe completely unsupervised, and let's also not suggest that all drivers always look at the road 100% of every drive they take. There is a realistic middle ground, and I'm very grateful to have Autopilot to be an extra set of eyes.
When you put a large touchscreen on the right side of the driver seat the moment you need to get feedback from the vehicle or do something you are distracted and your eyes are not on the road.
Now before all Tesla owners say, yea but my autopilot is on, and yea it is not as bad as I though it will be, you are still distracted and the primary task that you have in the vehicle (driving) is now with not optimal user experience which might lead to the worse case scenarios.
The physical knobs are far better way to perform tasks in your vehicle while driving, mainly because of the muscle memory your body and brain will generate, you will not only perform the task faster but you will not put constrain on your brain to read, watch or whatever you need to do to perform a task.
You also forget that you are not alone in your Tesla at the road. You have thousands of other drivers who might be as equality distracted or even worse. So imagine what happens when you play with your screen on autopilot and you are not watching your back mirror, while maybe a drunk driver is approaching very fast.
Now I am not against Tesla or autonomous driving, quite the opposite I can't wait the day the autonomous driving will be so advanced that people won't need to drive, mainly because majority of the people don't take driving seriously and the end results is the worst one possible, people loosing their life over car accidents.
There were statistics in my country alone that more people die every year from car accidents than people in active war times.
I believe that Tesla can do a much better job to build futuristic vehicles rather than just placing a tablet in the middle of the car.
They didn’t “just” place a tablet. They did a lot more than that. More than I could ever mention in one comment.
But to take just one thing, just because there is a tablet, that does not mean there are no buttons and other physical hardware controls. There are plenty of those. So I really don’t understand the motivation of your rant.
When you put a x amount of inches screen in the front of the vehicle right next to the driver, and making that screen to take input from the driver and display output for the driver, you are distracting him. When you are distracting a driver of a vehicle that leads to car accidents, car accidents kill other people and ruin lives.
If you are on a hype train and you don't take driving seriously if you want put in your car a 4k 65 inch Samsung TV to watch your favorite show, but I don't see a reason then why you should be on the road endangering other people lives.
I like Tesla as a company and I like Elon Musk I would love to have an electric vehicle one day, but that doesn't mean I should I agree with some engineer design decision to place a tablet in the middle of the car.
I don't believe that either the software nor the hardware is so advanced today that car manufactures can safely build big screens without distracting the driver attention, which should be on the road.
I also think that Tesla is leading that game for now which means that other car manufactures will follow...
The last thing we need is 20+ inches screens in vehicles while people are successfully being involved in car accident with their phones...
Nobody is taking away the accomplishments of Tesla, but then again I don't see why we shouldn't comment or criticize something when it is not right or could be better, simply because I want to see that future with amazing electric vehicles and I am just hoping for Tesla to consider other design options because they can solve the driving problem, rather that you ranting of my motivation to comment.
Have you ever driven a Tesla for some time? Studying is great, but it is no substitute for actual experience.
So a student?
Dumb question maybe (excuse me for not searching this out) but does Tesla have voice control? Seems like an obvious way to tackle this problem.
"Tesla turn my heat up" "Tesla tune to SiriusXM channel 100" etc.
It's the future, see!
I’ve only driven cars with radar cruise control (with always-on auto-breaking) and lane & blind-spot detection and I now find these features invaluable to feeling safe whilst driving and avoiding the pitfalls distractions can cause.
If people are going to adjust the volume more often than adjusting the heat, then you get a hardware button in the Model 3 for example, but not for heat adjustment.
There’s a lot of misinformation out there. I’ve seen HN posters flat out state (wrongly) that you have to use the screen for things where you don’t have to. Examples: volume control, pause/play, wipers, windshield wash. Take these skeptics with a grain of salt when they assert opinions about stuff they have no experience with.
At first I was worried about the center console but quickly came to realize it was a non issue. Even the speed being displayed there did not matter as normal eye movement when driving would pick it up if not out of the "corner" of my eye. I was totally comfortable with it before I made it home from picking up the car. My eighty year plus old father had zero issues with it. He is of the type where you don't play with buttons/etc unless stopped. to each his own
As for buttons, many cars have automatic climate control and I rarely if ever have changed mine. If I need the front or rear defroster its merely a glance and tap; muscle memory almost as much as with a button. Heat seater, my seat is right there on the bottom of the display. temp is a simple tap left or right. all again "muscle memory" because I am used to the car. Same as if I had to drive a friends car - you learn and you learn quite quickly.
I give my friends a simple test with their cars. Put yellow dots on each you use during a drive to and from work. You can do this before or during. You would be surprised how much you don't use center console buttons. There is a reason why some controls are replicated to the steering wheel.
Plus if you want to get down to it, if I really want to change something in traffic that is involved; though honestly I don't know what that would be; I let the car drive for awhile. It can do that.
As for the presentation, I had to laugh. My TM3 is blue and for a bit when watching the TMY driving videos I was hard pressed to see the physical difference
I've done the button dot thing. Or rather, I did it with velcro and stickyback sandpaper, because the dash lights in my old Pontiac went out and it was more fun to make it tactile than fix the lights. I realized I could quickly distinguish hook velcro, loop velcro, and 3 grits of sandpaper, so that gave me 5 "colors" to work with. I coded the HVAC controls, the radio presets, and the rear defroster controls. That's about all I used on a regular basis.
It was great. Previously I could find these controls without looking, but knowing I was on the right one meant groping to the end of the button row and counting back. My eyes never left the road, but my attention definitely faltered. Once they were tactile-coded, I had instant confirmation, and it took a lot less attention to interact.
Modern cars tend to be the complete opposite of this pure-tactile experience. The Lincoln Touch console, with its capacitive controls that activate before you even register that you've touched them, are the absolute worst. You can't grope over to a control without looking, or you'll change a dozen other things on the way. Touchscreens are only slightly better, in that they tend to have borders you can follow with your fingers, and buttons are often placed along the edges. But not always.
On the Prius touchscreen, I can get in the ballpark without looking, glance down to fine-adjust my finger placement, and get my eyes back up to the road even as my finger makes the selection. But that only works on the radio presets which are along the edge of the screen. Input source selection goes to a shit-tastic "pretty 3d" screen where the sources' display order can change, so you absolutely have to read the display to make a selection. (The steering-wheel copy of the "mode" button can also cycle between some, but not all, sources. It's worse than useless.)
I've spent some time in a Model S and I can't love the touchscreen implementation. It's not the worst I've seen (that trophy goes to Lincoln, hands-down), but it's way more distracting than it needs to be. I feel like it was designed as a showpiece first, an interaction method second, and a reliable cockpit control not at all.
I have Carplay in my car - which I like a lot - however I'm under no illusion that using it while driving, is much much worse in terms of the amount of time it takes my attention from the road, than a similar physical control.
There are also voice commands so yes.
In the case of climate control you can use muscle memory if you really want to, to hit a button always ready in the same place on the edge of the screen, and then use the hardware buttons from there, so yes. Personally I would glance at the bottom edge of the screen (center) while approaching the button with my finger, but you don’t have to do this, and you can easily do it with a flick of they eye while traffic is in a calm pattern, at a moment of your choosing. It’s not like your eyes need to wildly search the screen for the button... it’s right there in a known fixed place.
People have such far out misconceptions about Tesla cars. It’s bizarre.
Btw I have to take my eyes off the road when I check the speed and the mirrors and that is something I do quite often and considering the behavior on the roads more drivers should.
It would also be in reach of the passenger and you'd end up with less fingerprints on the screen.
Its absolutely no problem using a Touch screen, have been for 4 years and 100.000km in my Model S.
Sigh.
How's Tesla doing compared to the upper-mid range or luxury cars?
Central panel is much worse in this - there can be an atomic blast on the horizon and I wouldn't notice it, its just too far on periphery of the vision. It is bad, it is lame, and what is/was perceived as 'premium' feature is actually cheaping out on customers.
I have 15-year old beamer which doesn't even support mp3, and on board computer means it shows me outside temperature and consumption. Everything is manual, with dedicated knobs of various shapes. I love it and wouldn't want anything else (which is worrying since this stupid trend took over whole car industry and eventually I will have to switch my car).
Maybe your controls are too dark and hard to read. I haven’t had this problem with the large Tesla screen, although I almost never have to look at it. When I do it’s very clear and the important things are in known fixed places and easy to read.
If I do need to look at the screen I can turn on auto pilot or cruise control, a subset of autopilot functionality. Cruise control can be turned on at 0 mph or higher, and it follows the speed limit, dynamically updating as it changes, with user-adjustable leeway above or below. The cruise control maintains distance to the car in front of me and slows or stops for deer running across the road. Yes other cars have this but the point is it takes care of that point about cars stopping suddenly. So no worries while glancing at the screen. I’m not sure what it does for your hyperbolic atomic bomb scenario.
All in all, it’s not as bad as you think, although for some it does require a taste adjustment I guess.
Nope. This kills cyclists and motorbike riders. Our eyes/mind get used to headlights and don't see any speciality in them anymore which leads to overlooking those as they are just part of the normal scenery.
In former times, when only motorbikes were driving with headlights in bright daylight, you were much more aware of the fact that there was a "special vehicle" approaching you.