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Comment by ogre_codes | Hacker News Reader

This is arguably one of the biggest competitive advantages Tesla has. For $47,000 I can get an EV from Tesla with a better self-driving system[1] than a $100k Audi, BMW, Mercedes, or Lexus. I haven’t pulled the trigger on a Tesla yet, but I can’t imagine paying $40,000+ on a new car that isn’t a Tesla right now. For many people Tesla has made EV and self-driving table-stakes and nobody else is delivering on that.

[1] Yes, I know about the accidents

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>>I can’t imagine paying $40,000+ on a new car that isn’t a Tesla right now

It's personal & subjective, and nobody will persuade anybody in a thread, but FWIW I absolutely positively can.

- I'm unlikely to utilize self-driving any time soon

- The stories of their firmware terrify me. And I don't want a DAW and computer games running on my ECU :O

- More pragmatically though, the Tesla UI paradigm is completely foreign to my way of driving/thinking.

I'm looking for a "HOTAS" type UI, where I can do anything I want without taking my eyes and focus off the road. A UI that's one giant screen, that may change position of buttons from minor firmware to another, is basically as scary and alienating concept as I can imagine.

I get that I am in a minority nowadays - a lot of manufacturer's are replacing switches, buttons and knobs with a touchscreen and deep menus, but not thankfully all just yet :|

Tesla's increasing have voice commands for most functions. What you said was true before but isn't now. Honestly this feature, being able to push updates to the entire fleet when ready is a significant killer feature.

Again, at the risk of sounding like a grouchy old man (which I suppose I am :P), when I'm chatting with my wife and kids, I have limited intetion of interrupting that conversation to turn on the lights or seat warmer or wipers or change a song :-/. And even when alone - the amount of time and subconscious effort to hit a button, vs converse with the computer...

Honestly - these shouldn't be "either or". Sure, have a screen and voice for those who prefer - but leave a button or six for us ol' timers :-)

They should look into how the US Navy switched back to physical switches from touch screens on ships for unambiguous commands.

Gas and steering are physical controls though.

Radio and other such features do not need dedicated buttons. Crazy how many buttons my normal car has.

Everything you need at least once week while driving in a car should be doable without taking your eyes from the road for more than a second. Radio, AC, window heating and such fall under this category. And you have exactly the same amount of buttons on a screen anyway, they're just not physical.

Again, that's a personal preference.

Next, Previous, Pause, Play, Mute - I personally want them to be physical controls. On steering wheel ideally, on the dashboard otherwise. I use them multiple times a drive, and I don't want to take my eyes off the road to do them.

Same with seat heat, lights, wipers - anything I may want to do while driving, I want a button.

Setting up the exact shade of my dashboard light - that can be buried in a menu :D

Basically... when you say "Crazy how many buttons my normal car has" :

- You say that as a bad thing

- I see that as a brilliant thing... IFF done well:

Of course, physical buttons/levers/knobs can still be done well, or poorly.

Having many identical buttons in a confusing layout is just as bad as touchscreen - I have to look at them to use them.

Having buttons in a good, intuitive layout; especially buttons which are distinct from each other, as opposed to row of 6 buttons all the same, is brilliant. Even better if it's a distinct combination of buttons, knobs, switches, levers, etc - anything to help haptic feedback and intuitive access. Sometimes I think people who are against buttons may simply never had a car with good physical UI:/

(simple thing - my old 2004 WRX has a next / previous knob-like-thing, rather than two identical buttons next to each other [1]. It felt ridiculous when I first saw it - but then I realized its quality of purpose vs sexiness - I never ever ever have to think or be distracted even a millisecond to know exactly how to skip a song :). Compare to cars which have several identical square buttons for next, previous, pause, play; or temp up, temp down, fan up, fan down, A/C -- that's just horrible UI by clueless people for customers who don't know / haven't experienced better :-/ ]

1: Bottom right of the stereo: https://images.crutchfieldonline.com/ImageBank/v200311131204...

> It's personal & subjective, and nobody will persuade anybody in a thread, but FWIW I absolutely positively can.

I wasn’t trying to paint a broad picture because as you suggest, it’s subjective. But there is some evidence that I’m not alone.

https://www.wheelsjoint.com/tesla-model-3-is-wreaking-havoc-...

> I'm looking for a "HOTAS" type UI, where I can do anything I want without taking my eyes and focus off the road.

I agree, the cockpit design on the Tesla is not my choice and may actually be a deal breaker. But since there is a 30 day no commitment period I’m willing to give it a shot and see how it works in actual use.

>>But there is some evidence that I’m not alone.

Oh, absolutely - as I said, I'm in a minority.

But I feel a lot of it is: Sexiness of how it looks vs Practicality of usage

The problem is, sexiness is immediately obvious & attractive. Practicality takes a long time and active observation to notice and appreciate. I fear that touchscreens with bad UI will win; though I hope eventually there may be some backlash from consumers - or at least thought and compromise from manufacturers. :-/

Is Tesla following accepted industry best practices for designing their algorithms? If not, Tesla is exposing itself to a tremendous amount of liability when their autonomous system fails(and, as software engineers, we know it will fail). I applaud them for pushing the technological envelope and driving expectations. I'm not criticizing them for the damage those failures will cause, because it may be offset by reductions in human caused damage. I'm saying there is established legal precedent that will cost them dearly if they're not properly developing and testing their code(ISO26262, MISRA, etc). See the Toyota accelerator debacle for background.

So, considering the accidents, maybe Tesla is "better" at self-driving in the same way Intel was better at speculative execution before they had to patch it.

The only company that knows what they are doing is Waymo (which actually launched self-driving taxi service in Phoenix), Tesla and others are kind of "fake it until you make it" crowd.

Waymo has 600 cars in a very limited/ well known area and most of their cars still rely on safety drivers. If Waymo is around in 20 years their service might get to the small-ish city I live in.

The big thing I would want self-driving capabilities for is long cross country driving. A thing Waymo doesn’t offer even to people in it’s service area.

Tesla has hundreds of thousands of cars which range over the entire country and has driven millions of miles doing exactly the sort of self-driving I most care about.

The two barely overlap in terms of offerings so I’m not sure what the point of comparing them even is.

>I can’t imagine paying $40,000+ on a new car that isn’t a Tesla right now

Aside from the fact that the Tesla is not available where I live, if I was only going to own one car, it would not be a Tesla. A Tesla (or any other EV, really) does about 80% of what I need a car for, so it would be perfect to buy as a second car for me, to be used most of the time and have the other car be a backup for when I really need to.

If I had to settle for only one car, it would probably have to be something like a Chevy Volt, which I am quite sad got discontinued. Even then, that would get me about 95% of the way there.

I wouldn’t want a loved one driving a Tesla with autopilot enabled. Some of the people who have died so far have been tech enthusiasts who knew the limitations of autopilot, yet they still grew complacent and it cost them their lives.

If my non techy family see the Tesla performing what they deem to be self driving then they will quickly trust it 100%.

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