Comment by vrc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vrc | Hacker News Reader

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Because of the lack of tactile feedback, touchscreens often lead to distracted driving by forcing drivers to take their eyes off of the road to carry out simple tasks. As an example, take HVAC and radio functionality -- in older cars with buttons and knobs, after a short amount of time, people can operate these functions without looking. The same is not true for touchscreens. That's not to say that there is no place for them in cars, but the consensus it's better to use a combination of touch screen (for things you don't often adjust while driving) and physical controls (for things you do). But it's generally cheaper to slap a big ol' touchscreen in cars that does everything, and change configurations in software, rather than investing in custom interior designs for each model of car. And it's not just Tesla doing this, even companies who hang their hat on safety like Subarus are stuffing more and more functionality into touchscreens[0].

[0] https://www.motortrend.com/cars/subaru/outback/2020/2020-sub...

Not entirely related, but I always hated the red dash lighting on my car. I thought it looked ugly and wondered why they didn't just go with a cleaner white colour.

Then I read about red light is specifically used in car dashboard lighting and airplane cockpits because it helps with night vision. What I thought at first was just an ugly colour choice was actually a very subtle design decision to help while driving at night.

It always reminds me how complicated and multifaceted good design is. There are always trade offs to consider, but minimalism as a design trend often seems a little too willing to ignore those trade offs and will sacrifice traits like safety, efficiency and flexibility for the sake of cost and simplicity.

Then I read about red light is specifically used in car dashboard lighting and airplane cockpits because it helps with night vision.

Given that there is a stream of not-red lights shining at me in the opposite lane, I've been skeptical of this claim since Nissan did it in the 300Z like 30 years ago. It's there to look cool, not be useful. There's a subtle design lesson in there as well, I'm just not sure what it is.

You don't need night vision when headlights are visible in the opposite lane. You'll appreciate it when you are driving on a dark road on a moonless or overcast night.

When I took an astronomy class in college, we'd have "night" class on the roof, with telescopes, and star maps.

We were instructed to bring flashlights, but cover the lens with a red layer, to keep the pupils from closing too much, so we could both look at stars but read our star charts.

The headlights in the other lane don't disqualify the benefits of using red lighting inside the car.

what about driving in remote areas without street lighting?

While the trend for touchscreens is probably increasing, some manufacturers have begun pushing back and reverting to analog controls.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-geneva-motor-...

Also mazda[0] who some are saying of whom Honda is actually following the lead[1]

[0] https://www.motorbiscuit.com/why-is-mazda-removing-all-touch...

[1] https://jalopnik.com/honda-follows-mazda-by-ditching-some-to...

This 1000%.

I don't even have a Tesla, I have a 2013 Prius which has an array of buttons for everything instead. The only knobs are the miniscule (and hard to turn) volume and tune buttons on the radio. They made a token effort but placing indentations on the heater temp and fan speed buttons but after five years I still can't operate anything on the center console without taking my eyes off the road.

I love almost everything about my Prius but the person who designed the interior to look like a Starfleet shuttlecraft should be shot.

As a Model Y owner (who still has his roof!), you very quickly become accustomed to it. Excellent voice controls allow for finding music easily, and adjusting things like the AC is done so infrequently that doing it through the touch screen is a non-issue.

Unless if you have a scottish accent.

or are a non native english speakers. Sure, not getting voice control to work properly in my language is one thing, but not being able to deal with local accents (which is a majority in the world) makes voice control almost useless.

Every human factors study I’ve seen results for indicated that touchscreens were ergonomically inferior. Drivers would take longer to make the same adjustments and were more distracted while doing so. You may be underestimating how much the touchscreen impacts your ability to drive. Voice control is indeed much better, but as others have pointed out, experiences may vary.

Even the Ford Mustang Mach E has copied the Tesla center-screen design. At least they also have a short-wide screen behind the steering wheel too, and they've included a big knob embedded into the bottom of the center console screen. Hopefully that helps.

Wow. I feel like I got my Subaru at just the right time when driver assistance tech was somewhat mature but the user interface was still mostly mechanical.

I'm not familiar with Teslas at all, but it sounds like a voice interface might help work around some of these limitations, a la Alexa/Hey Google. Maybe they already have it?

Please no, nothing is more frustrating and distracting to try to get my virtual assistant to fix something they've misunderstood. That's about as fun as arguing with your passenger about directions while driving.

I used to think that voice recognition sucked until I tried Google Assistant. Holy shit is it amazing when it picks up every single word you utter every single time. Truly impressive and if car manufacturers can license the voice tech from Google I can definitely see the tech being quite useful.

It feels like a specialized voice control interface with a limited set pre-programmed functionality accessible through specific hard-coded keywords (which is what I assume Teslas could be equipped with for this purpose) might have a much easier time getting things right compared to an open ended general purpose virtual assistant that has to deal with completely arbitrary voice commands and unbounded ambiguity.

I can't wait to how badly it'll botch anything but a generic American accent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8

>Maybe they already have it?

They do. You can control many things with voice in Tesla.

I don't know the comprehensive list of things you can use it for, but so far I used it to:

* Change temperature

* Play a specific song

* Set navigation to a new destination

I didn't put switching music tracks (next&previous)/adjusting volume on that list, because those can be easily performed using the scrollable button on the steering wheel.

If by voice control, you mean asking a passenger to do it, sure. If you mean trying to find the right keywords while driving a vehicle at 65 mph, no thanks. I'm a native english speaker with a california accent and none of the systems I've used have been much help.

It's like playing an old text adventure without the manual, so you don't know the verbs. It uses too much thinking to try to come up with different words while also trying to drive.

The whole point is that you won't be driving it soon, so you can put whatever you want on the panel at that point.

We can argue how far away that is etc, but that's the mission statement.

> The whole point is that you won't be driving it soon,

Yet they continue to manufacture cars with legacy, tactile steering wheels. Curious.

> Yet they continue to manufacture cars with legacy, tactile steering wheels. Curious.

That's still required by federal (!) law, cf. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/393.209

Your federal law does not necessarily apply everywhere a tesla may be purchased and operated (I'm not saying it makes economic sense or anything, just that US law is likely not the sole reason it's there)

Yeah, any day now, just like they were going to self-drive to deliver in 2016.

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