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Comment by crooked-v | Hacker News Reader

It seems particularly weird that they put that physical wheel at the bottom for a dedicated vehicle control area, but didn't bother to just, like, put individual buttons there.

I'm happy that Mazda, by comparison, is specifically moving away from touchscreens and strictly to a combination of dedicated physical controls and more limited screens with a dial/puck control.

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As well as my general dislike of touchscreens, this is especially so in outdoorsy kit where you are prone to have dirty hands. You are then putting the dirt on the bit for seeing information.

Also, for me, outdoorsy kit should be operable in gloves. Vehicles with hearing are a bit of an exception I guess, but still.

> "instead of just, like, putting individual buttons there."

A touch screen is cheaper, because they can re-use the same hardware between different vehicles rather than having to design/build/assemble a slightly different set of physical buttons for different models with different features.

It also allows for the interface to improve/evolve over time with software updates, something that Tesla has very much taken advantage of. Tesla Model S's from 2012 still get software updates with new features from time to time.

> A touch screen is cheaper, because they can re-use the same hardware between different vehicles rather than having to design/build/assemble a slightly different set of physical buttons for different models with different features.

Any savings will be lost by one class action lawsuit or mass recall. Touch screen is the wrong interface when lives are on the line.

There are already millions of Teslas and other vehicles on the road with touch screen interfaces. No lawsuits so far.

You only have to search "Tesla touch screen lawsuit" to find that there have, in fact, been multiple lawsuits over problems with the touchscreen, as well as a recall of 135,000 vehicles.

That recall has nothing to do with the fact that it's a touch interface. The fault was a flash memory chip that would fail after a few years of use.

Why does a premium vehicle with a premium tablet have faulty components not seen even on consumer devices?

Because Tesla screwed up. The component itself (an 8GB e-MMC flash chip) actually wasn't faulty, but it was being misused/overused by constantly writing syslog data to it. Apparently this could amount to hundreds of MB of writes per day, with the device already mostly filled with firmware. After a few years of this it would exceed its write-cycle limit and start to fail.

https://electrek.co/2020/08/04/tesla-wiper-controls-ruled-il...

Not exactly a lawsuit but on the judicial axis.

Cheaper? You mean $5 of plastic and rubber versus a overpriced tablet? Consumers lose functionality and gain nothing. I don't want to play angry birds or whatever Tesla offers, I want to hit the AC button for the AC, or the radio button for the radio. All cars have these basic features.

Buttons need to be designed, dash that fits those buttons need to be designed. They already get the touchscreen, adding smaller screen + buttons is more expensive than no buttons + larger screen.

Redesigned how, 90% of cars look the same, and it's been industry standard for years.

I was kind of with you up until here. Radios at least are modular in most cars so you can just swap them out. I wouldn't be too surprised if everything else was designed this way at most car manufacturers but with a proprietary module system. Many seem to pick one or two design languages and at that point the buttons need to be designed one or two times.

Am I correct in thinking that no other car company is doing meaningful updates regardless of the technology stack they’ve implemented? I have a Ram 1500 with a giant screen and lots of bugs in its software, but have yet (2+ years) to see any updates. I have a family member with a 3 year old Mercedes and it still apparently costs $500 to have the dealer update the GPS mapping (bizarrely competing with the free and far superior Google Maps or Apple Maps via Android Auto or CarPlay…)

I think Tesla implementing major advances like intermittent wipers via OTA update is amazing and related to their culture. I don’t expected to see Ford or others follow suit. The only company that could possibly take this on IMO is VW because they’ve embraced EV beyond any other competitor with ground up new designs.

That kind of thing is why I'm treating Android Auto/Apple CarPlay as a required feature for any future car I get, and treating the car's own infotainment system as merely a substrate for that functionality.

Android sounds great, devices using it absolutely get lots of updates long into the future.

Oh wait.

The point with Android Auto (and CarPlay) is that it keeps working with future devices. Your current phone might stop getting updates, but your new one will work with your car too.

The interface is actually running on your phone, but using your car's display as an external display and touch input device.

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