Hacker News Reader

Comment by a2tech | Hacker News Reader

My Ford Edge has almost all the important controls accessible only through the touchscreen. If I'm in reverse for example I lose all ability to adjust the temperature, fan, or seat temperature. Its terrible. Adjusting the seat warmers requires moving an onscreen slider which is weirdly overly sensitive and yet at the same time laggy. Adjusting it while driving is almost impossible without looking at the screen which is unsafe and absolutely unnecessary.

View on HN

I bought a new car last year, and I didn't set out to buy the cheapest car on the lot, but I ended up buying an ecosport partially because I really liked that it has buttons for everything. This is probably because the car came stock with a 4" screen (the minimum required for the backup camera), but it's really nice having physical buttons for climate control, since pretty much everything else I looked at had touchscreen UI for nearly everything.

Plus, thanks to the excellent folks at cyanlabs[0], $150 worth of parts from a junkyard and I was able to get the larger screen so I can use Android Auto with the map at a usable size. I don't mind the touchscreen UI for something like selecting audio or map destination, since I can do that while parked. The only feature/option I actually miss from a higher optioned car is seatwarmers, which I'll probably add before next winter.

So yes, part of the reason I ended up in the cheapest car they sell is the better UI of the controls (that, and I liked the smaller physical size of the vehicle). I ended up spending ~20k less than I was originally budgeting for the edge. Sure, this is anecdotal and I realize I may be an outlier, but the UI was a major part of the purchase decision and I know enough about the industry to confidently state that most of that extra money is pure profit margin for Ford. BOM cost on an optioned up Edge isn't significantly higher than the base ecosport, so that is way worse profit margin for them.

Edit: forgot link [0] https://cyanlabs.net/applications/syn3updater/

>If I'm in reverse for example I lose all ability to adjust the temperature, fan, or seat temperature

For every single millisecond after you check your backup camera to make sure there's no kid in the blind spot behind your car, your whole-ass body should be rotated with you head looking over your shoulder and out the rear window.

Unless you have a monster SUV that you can't see out of anyways, in which case use the screen.

In either case the driver should be spending an exact and precise 0.0% of the time a vehicle is in reverse manipulating any control not related to steering and acceleration.

"But what if the passeng.." Don't. Please don't.

What really? I find the side mirrors and the backup cam 10X better for lining up the car perfectly than doing the oldschool look-over-shoulder arm-over passenger seat thing.

Especially since the backup cam doesn't change in perspective as I crane my head to get the side of the car in view in the sideview mirrors.

That's one way to do it, but not the only safe and effective way. Also some injuries will prevent turning the body around in the seat.

What if I stop the car entirely while I perform the adjustments? "Put it in park" I hear you say. Tedious, and doesn't always work anyway - many cars leave you with a full-screen reversing camera even once you're moving forwards until you get above 5mph or whatever. And what if I want to stop and adjust my side mirrors to see better, and those are adjusted via the touch screen? (I'm looking at you, Tesla.)

Guess what? I can happily reach down and adjust a real temperature dial by touch while looking at a reversing camera, without looking at that dial or being distracted, in the same way that I can do that while driving forwards. It's the touch screen that's the problem here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com