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Comment by derf_ | Hacker News Reader

The business case is that I will actually buy it. I won't buy "consumer electronics" garbage when I want to buy safe and reliable transportation.

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That hasn’t worked for TVs. Or phones. Or plenty of other things.

Not sure what your point is when we're talking about cars, where fixed physical controls are demonstrably more usable and safer for drivers that need to keep their eyes on the road. Multiple manufacturers have pulled back from excessive touch controls (not just touchscreens, but capacitive buttons and sliders) and reinstated more traditional buttons and dials.

Physical controls and smart cars are not mutually exclusive. That’s why they’ve been fixing that.

I agree that was an idiotic trend.

But if someone wants a car without connectivity, it’s too late. The market is not strong enough to get rid of that. Most people either like it or don’t care enough to avoid it.

Just like most people liked or didn’t care enough to avoid smart TVs.

So that’s all you can buy.

Oh, true. I got sidetracked by alephnerd's argument about touchscreens.

I declined the master data agreement when Toyota updated it, and my car hasn’t connected to the Internet since. They also wanted to charge me like $20 a month for stuff like bothering me with notifications that my wife has failed to lock the car when I’m halfway across the city after the first year of ownership.

I suppose they could still remote kill the car though, and have no idea what would happen if I hit the emergency button.

^ This

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