Technology

Shocking. They’ve been trying to make the car a second living room, and in doing so sacrifice the driving experience by foregoing buttons, levers, and switches for capacitive surfaces and touchscreens.

The turn signal on the Tesla Yoke is shocking to me. It screams of tech boys adding “cool things” before thinking about whether or not it’s useful.

Then there’s all the anti-consumer practises. Buy a car, but don’t own it. Yes we shipped it with heated seats, which you obviously paid for, but to use them you’ll have to pay a monthly fee. And no, you’ll still pay for all the energy used, that’s not on us. But hey we’re actually giving you a better deal on it!

It’s all BS.

Touch screens in cars are stupid: you need to take your eyes off the road to use them. Buttons and knobs, once you have learned them, can be operated by touch and maybe a quick flick of your eyes.

I don't know who the hell thought that a touch screen only system was reasonable for a motor vehicle, but they can go get fucked.

All I want is solid gps and Bluetooth.

I don’t need a fucking dominos app. Or to take my car to the dealer so my AC works again because of a fucking update

I'm with the people who miss 3.5mm jacks on phones on this one. Until there's an open, portable standard between iPhone, android, and physical media that I own, I'm not buying ur dumb infotainment system. I'll go on eBay and buy a physical Garmin GPS before I learn what "google automotive services" is

The worst part is the inability to swap out the head unit now because everything is now integrated.

As someone working in the industry I dislike it as well. Many of the features have some really good usecases but the problem is just that they're enabled/available for every user even if most people only use a small subset of features so the settings/interface gets so cluttered.

In my opinion though, the move away from physical interfaces towards touchscreens is way worse than the clutter.

Car manufacturers need to realize that people already have a touchscreen that has a GPS, podcasts, music, and text messaging service in their pockets 24/7. Best option would be to make built in phone holders that are plugged in via USB C and connect to the sound system. Voila.

Stuff like this makes me very glad to own my 2015 Nissan Altima. I get occasionally let down by its somewhat lackluster engine and CVT transmission, but it cuts all the crap with infotainment bloatware in the dashboard and how it works. The only screen in my car is a small black strip that can only display text as most cars used to have. All you do is plug in your phone to the aux cord and use your phone as the touchscreen it was made to be, no need for another one. Physical buttons galore.

Less tactile controls made me choose a 2014 over 2015 Honda Accord when I bought my car a few years back, and I'm very happy with it! Can't imagine having most everything controlled with a touch screen. The only tech I need is Bluetooth and a backup camera. Screw software subscriptions and OTA updates to potentially alter the car I own outright.

No joke, I walked into vw dealership couple years ago to test drive the ID.3, nearly ready to buy it by end of 2021 (replace my eGolf).

The interior controls and their ergonomics were shockingly bad. Unlit touch strips for volume and temp, touch buttons on steering wheel, mirror adjust switch that freely rotate so you don't know which mirror is adjusting, only two power window switch to control four windows on driver door, gear shift that's totally hidden by steering wheel..

Just awful.

The car as a device to transport one from A to B has been developed to completion. Any car is capable of fulfilling that task. The next stange of developement is that the comfort features in cars are being replaced with a universal control unit: a touchscreen (-computer).

All physical buttons (air condition, radio, etc.) are being phased out and are accessible over the central touchscreen, hidden in menus. This way it is easier to get customers into subscribed services (e.g. for the ability to lock your car remotely or to use the heated seat feature you have to subsribe to this particular service in order to use it).

Also, when features are controlled over a software interface like those touchscreens instead of physical buttons, it it easier to give access to users - or restrict them from it:

IIRC at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Tesla remotely enabled their cars by allowing free supercharging as a helpful measure to help people to escape from Ukraine. Pretty nice of Tesla, isn't it? Well yes, in this particular case, but this kind of remote software interference from the manufactor can also work in the other direction. They can easily restrict the functionality of your car. Functions your car still would have if they weren't controlled remotely.

Cars become a Software-As-A-Service product.

Edit: spelling

My car is at that age where it’s too young for car play and too old for buttons and that’s literally my complaint about it beyond it being a full ICE. I’m baffled that they aren’t just all accepting that letting us use the console as a controller for our phone is just better

This is what I really like about my RAV4: the touchscreen is just for controlling CarPlay/Android Auto and system settings that you don't change while driving anyway. There are physical controls for everything else, including the radio.

My wife's Jeep Latitude, on the other hand, is a mess. Things like the seat warmers, heated steering wheel controls, and the climate control vents are only on the touchscreen and it's super laggy. Trying to change any of that while driving is very risky.

On TikTok I’ll sometimes see some really nice older vehicles that have either been restored or just reeeaalllyyy taken care of and it kind of makes me miss when cars were a lot more simple. Don’t get me wrong, I love my newer car and having some kind of warranty but that won’t last forever