Why not have both

love how looking at phone screens is (rightfully) considered bad while driving, but then they just put a big fucking tablet on cars.

If you're pulled over for using an iPad while you're driving you'll get a ticket. But if you build the iPad into the car it's somehow okay.

My major problems with this design trend, in my own (biased) experience:

• Center console entertainment UI is usually the slowest thing ever made, making it an even bigger distraction than needed. I could develop muscle memory for blindly pushing the right virtual buttons, but the slowness makes this impossible. It's usually wildly under-specced, but what's stranger is that there's never an upgrade option you can buy from the manufacturer.

• Can't use the panel blindly, creating a big honkin' distraction within reach of the driver. Speed (see above), iffy capacitive touch with no haptic feedback, as well as multiplexing the UI through deep menus, are the chief culprits here. If there were standard controls that were always on screen in the same place, with a suitably responsive UI, this wouldn't be as big a problem.

• For systems that are fully-integrated, it's all or nothing. If the panel/CPU dies, you lose your stereo, navigation, and climate controls all at the same time. My car, fortunately, has the A/C physical controls. This creates a distinct point of failure which is nice - I'm pretty sure I will still have A/C if the panel craps out.

• It's dirt cheap to manufacture and I think we all know it. We're already paying historically high prices for cars, and cheaping-out on the bits we touch the most is just an extra kick to the junk at this point. To the manufacturers: we have remarkably better experiences on our freaking phones every day, so nobody but your grandma is impressed with the weak-sauce, crippled, bogus UX you bolt into your expensive vehicles. You're not making cars cooler, you're just making car ownership worse. Do better.

The crazy thing for me is that apart from physical buttons, if car manufacturers actually just released models of 20-30 years ago as new launches, complete exterior and interior, they’d so well!

Edit - with just Bluetooth added but I’m cool with using a cassette adaptor of some sort. Also assuming the engines would be up to today’s emission standards. I mean just the shape and looks.

Reject smart cars because they're collecting your data and it will be used to increase your insurance rates.

My AC doesn't need an OTA patch.

Leave me a phone sized screen for CarPlay and everything else can go back. I agree with the giant touch screen only stuff being nonsense, but CarPlay is life changing to my driving experience.

..... I'M JUST SAYING.

Is this what the new subscribe-to-drive cars look like inside? Just a straight up tablet where the music and heat controls are supposed to be?

And my axe.

Having a touchscreen to operate your car with is a safety hazard compared to having buttons and knobs.

You might die on a hill if you attempt to control a car using a touchscreen.

Counterpoint:

I've got a MK8 Golf and boy are the interior ergonomics of that thing annoying. Capacitive EVERYTHING. Steering wheel controls. Climate controls. Overhead lights!! It still has a normal blinker stalk though. But I knew what I was getting into when I bought it....I mainly wanted one of the last manual hatchbacks before they die out completely. Good thing it is super fun to drive so I don't really pay attention to the annoying lack of buttons.

I'm really thankful that Audi rolled back whatever they were doing and gave me knobs and switched to deal with. Like in fucking planes and space shuttles !

And fingers crossed all this common sense gets enshrined in law soonish.

What cooks my god damn goose isn't the stupid screen I'm going to break one day. It's that they run buses for other systems through the radio so you can't replace it with what you want.

Being able to feel controls instead of having to look at them while driving is key, but some of you take this to Luddite levels.

I'd like to keep the Reverse Cam alongside the knobs personally.

I understand why people want minimalist design. I too like this. This is why my 2000 Audi TT has a door flap to cover up the radio when you don't want to see the buttons.

I can press any button I like on the console without looking, while knowing what button is.

I will never prefer anything else.

I want 3 things in a car navmod:

1. Decent enough sized screen for Android auto to show me the map. My 2018 Nissan leaf is probably the smallest I'd go on this, but I wouldn't even double it

2. For the love of GOD could we let me upgrade the unit, or force android auto to use my powerful-enough-for-this-purpose phone handle rendering the video feed? My pixel can handle an external monitor at 1440p no problem, I'd love to give the shitty PC in my car a break from scrolling maps at 3fps

3. Physical buttons for everything HVAC, can honestly take or leave the volume and tuner knobs as long as they're put on the steering wheel