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I want to be able to replace my infotainment system without hassle or loss of functionality
The good old days when the first thing you did when buying that old beater was change the radio to one with CDs or even MP3s... Of course if you didn't have the budget for that you could always get one of these cassettes with a jack cable to plug into your disc man, the only issue is it would skip when you hit a pothole.
Unless you had a fancy discman with anti-skip. Reminds me of driving my dad's 1963 VW Beetle in high school before we restored it.
Also... Good old days? I did that with my minivan barely three years ago with an Alpine ILX-407... But that one doesn't have a CD player because I don't use CDs anymore. I haven't used CDs in a car since high school, now that I think about it... I just kept my iPod connected to that car, hidden from view.
My parents' Duster has volume buttons, but⦠they randomly regulate different things: navigation voice loudness, media volume, something with microphone icon. If you want to change something else, you need to tap a button on the far top right corner of the display, which is incredibly difficult. And even then, the decision isn't remembered, so if you press the volume button after the popup disappears, it will change not what you want again.
I swear, the cars are not even tested these days
My car is pretty old and doesn't have any screens. I was using a rental car last week for a few days and I was definitely missing my physical buttons. I had to ask the guy in the passenger seat to change things for me because whenever I tried to without taking my eyes off the road I'd almost never hit the right buttons. Especially when I was going over bumps on the road.
Ford, in their infinite wisdom, decided to make the touchscreen pressure-sensitive, but the flat physical buttons capacitive. Which means that it's super easy to accidentally turn on the driver's seat heater if you dare use the volume knob, impossible to use any of the physical buttons if you have normal gloves on, and very inaccurate to use the touchscreen with those same gloves on.
They know it, too, because when I had a 2013 Fusion, the overhead console with the dome light buttons was the same capacitive bullshit, and my 2015 Fusion has a regular button. (Apart from these design flaws, I love the car, which is why I replaced one with the other.)
At least you had a volume knob. Last week I drove a new Renault Clio via local carsharing, and it had a touchscreen, where you had to click a button on the screen to pop up a slider next to it, where you could change the volume. It had like 5 buttons on the steering wheel, some of them even looked like they could be used for controlling the volume, but no, they were for cruise control or whatever, the only way to change the volume was via the touchscreen with two taps.
We had a Civic with that kind of weird slidy up/down volume control, total garbage.
A knob for volume control has been the standard for car audio since there was car audio. If you're going to change that, why not put the clutch pedal all the way on the right?
No no no, cars need the least amount of software, no touch and all buttons. And 0 OTA. Zero, Nada. And the only software that should be there is that very minimal radio and some dash functions controllers, that's it. I'm so sick of having a phone on wheels. It's a car, and can be called "death on wheels" and drivers need the most attention they can.
Cars have had a multitude of controllers (which means software) for over 30 years now. It's the cellular connection you don't want or need.
The only way I would ever have a connected car is if the software was under my control and could be self-hosted. Nothing crazy, just stuff like weather, traffic, and maybe remote diagnostics. But that's just my nerdy side coming out.
Both of my cars are fairly modern (2008, 2015), but neither have any sort of connection to the outside world, and despite both having touchscreen interfaces, all critical functions are button-operated.
That's what I meant. I know that there has to be some software. That's why I mentioned zero OTA. So the modem. We don't need that. No one asked for it. They use it to syphon our personal data and sell it to the insurance companies.
Europe wins again.
Fuck I hope this gets brought to North America.
Spoiler: it wonβt. Tariffs are gonna make it cost prohibitive to buy anything abroad so Americans will have American cars, Europeans will have European cars. Expect quite a bit of divergence.
I don't know. They tend to standardize pieces across countries to reduce costs. And we might just end up with European cars up here in Canada in the end. Who knows. π€
Zero is the correct number of touchscreens for a car. This has seemed obvious to me since the first time I saw one and I've never understood how anybody could think otherwise.
If you want an in-car navigation system, that seems like a good application for touchscreens.
Rear view camera is nice too have too. Top down is neat too.
Doesn't need to be touch for that
I remember back in the mid 2000s with my flip phone a T9 texting. Could text and drive without looking away from the road because of muscle memory. Once I got a touch screen I realized that wasn't the case anymore. So imagine this anecdote with car buttons to touch screens.
I know people like to harp on Tesla about this, but ALL of the mandatory controls can be done with stalks/buttons/wheels and have been for awhile
Hazard warning lights - button
Indicators - stalks or buttons
Windscreen wipers - button to initiate, wheel to choose intensity (or press button again to increase intensity). Button then wheel to turn off.
SOS calls - N/A
Horn - Press the wheel
The only one that Tesla didn't always follow was the wipers, but that's no longer the case, glad they finally listened on that one.
Is there actually any OEM that doesn't meet these requirements? I agree though, these are good bare minimum requirements.
Edit: I could also see merit to adding a defog one as that could be a critical timing thing.
Those are always button on all cars tho it's more about secondary operations like tuning AC etc.
The law is about the buttons I listed. Those were in the article.
Youβre right, the legislation also needs to mandate a reasonable location for information display. Around me teslas just CONSTANTLY have a blinker on because the stalk has no feedback and the indicator lights are only visible if youβre looking far enough down to lick your own junk.
Hazard warning lights - button
https://youtu.be/Vk3d-gHdhrE?t=30
It might be a push button, but it's literally in the worst location I've ever seen it in a car.
Europe rules!