People are getting fed up with all the useless tech in their cars

For the first time in 28 years of JD Power’s car owner survey, there is a consecutive year-over-year decline in satisfaction, with most of the ire directed toward in-car infotainment. #jd #infotainment #apple #android #tech

https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power

People are getting fed up with all the useless tech in their cars

People are dissatisfied with the technology in their cars, according to a new survey from JD Power. They especially don’t like the native infotainment systems.

The Verge

I absolutely refuse to buy a car where the only thing in the dash is a single big touchscreen. This is a really cheap and lazy way to design a car. It’s not fancy or futuristic. It’s turning an engineering problem into a cheap software problem. Any feature that controls some aspect of the physical car such as AC, headlights, turn signal, seat placement, side mirrors, etc… should all be physical buttons with some tactile feedback. The only thing that is acceptable as a screen is information display and controlling entertainment.

If electric vehicles 10 years from now don’t re-engineer buttons, dials and knobs into their cars I am just going to walk 30 miles every day.

Mazda has had it figured out in my opinion for years with their dial setup. Most of the important stuff is on the wheel itself, but you can control the entire center console with an easy scroll dial and like 4 buttons surrounding it, and all the traditional stuff has physical buttons right near it. Their cars have other drawbacks, but the interior design just makes sense to me.

The Mazda system was a complete deal breaker for me. You have to locate the hotspot on the screen, then fiddle with the knob to get it over the right spot, then select. Way more aggravating than a touch screen.

If you use Carplay or Android Auto, it reverts to a touch screen anyway. The whole system was a muddle.

Lexus and Audi have both dropped their puck controllers due to customer feedback.