101The best hill of them all.
MontaggeWhat 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.
The PantserYep, infotainment and HVAC should have different control systems entirely. If your radio dies it should not mean the death of your car completely. And I consider not having access to your government mandated cameras and defrosters a dead vehicle.
Evil_incarnateI take trips to Tallinn. Beautiful city. I use the car share apps there for convenience. Pick up a car and park wherever. I get to try out many different cars, if only for a while. I hate touch screens. One even was set with brightness to zero and I was unable to change it.
Dials and knobs for everything please.
donLived in Eesti for several years back in the 90’s mainly in Nõmme and Lasnamäe. Beautiful country, amazing people. Hotel Viru had its own cool vibe back then, and Vanalinn in the winter is breathtaking. If I could apply for citizenship, I do it in heartbeat.
I had a 1988 Pontiac 6000. I took out the radio/tape unit and replaced it with a CD player. My goddam cruise control was disabled after that. They’ve been running other systems through the radio forever.
Why are you going to break it one day?
Embrace tradition
That one we can accept modern ebikes.
starman2112Yep. Usually I’m bluffing when I say “I’ll die before I buy [a smart TV/a phone with a selfie cam hole punch/a computer running Windows/a console without a disc tray],” but there are real alternatives to buying these death traps. I could stand to lose weight anyway.
I would if there were any bike lanes in my city I could use to get to places.
Infiniti has the best center stack of all cars, and that’s a hill I am willing to die on. Screens for navigation, radio, and car settings, with physical buttons along the sides for common HVAC, etc controls.
I haven’t driven an Infiniti in about 20 years, but I like the fact they stuck with physical controls. I rented a new Peugeot that was 100% touch screen for everything including changing from park to drive. I almost got in a wreck because I had to reverse out of the way of a distracted driver pulling out of a parking spot and the touch screen wouldn’t let me go from drive to reverse, i had to click park first. Anyways, I have a whole laundry list of modern smart features that make me feel like I’m fighting my vehicle instead of driving it. I’m not a fan of lane assist and auto off at traffic lights.
Volkswagen in the 70s and 80s had three horizontal control levers for the heating on the center of the middle panel which you could push with one speedy gesture to the very right, and then the front window would get max heat and max air flow to defrost/to demoist very fast.
Was so intuitive and fast you didn’t think about it and never had to take your eyes from the road for. That was peak design in my eyes.
Is that a cassette deck? Lucky.
Now just need a ⅛" jack to cassette adapter.
MeatPilotJamming out, you hit a bump. The CD player just skips horribly and can’t read it anymore. 🤌
Yup yup yup. I’ll die before I buy a car with a touchscreen. I’ll get my damn motorcycle license first.
My partners car has a touch screen, but knobs dials and buttons for all the climate features.
The touch screen is just the infotainment stuff.
That’s about as far as I want it to go. I don’t need a large format display in my vehicle. I don’t want my speed, turn signal indicator, and climate controls on a massive display that takes up 1/3rd of the dash. Their car has a 8" or so, infotainment display… Great for Android auto/Apple carplay, with navigation so I can get my directions without having to meddle with my phone, or a clunky phone mount wobbling around.
But that’s where I draw the line. Just give me the fancy infotainment screen, leave everything else the way it is.
psvrhAh, the old “How hard do you want it, how hot do you want it and where do you want it?” climate controls.
There were and are the best.
[deleted] in lemmyStill have them as paddles and buttons on my 2023 Honda.
Heating and ac controls on the flatscreen eliminated a bunch of other carmakers from my poasible choices.
Having a touchscreen to operate your car with is a safety hazard compared to having buttons and knobs.
brapMy Mazda had a nice combination of touch screen which disabled itself when the vehicle was in motion and you could then use the rotary control instead. Was really nice and intuitive with entirely separate AC, heated seats etc controls.
osaerisxeroI had a rental Mazda and I have to say, that rotary control is the worst combination of tactile and touch interface I have seen to date. Maybe that gets better after using it for 6 months, but I can more or less memorize touch interface control positions in that same timeframe and without the distraction of figuring out which element the rotary dial highlight moved to this time.
I would rather have had full touch than that monstrosity.
I enjoy it on my Mazda, find it super easy to use and safer than a touch screen. To each their own.
cobysevI have a Mazda like this. I absolutely hate it.
I have a small built-in touchscreen on the top of the dashboard which is visible in my peripheral vision while driving. But it turns off touch controls while the car is moving. And the physical controls are in the center console behind my manual stick, on the passenger’s side. So I have to blindly feel around for my knobs and buttons while driving, or take my eyes completely off the road to look down at my center console.
It would be safer if I could just tap the screen quick while keeping my eyes facing the road, versus trying to search for knobs down next to my passenger’s thigh.
I also hate that this newer model removed the mute button from my steering wheel. I used to be able to immediately mute my radio by pressing that button on my 2010 Mazda. But in my new 2017 Mazda, I need to find the tiny volume knob by my passenger’s thigh and slap that knob. I still have volume buttons on my steering wheel, but I can’t immediately mute by holding the down volume button. So I need to go searching for that knob, which is more time I’m not looking at the road.
My Mazda has the same controls and I’ve never really felt like they’re hard to find. The button layout makes a lot of sense and the large center wheel is easy to find so you can use it as a reference point to find the other buttons easily (I pretty much just use the home and music buttons and that volume knob).
Having buttons and knobs to operate your car with is a safety hazard compared to having voice controls.
Depends how well the voice controls work. I have been so frustrated with AI assistants’ inability to understand simple instructions while I’m driving that it has become a serious distraction at times. I have never found myself yelling at knobs.
When I’m driving, all the people I yell at are knobs
Even just the bright light from it is a hazard.
I turned down my dash panel for the “plus lights” night mode (my car is a 2012 Honda civic coupe, so night mode is literally whenever I turn on the headlights) because it was so blindingly bright I couldn’t stand it.
I was in car with a friend with a Prius… not a super new one, but with the central touch center of shit and it never got very dim… it was always just this distracting light in the middle of the car. I literally would not be able to drive that car, my attention would be drawn to the light because I like dark. But then it also reflects off the windshield and shit and just nope.
Techbro tries to demonstrate that he’s not fundementally disconnected from society challenge: impossible
There’s a middle ground. Give me a decent-sized [touch]screen for Android Auto with physical HVAC & media controls.
Honda is one automaker that has separate climate controls, and it is a great balance with things that are nice on a screen like navigation. Heck, even though the music is through the touchscreen it still has a volume knob to quickly adjust or turn off no matter what the screen is showing.
I have a small (4-5") screen that has my clock, media information, which displays my backup camera feed if I’m in reverse, which I think is a modest improvement over the all-analog option, and a huge step up from the deathtrap touchscreen configuration. In my mind, the touchscreen is the point where it starts to drop off quickly, as it stands I don’t think I’d buy a car with a touchscreen that doesn’t lock it out while moving.
The existence of a touchscreen isn’t a problem, just having common controls moved to it. The touchscreen is useful for interacting with active phone apps, e.g. maps. A total motion lockout might be excessive.
In my mind, the issue is that cars are incentivizing drivers to use high attention controls like touchscreens while driving. Actions that need to happen while driving, whether they’re directly vehicle operation, or something like air conditioning or media volume, should be simple low-attention controls, ideally with tactile feedback. Keep it simple for your brain, keep focus on the road.
I have volume buttons, skip, jump backwards, and a numpad on my dash that interact with phone apps via Bluetooth. Maybe there’s a physical (or voice) control that can be added to the dash or wheel to interact with map/navigation apps. Using the touchscreen is dangerous, and a car shouldn’t provide a reason to do so. I’d rather solve the problem another way.
But if a touchscreen is required to update the clock, or do Bluetooth pairing, that’s fine. There’s no reason to need to do those while driving.
It is funny how car lovers pretend that cars aren’t just some blip in history that has existed for barely a human lifetime as a form of transportation for the masses.
I don’t think anyone says cars have existed forever. Strange take.
Interesting take.
Can I ask how long something must exist before we can love and appreciate it?
I still miss my old school flip phone, but mobile phones haven’t been a thing for half as long as cars so I guess I can’t be a technology lover?
You’re weird.
IninewCrowTouch screens with a hundred options will become useful when we start traveling between star systems and need to react to things in minutes or even hours at time.
But when you’re driving a vehicle that can run into things within milli seconds if you take your eyes off the road … we’re still going to need tactile buttons.
If only they were capable of offering phone stands. No, I don’t need your 4 foot, 500 gigalumen screen, just give me a place to put mine.
Can we add ‘cars with spare tires’ to the list?
Having to call a damned tow-truck just to get a flat tire fixed is not a winning move if you’re trying to sell how much your car benefits the environment.
problematicPantherWait, new cars don’t have spare tires? Wtf has the world come to?
Yeah it turns out no one uses them or keeps em pumped up or applies that rubber stuff to em to keep em in good shape so the manufacturers replaced em with “24 hr roadside assistance”.
Spare tires have come in handy many times in my life! And im only 30. Fuck 24 hour roadside assistance i can put a spare on faster than they can get out to me
Yeah it sucks
No doubt they have been and are handy to many, but with increasing amount of people not knowing how to change their tires and the tire being empty and gone to shit anyway, I guess I get not having as a default.
I thought that was a legal safety requirement in the US.
Annoyed_🦀 Do you know in the US, the car maker can make a car use brake lamp as a turn signal? The standard is weird.
I did - I’m from the US and have been confused by this before.
Also I saw Technology Connections’ rant video about this! As always, in case you’re not familiar, I highly recommend his channel.
First they switched to the mini-spares. Then they got rid of them altogether.
If you’re lucky, there are little filler canisters and a cigarette lighter-powered air compressor to let you get slowly to a tire shop. Sometimes, not even that. If there’s a nail or a blowout, tow-truck city. Just hope it’s not out in the middle of nowhere in the dark or in bad weather.
And keep in mind that the Fix-a-Flat kind of spray will make your tire unrepairable.
FoxI’m not sure that’s strictly true, but it definitely makes the inside of your tire (and rim) a goddamn mess
ikiddI could see that if they ran run-flats. If not, they could fuck off with that bullshit.
Many new cars have “run-flats,” which can be used even if they get a puncture/go flat.
However, they are more expensive, they don’t function under certain kinds of flats (e.g., sidewall damage), they have limited range, and limited speed.
The tiny “donut” spares on some cars are also not intended for high speeds, but I’d much prefer that to a punctured run-flat. (You should probably place the donut on the rear of your car is front wheel drive, though.)
(You should probably place the donut on the rear of your car is front wheel drive, though.)
I read somewhere that you should always replace a back wheel with a donut spare, even if that means swapping a punctured front wheel with an original back wheel. The donut spares are so flimsy that they can’t be trusted to reliably handle the side loads a front wheel experiences when your car is turning.
That’s one for safety in case you can’t get help, but one should drive slower than 60kmph and seek help immediately when using T rated tyre(such as the donut spare). The control sucks when your front tyre is a donut spare, and braking also sucks, so driving slow is the only way to do it.
I feel like the saved weight could be a net benefit
I very much prefer the extra cargo space. I have never had a flat tire. I go on vacations/road trips every year, multiple times.
Agreed