Cars Are Caught in an Endless Cycle of Bigger Screens Nobody Likes

https://www.thedrive.com/news/cars-are-caught-in-an-endless-cycle-of-bigger-screens-nobody-really-likes

23•PaulHoule•5h ago

Comments

tahoeskibum•5h ago

I love having the big 15 inch in my Tesla. Great for maps, watching Netflix or gaming while charging.

PaulHoule•4h ago

Personally as an amateur designer I love the idea of working on a huge canvas. Turning a car into a Gundam cockpit or a store into

https://archive.ph/1k7Ui

or lighting up the whole sky on a cloudy sky with a laser sound like a lot of fun to me, but subjecting other people to this is another thing.

bitwize•3h ago

I had a dream in 2001 or so that I visited a smarthome with this kind of thing on every surface. Instantly reconfigurable decor. Then, as I was touring the home, it got hacked. And suddenly...

Goatse.

Goatse on every wall, every cabinet door, everywhere.

I was soured on the idea of smarthomes, especially ones with display-monitor decor, ever after.

westmeal•2h ago

For you it may be a con butt for others it's a wide open win.

nottorp•3h ago

It's okay, even "professional" designers don't seem to know the "usability" term :)

jvanderbot•3h ago

Tesla is the worst offender. I hate that my passenger has to close my map view to adjust climate or change music.

Get rid of these things they are for the car makers not the car users.

cchance•2h ago

I mean thats your view, i don't see why i need to see a map fully if the turn instructions are always visible, lol and especially if the passengers not gonna be sitting in the fuckin AC window for an hour lol

mathiaspoint•2h ago

It's odd they don't give you a window manager and just pigeon hole you into a modal UI.

henvic•1h ago

On Model 3/Y, when you pop up something else the next navigation direction starts showing on the top-left. I know it's not the same, but it's easy to miss it.

And by far, it's not the worse offender. Some cars completely hide any instructions (looking at you, BYD)!

thebruce87m•2h ago

I agree. I do all of my charging at home but I still love the screen. I’ll go out for a coffee at lunch and catch up on my TV programs in comfort.

m463•1h ago

Older teslas were better (not perfect). You had nav and status on dashboard in front of you, dedicated physical controls for turn signals, shifting, wipers, autopilot, etc. Central display was for big nav map and configuration. There was also a "rim" around the display to rest your hand on when touching something.

They still screwed it up with software updates. Touch targets got smaller and harder to hit in a moving car. Grey on white controls were harder to see, and frequently disappeared until until touched. Even dedicated controls like the passenger seat heater would disappear when the passenger got up. Controls rearranged themselves.

They need to hire some masters of human factors like modern airplane cockpit designers. In a plane, a mistake is a lost plane + faa investigation.

And listen to their customers, because most of the mistakes are blindingly obvious to everyone.

yieldcrv•1h ago

Ford Mustang Mach-E has a combination

and a vertical screen like the older tesla models

bitwize•3h ago

Reggie Watts's lines are going from parody to the absolute state of things: "I like to take a flat-panel display monitor, put one in the steering column, one inside of the glovebox, one on top of the dashboard, two in back of the headrests, one mounted in the ceiling, two still in the motherfucking packaging in the back seat, so when my motherfucking friends go and sit on the shit and break it, I can honestly say...

I... just... don't... give... a... fuck!"

meepmorp•3h ago

I miss having controls that you don't need to see to manipulate.

korse•3h ago

I am certainly in this camp. The only vehicle in my household from post 2010 is a Ducati (and not the kind with forward looking radar ffs).

Wife traded a 2018 car for a 2005 truck and I have a 2010 sedan with a 500 mile tank and nice engine for non-bike days. We considered a Tesla model X for her but after trying it out for a few months ultimately decided against. Part of it is that we like to own our own stuff and dropping 60k+ on an asset that loses significant value in the first 200+ yards of travel seems retarded. Could have gotten a certified pre-owned Tesla I guess... but nah. Also, I have no problems with Muskie. He can go make a new world with e-girls and ketamine if he wishes.

My next vehicle is probably going to be electric but it will be home-built using a classic car chassis. I have no idea why people want to be shittily chauffeured around by a smartphone on wheels.

ELECTRIC CARS SHOULD BASICALLY HAVE THE SAME TECH STACK AS AN ELECTRIC SKATEBOARD!

Rant over. -_-

p0w3n3d•2h ago

You must be living in USA, right? In my country (Poland) you can't build your own car, because it'll never get the road permit

gambiting•1h ago

I'm Polish and of course it's possible, in fact it's very straightforward for one-off vehicles that you don't intend to sell, it just has to have brakes, all required lights and mirrors, there are many hobbyist groups in Poland which build and register their own cars that they then drive in public roads just fine.

https://bip.gliwice.eu/pojazd-zbudowany-samodzielnie-sam

silverquiet•1h ago

OP said "using a classic car chassis". I'm not particularly knowledgeable, but you can make a lot of modifications to an existing car, but building your own from the ground up would be mostly illegal. I think in some sense, the actual "car" is legally only the VIN plate or something like that. My state stop even doing safety inspections recently, and before that they were already pretty minimal; it was mostly a check that your lights and horn worked and that you had at least one mirror.

cchance•2h ago

Nobody? I love my screen in my tesla, lol people really gotta stop fuckin generalizing, especially car companies lol

mathiaspoint•2h ago

Post 2009 cars regressed in almost every way. It's weird my used Toyota costs less than a third of the latest model.

p0w3n3d•2h ago

Which are mainly more and more dangerous

pixelready•1h ago

I feel like people tend to get polarized on this issue but I think there’s very much a hybrid sweet spot.

Nice to have rich car data display and a big juicy CarPlay / android auto touch interface for quick glance tinkering with a map or audio app, or seeing camera feeds for blind spots. Some people like media streaming while parked / camping.

But certain things should be completely no-glance fully tactile interaction, like volume adjustment, climate control, switching gears and driving modes, signaling, etc…

What I object to is these high tech cars always go hand in hand with intrusive hard to opt-out of privacy invasions like archiving cabin audio, camera feeds, realtime GPS tracking, etc… and very much selling all that in bad faith knowing full well that average consumers are unaware of even a tiny sliver of what’s going on there.

m463•1h ago

I think the sweet spot is touchscreen car configuration, screen in direction of travel for status, and dedicated motor-memory friendly controls for car control functions.

ikr678•19m ago

It's polarizing because the 'no screen' side is no longer given an option on the market to express that preference.

jqpabc123•1h ago

More voice, less touch.

Car --- volume up

Car --- temperature down

Car --- cruise control

Car --- lights on

Car --- navigate home

Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel. Anything else is a sub-optimal UI that can be improved with some imagination and a little work.

mathiaspoint•1h ago

I'd say just give me a volume knob but there's almost nothing worth listening to on the radio anyway. I actually yanked the fuse on mine to keep it from draining the battery.

At least with climate controls give me tactile knobs. Of course someone I know got the new tachoma and they made the 4wd switch exactly the same as the AC/fan knobs which is just so fucking insane. It's like whatever process is used to design these interfaces seeks out the worst way to do it given the requirements.

Idk maybe I just want a dune buggy at this point. At least there's no design by committee corporate brain damage I can't rip out of that.

bdangubic•1h ago

we had voice-activation for a decade now, nobody uses it - hence bigger and bigger screens :)

Sohcahtoa82•50m ago

Voice controls for common tasks? No way. In my experience, that means I can't use the controls while somebody is talking or the voice recognition will pick up a mish-mash of words between us. It also means there's often a delay between when you say a command and when it happens. Saying "Navigate home" is fine. I would not want "Temperature down".

Volume and cruise controls should be controls on the steering wheel. Climate controls can be in the console, but should be physical, as it's typically pretty easy to take a quick glance, then find it without continuing to stare at it, unlike a touch screen.

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