- cross-posted to:
- electricvehicles@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- electricvehicles@slrpnk.net
Manufacturers are slowly starting to listen to what car journalists and owners have been complaining about for almost a decade: Cramming all the car’s functions into a touchscreen is an inferior solution to having dedicated physical controls for key tasks.
Among the manufacturers known to be switching back to buttons is Volkswagen, whose latest vehicles have gone touch-control-crazy with functions either buried inside a touchscreen menu or relocated to an annoying haptic feedback panel.
We’ve known for a while that Volkswagen was considering putting back some buttons in its cars, but the manufacturer never officially acknowledged this. Now VW’s design boss, Andreas Mindt, has admitted to Autocar that this approach was a mistake and that the automaker is backtracking on this trend.
“From the ID.2all onwards, we will have physical buttons for the five most important functions—the volume, the heating on each side of the car, the fans and the hazard light—below the screen,” Mindt told Autocar. He added, “They will be in every car that we make from now on. We will never, ever make this mistake anymore. On the steering wheel, we will have physical buttons. No guessing anymore. There’s feedback, it’s real, and people love this. Honestly, it’s a car. It’s not a phone.”
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Nah you should make the steering wheel also a touchscreen, that would be smart. 🙃
Step 1: put in touchscreens Step 2: touchscreens good because = smart Step 3: … Step 4: Profit?
Swipe left to go left. Swipe right to go right. Pinch to accelerate. Say in a clear voice “Please begin braking” to decelerate.
Display ads in the meantime.
Say Yaah to accelerate, and Whoa to slow down.
Touch screens in cars has always been a fuckin’ stupid idea, and I say that with the sincerest hope that nobody died because they had to look at the touchscreen to know where to tap to change the radio station because commercials came on
Someone has died due to a touchscreen. A woman had a Tesla which you put in park forwards or reverse with a touchscreen. She’d always had trouble with it and got it wrong and reversed into a pond. That meant the power went out so she couldn’t open that door. To get to the emergency escape handle you have to remove the speakers in the doors. So she drowned.
The kicker? Her husband was a millionaire and he immediately put out a statement absolving Tesla and musk from any wrongdoing.
Billionaires, both of them, I think.
But why can we not have button phones as well? I miss tactile feedback.
Postal service PostNL uses them, so I happen too see them from time to time.
This is incredible news because that means my future GTI will have buttons.
I just hope they’re smart enough not to put a 1200kg battery in it 🥹
!cassettefuturism@lemm.ee brace for the flood!
Now that I think about it, cars could totally add a slot for SIM cards and be a phone and roaming wifi if they wanted to.
they do
Mine has an embedded one and I cannot change the provider, I am basically stuck. Luckily i can make hotspots from the phone and car can access the internet through my phone
This way the new VW tanks will be easier to handle.
About fucking time some damn sense around here.
They cant just be buttons. They have to be well thought out buttons. My old toyota had 3 big round knobs for the heater controls. Could adjust it without even looking. My new Toyota has heater control buttons but they’re tiny and arrayed in a row like a tiny piano. There is no space between each button and they all have the identical tactile feel. Have to take my eyes off the road for a few seconds just to find what I need.
Good. Now make the touchscreens in cars illegal.
Nah man. There are uses for touchscreens in cars. Just don’t put everything there, and especially don’t put anything you’d need to use while actively driving in there.
But being able to have dynamic user interfaces is very useful for plenty of non-directly-driving-related features.
Alright. Just make it illegal to operate any touchscreens while driving.
And make it the responsibility of the car manufacturers if the touchscreen is used, because they clearly induced the accident, that would quickly make them stop making touch screens be needed for things you should not look away while driving
This is going to be unpopular but I quite like the buttonless UI in my car (6 year old swasticar). I recently bought a van and it’s so distracting.
Buttons are all over the place and I have two screens to monitor. Honestly, I spend more time looking at the controls in the van ghsn the car.
I’m getting rid of it soon and I’m not looking forward to that part.
Once you start remembering where the buttons are you get to the advantageous part which is using the controls without ever having to take your eyes off the road.
That’s what I do 99% of the time with my car. The scroll wheels and voice commands work well.
Great. Do away with the unnecessary telemetry next.
lol
I used to work with big companies collecting IoT data. 90% were collecting telemetry without knowing why. Or having business goals they could easily achieve in other ways, without hoovering everything and violating our privacy.
The rest were doing it so they could sell it to data brokers and make money.
None of them were trying to push privacy as a competitive advantage.
None of them were trying to push privacy as a competitive advantage.
This is why I don’t have a new car. I’m hoping I get one where I have access to my own data (in eg. Home Assistant), and the manufacturer doesn’t.
3rd party stereos in classic cars seems to be the only way to get that.
Yep, that’s basically what I have.
I’m ready to buy a factory new car, when I find one where the data is mine.
It’s too bad LocalMotors never really worked out. It could have been an open source car company, but instead it was a weird designed by committee expensive car.
Factory cars these days are so locked down that in order to replace some sensors or controllers you have to log into a paid (like sometime $30+ an day) online portal to enable the new part. It’s super fucked.
nymea.io was one of the few who were full private, but I think they got bought out or something
The thing the vast majority doesn’t care about and that doesn’t prevent them from buying cars and that you’ll have to live with unless you just keep driving your old car forever?
I’ll eventually have to buy a new car, yes. But I’ll also be looking into replacing the car’s cellular antenna with a dummy load if possible. A good car shouldn’t depend on cellular networks to be able to function.
Unfortunately, a lot of them are bad https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/categories/cars/
I’m looking for reading on cars that don’t break when you disable the cellular antenna, but haven’t found much so far.
Even if you disable the antenna, who is to say it doesn’t cache telemetry locally that isn’t just sucked up by the dealer the next time you bring your car in?
But then how will you know where the nearest Arby’s is on your commute
My favorite place to buy and use drugs!
It’s so weird how not a single person here can just say “cool, this is good”.
Sometimes things can just be good.
Trust is earned, and automakers have done nothing but the opposite for an entire lifetime. There’s a reason everyone was so desperate for Tesla to be the little guy rebel. It didn’t work out though :(
Yes, but a corporation complying with the law is sadly what passes for good news in the US these days.
Consumers don’t like subscriptions to operate heated seats that are already integrated into the car, for example.
Yes, but this is not one of those times.
Imagine someone poops on your doorstep, and then removes half of it.
You can say it’s good that they removed some of it, but that’s probably not the point you would want to make.
Nothing to do with the euroNCAP guidance that came out earlier in the year, of course.
Nah I’m sure that carmakers being forced to do this only factored in a little bit.
Only because buttons are cheaper than fines of course.
I’ve been assured that tHe MaRkEt will solve everything, though!
Just keep hoping for that invisible handjob.
Great, now unfuck the car I already have
Would be hilarious if they recalled them and superglued buttons over the touchscreen interface.
Isn’t that basically how the knob on the touchscreen of the Ford Mach-E works? I think it’s just glued on and simulates a touch like a stylus.
I had no idea, yet I was correct: this IS hilarious!
I have an 2021 Toyota and replaced the display with a Android head unit. Then added Bluetooth + USB buttons on my dash.
Some features don’t work anymore like, but I can live with that.
Why did you buy it then
Because there are multiple criteria that people look for in a car? Or because fuck you.
Glad they return to the old proven ways. It’s so much safer to have proper buttons and dials.
