That's great! I hope all new Hyundai's buttons are more readable than the darn things in mine. I thought it was just me, but nope, it's a common complaint. I can not make out a single word on my buttons, it's super annoying.
My wife has an ID.4, and they really have gone overboard with touch controls. You have only 2 sets of window controls (driver-side and passenger); you have to use a touch control to switch between front and back.
Audis and Skodas (same group, basically same cars) have the regular physical controls AFAIK. I'm driving a 2021 Audi A1 and it has nice click-y buttons for everything
This is good news, though some (mostly higher-end) carmakers are addressing this by having high-quality natural language voice commands. I look forward to having a vehicle like this someday, but in the meantime I'm glad that there are mainstream carmakers that are keeping physical buttons.
My experience with Siri when I've lost a remote has been more than enough to tell me that trying to control volume with voice is just a pain in the ass.
I personally don't enjoy voice commands, they require all passengers to stop talking, and it interrupts the radio, podcast, or music, and generally it's awkward to use voice commands during a phone call. Well placed physical interfaces are unbeatable for their input reliability, which translates to less time spent distracted from the road.
I don't have a high-end luxury car, I've only used Android Auto / Apple CarPlay through the car's microphone system.
Even if we assume a sophisticated system that can triangulate your voice, trying to talk to the car while driving, and having other passengers talking seems like a recipe for distraction.
Perhaps! I was imagining that it would work at least as well as a HomePod, which can pick up very quiet talking even when music is playing. Since the car knows where your head is located, I assumed that it would perform even better. I don't have a problem talking while there are others in the car — I often have kids in the car and use an AirPod to ask Siri to send text messages. I find it to be less distracting than reaching for knobs (and I've driven knobby cars since the 90s, so am well-practiced at that). I find steering-wheel controls to be the best, but anything that makes me reach into the center stack is less preferable (compared to voice interface) for me.
I bought a Chevy Bolt vs a Model 3 for this and CarPlay. It is so well designed and every time I need something it is right where I expect it.
Could I learn the touch interface? Of course, but driving is often done subconsciously and touch is not amenable to that type of automatic interaction.
I wanted a car, not a toy.
(I am aware of the irony regarding the unfortunate proportions of the Bolt making it look like a toy car… lol)
Four grids of uniform buttons, they think that's an improvement over a touchscreen? There is zero practical distinction between taking your eyes off the road to see which button you're pushing vs taking your eyes of the road to see which part of the screen you're touching.
GOOD HVAC/radio design means you can perform ALL essential functions WITHOUT taking your eyes off the road AT ALL, once you've spent five seconds learning what's where. The controls should be in locations where it's hard to mistake one thing for another. The controls should also be differently shaped and different types. Give us knobs and sliders!
Not identical: they typically have raised markers on two of the home row keys precisely to help with orientation. And, well, your hands are already positioned over them much of the time, so relative identification is much easier. Not so with these buttons.
Not sure I'm using them even unconsciously. Because every time (admittedly not often) that I get a new keyboard I type shifted (as in djogyrd instead of shifted) for a while.
If i'd be using those raised markers I wouldn't take so much time to adapt I think?
These are in 4 different blocks with only 4 each, I don't think this is terribly hard without looking. And it's not like these are functions like windshield wipers that would typically go somewhere else. Looks more or less like typical buttons to me.
The bottom two blocks are fine, I agree, because they're laid out in two dimensional so if you feel around for the corners and identify the buttons that way.
The top set of buttons arranged in a line are much worse. They're two sets of 4 in a sense, but they're nearly undifferentiated from the hazard lights button, so in reality it's one long strip. I strongly suspect that people will take their eyes off the road to look at those buttons more often than not.
(Yes they're media controls, but let's be honest: people will use them to skip tracks while driving.)
That’s not analogous. Proper use, or accustomed use, of a keyboard places the hands in the correct position by default. Our hands don’t remember the _absolute_ position of those buttons, only their position _relative_ to other buttons.
Buttons in car control panels require users to leave the default position of hands-on-wheel and acquire the new button. That’s an expensive operation, and it’s well-studied — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
Also, keyboard layouts are static — learn QWERTY once, use it forever. Car control panels are usually different between cars, so learnability is harder. Many people regularly drive multiple cars, increasing difficulty again.
Well designed button layouts use tactile differences so you can non-visually identify where you are without conducting a sequential search. Button clusters are restricted to groups of three or two with distinctive shapes or raised features that permit rapid acquisition of the intended button. You can't do that with a uniform, flush button strip. That's just designer wannabe BS where form is everything and function is ignored.
I think clearly Hyundai have taken an approach that improves dramatically on the 'buttons hidden behind touchscreens' menus' which has started to plague cars with touch screens.
The result is a dashboard that has decent form and decent function as opposed to great form terrible function. They aren't going for impeccable function here.
When a company tries to do the right thing and publicly calls out flaws in design iterations that we have disliked, lets not shoot them down for not getting it perfect.
To say its "form is everything where function is ignored" is just an overreaction.
Great, we have gone from a horrible and extremely unsafe design to a bad and mildly unsafe design.
What happened to the ~5 decades of design ranging from "decent" to "great"? Even the worst-designed dashboard of the early 00s was better than what we have now in many cases. Give me my damn knobs back.
I was going to agree, from the description above, that this was still a bad design.
But having looked at the picture, it seems fine. There are four sets of buttons that do different things. It will take negligible time to locate the one you want, after which you can stop looking at the panel. The buttons won't move and you'll be aware when you've pressed them.
I dare say the thought process is that, does it really matter over and above how they have already designed it?
If you spend enough time in your own car you will get pretty darn good at finding your buttons with the smallest of glances. I don't think car designers really see the benefit, when they're constantly changing their dashboard designs.
That's a recipe for keeping horses rather than cars.
Designs should change and improve as technology improves, however it needs to move in a responsible direction. What we had 50-70 years ago is quite different from what we have now.
You can take your eyes of the road for a little bit my man. You do it all the time anyway when checking mirrors. Yes, knobs and sliders would be better but this is a good compromise vs exclusive screens.
Also, as per the other content: you can type and remember 100+ buttons.
> There is zero practical distinction between taking your eyes off the road to see which button you're pushing vs taking your eyes of the road to see which part of the screen you're touching.
Practically, I don't need to take my eyes off the road to press an analog button, that I am familiar with, having a small chance to fail (to register the interaction). Touchscreens are notorious for not registering interaction, which is why using a touchscreen keyboard is inferior.
I agree entirely; this is lazy design. Cars are the most dangerous machines we’ve invented, by orders of magnitude nothing else causes as much unintended harm. It’s really, really worth doing the best possible job in the control surfaces for these machines.
They’ve prioritized visual consistency over usability. For example, why do the Volume and Tuner knobs look identical? They’re for different purposes, used in different ways and in different contexts. They’re even usually used by different _people_ — the volume knob is more likely to be used by the passenger, for instance.
And yet, they’re more related to each other than they are to the buttons placed between them, like Search and Map. All those buttons seem essentially arbitrary to me. Are Seek and Track really as important as Setup? Why have a rarely-used and interruptive feature like Setup right next to an often-used and non-destructive feature like Favorite (I’m guess that’s what the star means)?
I’m still glad they’re real buttons rather than a touchscreen. But you’re totally right — this is exceptionally lazy design and implementation of physical buttons.
And if I may — I’ve seen replies already to the effect that the usability of this interface doesn’t matter, either because it’s not a big deal to begin with, or because drivers will get used to anything, or for another reason. That’s missing the point — usability is for everyone, all the time. Even exports make mistakes with unusable controls.
> For example, why do the Volume and Tuner knobs look identical? They’re for different purposes, used in different ways and in different contexts. They’re even usually used by different _people_ — the volume knob is more likely to be used by the passenger, for instance.
Given that they’re so far apart, I don’t see why they should be physically different from one another. Also, the standard position of the volume knob is on the left, the tuner knob on the right. This is how it has worked in any car radio I’ve ever seen when the knobs are arranged horizontally like that. They’re both within easy reach so trying to statistically determine which occupant is most likely to operate which knob doesn’t seem very useful.
I agree with everything else you’ve written. I hate it when disruptive controls are mixed in with less-consequential ones. This design could use some improvement, but it’s also substantially better than the touchscreen-only alternative.
Unlike a touchscreen, you can feel the line between adjacent buttons and between buttons & the surrounding dashboard. Unlike touchscreens, you can touch these without triggering them, use feel to locate the correct button and center your finger on it, then press it, all without taking your eyes from the road.
Could they be even more distinct? Sure. Are these still a huge improvement over a touchscreen? Absolutely.
I have seen a touch screen covered by a thin layer of plastic in the button row that has some indentation so the finger can feel where the buttons are. This was on the control panel of an industrial machine. With some small sound or haptic feedback when the button is being pressed, this allows someone familiar with the interface to quickly press some buttons while operating the machine.
(There was also an indentation for a slider on the side)
I mean that is cool, but afaik literally no one has ever done this in an automotive product. Probably because this flexible screen would turn crap after 10 years of non-stop inflating/deflating, or wouldn't operate in conditions that cars actually exist in(-30C/+40C operating temperatures are standard for automotive screens, as soon as you add any kind of flexible plastic you definitely lose that).
A slightly sarcastic “just” on my part, haha. Considering that the original idea (also a later project GelTouch[1]) never lead as far as I’m aware to any shipping products, I doubt they thought about specific automotive needs.
Do you have any good examples of a car or plane that can be operated that way? I'm not aware of any.
Taking a glance to co-locate your finger and a button or knob is far faster than doing so with an element on a touchscreen. And the latter requires visual attention throughout the interaction.
Also, I would wager that keeping eyes on road while mentally finding a button or knob without looking is actually more distracting than taking a quick glance for it.
There is zero practical distinction between taking your eyes off the road to see which button you're pushing vs taking your eyes of the road to see which part of the screen you're touching.
There is, in fact, one large difference. With a button you know you’ve pushed it. Once you see where to press your eyes can go back to the road while you actually press the button since the feedback indicating it’s been pressed is tactile.
That’s just a button though. That scenario is magnified with any sort of adjustment slider.
I just got out of a rental with a touchscreen climate controls and it was significantly less safe just adjusting the heat.
Car touchscreens also have tactile feedback - they produce a click and a vibration when a press is registred. This works well. What doesn't work at all is being able to find a button without looking.
Largely, no they don't. Most models I've seen (including, the usual whipping boy Tesla) do not have any haptic feedback on their touch screens. Noises when clicking something is more common, though.
While I agree that Hyundai's console design is seriously lacking, anything immovable/unchangeable has a key benefit over touchscreens: it can be habituated.
Personally I find any interface that can move while you use it to be borderline anger-inducing (the Google Cloud Platform console comes to mind immediately). In a car it's deadly. Gimmicks move gadgets though, so we had to let some designers and product managers get their bonuses/promotions and then pivot into an "epiphany" (sans the mea culpa) to get to now.
and yet, here I am, typing on my keyboard, which is above my eye level while I lay on a couch eating a burrito with my latop on my belly. And I don't even have to see the keys... they should alternate every single key with a knob so I know the difference.
There is absolutely a difference. You probably typed this entire message on your desktop or laptop keyboard without looking at it. Could you do the same on a touch keyboard on your phone? Buttons staying in the same place and giving tactile feedback makes all the difference.
The design in the linked picture looks just about like any other non-touchscreen car in the world, and is perfectly usable.
Core functions like HVAC and hazard lights deserve dedicated controls, but modern cars also need a type of input that can be used with a tablet-sized display. What to do?
*Rotary Encoders*
The best type of input for a car is a rotary encoder, a knob with tactile "clicks" that register as you turn it. Good ones can also be pressed down like a button, and moved in cardinal directions like a d-pad.
Have one for your volume knob: pressing it down toggles muting.
Have one for the main controls: twisting moves the cursor, swiping changes which app is selected.
Have one on a steering wheel stalk, to cycle between display modes on one of the dashboard display's rounds.
This actually looks like a really practical design to me.
Maybe I've been driving the wrong cars, but I don't expect to be able to feel around blindly to find the right button to press (although, to be honest, that does seem like it'd be doable with this Kona design). I do expect, however, to be able to glance at the button panel and quickly get a fix on the button location so that I can look back at the road while my fingers to the rest. This design would certainly enable the latter.
That's wonderful, I hope other car makers realize how distracting and dangerous touch controls are for a driver's ability to focus on driving.
My car has physical controls for most things, and I use CarPlay for music/podcasts and navigation, and even for that purpose it's extremely distracting to use it while driving when compared to the physical interfaces for A/C, seat heaters, mirror adjustment etc. I generally avoid as much of the CarPlay interface as possible while driving.
Voice commands are not the silver bullet solution here, they have a lot of problems such as requiring all passengers to stop talking, and it interrupts the radio, podcast, or music, and generally it's awkward to use voice commands during a phone call. Voice commands are probably fine for some low stakes input like asking to call someone, changing music tracks etc.
Hardly fair to compare navigation and selecting music to adjusting temperature and seat heaters. Very different tasks with very different requirements for looking at them.
I have a 2022 VW Golf GTI. It has no buttons for the climate control and haptic buttons for the steering wheel controls. I think there's some assumptions the designers might have made about how people would use the system:
The first is how HVAC systems work in a house, old cars, and new cars.
- Home window and central ACs (at least all the ones I've seen) can't adjust the temperate of the air that comes out, it's tied to external values like whether the air recirculation is on, the temperature of the outside air, wind, etc. For example if it's 90f out and you turn on the AC and the desired temp is below that it will output 70f. There's many variables, size of the system whatever, point is YOU CAN'T CONTROL THE TEMPERATURE OF THE AIR COMING OUT OF THE SYSTEM
: You set a desired temperature
: If that temperature is above (AC) or below (heat) the compressor and fan turn on
: The system outputs a fixed air temperature, as cold as possible for all the variables BUT NOT your desired temperature
: When the desired temperature is reached (or a few degrees in either direction to prevent rapid cycling) the compressor turns off. The fan may also turn off or continue to run depending on the settings.
Cars:
In older cars and newer cars when automatic climate control is off or unavailable the system outputs the TEMPERATURE YOU CONTROL. You aren't setting a desired temperature but an output temperature. One exception to this is cars that turn off the compressor when your interior air is below the desired.
Many newer cars have automatic climate control. You set the desired temperature and it adjusts both the air temperature, fan speed, and position until you reach the desired temperature.
That means if it's 90F in the car and you want 69F the initial output air temperature will as cold as possible, possibly lower than your desired to assist in getting to your desired. This is accomplished via air mixing with the heater core.
*It's more complex than this but for the sake of simplicity
I believe the goal was that you would set a fixed temperature, turn on auto, and rarely touch the system. This is even more possible in my car because there's dedicated defrost buttons that override the system when on and return it to the previous setting when you turn it off.
This means there's less interaction with the system and therefore less need for dedicated buttons and less distraction, assuming that's how it's used.
Both + and - are on one long strip with no gap between other buttons. When you press it there's a small amount of movement and haptic feedback. It does not respond to touch unless you slide.
The operation is as follows:
Press + and the volume increases by 1
Press - and the volume decreases by 1
Slide your finger from left to right the volume increases multiple values depending on the amount of contact and speed of the swipe
Slide your finger from right to left ....
Again, the sliding action mimics the operation of a phone. I don't think it's unreasonable for the designers to assume the operation would be natural for people.
Overall there's a greater learning curve however a learning curve for a car isn't important in most situations since you usually keep a car for a few years. I've gotten used to it and I would have liked real buttons I don't see a problem. Taking my eyes off the road can happen for many things, like GPS, text messages, etc. That's something I need to known not to do because simply reduces the reasons doesn't seem like the ideal solution.
So I daily drive a 1988 saab 900, with very nice haptic controls. My engine blew up at the end of february. In the last 4 weeks I have been driving my wife's car, a 1990 Saab 9000. Automatic Climate Control is great. Last week I got the 900 back up and running and it's such a stunning difference between a car that was engineered originally in the 70's and one that was 'new' in the late 80s.
In my 900 there's basically 2 heat settings, ICE COLD and FIREY. It's best controlled by adjusting the return air flap / fan speed or cracking the windows. It's never right, it's always fiddly. I don't like it, except on very cold days it has no problem.
I notice that the 9000 I spend much less time fiddling with buttons, but when I do... it takes me longer. On my 900, I don't even think about it, like when you drive stick shift, you just shift, no mental thought. You think it and do it in one motion, like using vim hotkeys.
So - now I will be back to driving my 900 this week after I finish buttoning up the interior pieces, and I don't know if I like it more or less.
I'm somewhat interested in older cars, but a big deterrent for me has been safety. I guess this is just a risk in driving an older car. A lot of my driving is on the highway going 70+ MPH, so I suppose if my commute consisted of roads with half the speed limit or less then it'd be more of a consideration.
Agreed, though a saab 9000 is a far cry from the old X frame bel air. There's a serious amount of crash protection. The concept of crumple zones is alive and well in the car, we've just been refining it
"NORCROSS, Ga., Oct. 4 -- The real-world success of Saab's
safety engineering heritage is once again underscored by the latest
reports from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the
Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI). According to the IIHS rating
system, the Saab 9000 had the lowest driver fatality rate among 153
1990-1994 passenger cars, wagons, trucks and sport utility
vehicles. As listed in the Insurance Institute's September, 1996
report, the Saab 9000 scored the lowest driver fatality average --
better than such safety stalwarts as Volvo. Saab's average score of 25
was well below scores posted by every competitor, including the Volvo
940/960 (45) and the BMW 5-series (52). (A score of 100 indicates 2
fatalities per 10,000 registered vehicle years.) Data on the
current-generation Saab 900, which debuted for the 1994 model year,
was not yet available.
"
Sorry I also found this:
Folksam Report 2017, the result:
Saab 9-5 I, 98 - 09. Good security. At least 20% better than the average
Saab 9-3 II, 03 - 12. Good security. At least 20% better than the average
Saab 9-3, 98 - 02. Good security. At least 20% better than the average
Saab 900 II, 94 - 98. Good security. At least 20% better than the average
Saab 9000, 85 - 98. Average security
Saab 900, 79 - 87. Below average. 20% worse than the average
I can’t speak for their EV line, but no media is talking about how crappy their engines are. I won’t touch a KIA or Hyundai and I have zero qualms speaking up about it. My brother and I both needed new engines after 50,000 miles with normal wear and maintenance. If you read up on oil consumption you will discover they have had problem’s continually since 2014. Last I checked the 2021 +models are still affected. Getting the engine replaced is getting harder as they can’t keep up with engine demand. It’s a 4000 mile set of tests and BS. KEEP ALL YOUR SERVICE RECORDS and keep your maintenance schedule, or you will be paying anywhere from $16,000 USD to fix it on your own dime.
They do have a history of cheaping on parts. When we had a KIA, all sorts of problems with CV joints, and power steering components, all expiring around 130,000km or so. Just lower quality seals & parts on drivetrain components, that lasted just until out of drivetrain warranty, if I recall.
The wildest part for me is that the turbo variants they're selling in Europe seem to be perfectly fine. In the N cars there only seem to be clutch issues (and other stuff that's only relevant if you track them). My family has driven Korean cars since 2008 without ANY issues and I'm perfectly happy with my i30N.
One of mine has a seized engine at 66k miles. I’ve been waiting 2 months for the pleasure of paying $6k for a replacement. It is hopelessly backordered. I plan to sell mine as soon as I’m able.
There are a few people in this thread saying their engines seized within the warranty period but weren’t covered by Kia, so this warranty might not be as useful as it sounds.
Strangely, Does Hyundai/Kia have some difference wrt engines in US and India?
Never heard anyone complain about engine in India even after 62k miles, they are quite popular among taxi drivers, who definitely stress the engine more than enough. Indian roads can be quite punishing on cars.
Note that it appears CarMD is basing this on data largely from 1995-2015. That’s well under the likely time/miles when KIA/Hyundai would have started to have engine trouble s.
Taxis are one of the least stressed engines as they stay at operating temperature for most of their life, more so when they are run 24/7 with multiple shifts.
In Indian traffic cars are constantly revving and slowing down. And Indian taxis are worst maintained. We don't have regulations enforcing it. And the driving of the majority of taxis is also haphazard. I'm not aware of any ideal taxi situation that you're speaking of in the Indian context.
That only matters if your design isn't garbage to begin with.
If you have some Toyota 22RE-esque timing component eating abomination or some Navistar 6.0-esque headgasket eating abomination the thing won't last long enough for normal wear to dominate the equation.
I’ve read some threads either here or on Reddit from mechanics saying it was the 2.0 engine (I think the CVT versions) that crapped out like this and they used that engine in a ton of models. Anecdotal, but mine is an old 2013 Kia with a 1.6 engine with DCT like all their turbos / top of line models and I’ve had no mechanical issues at all yet, but I’m looking to buy soon and I won’t consider their 2.0s out of caution.
My 2012 Accent had this issue with a 2.0 engine. Started burning oil around 90K miles and was getting worse by the day. To their credit, Hyundai replaced the full engine at no cost right at 100K miles thanks to the warranty - I have had the car for 10 years without incident, so it's pretty cool to get a brand new engine. I'd buy another Hyundai just because their warranty is so kick-ass
I'm convinced Mazda could have taken over the world with an electric CX-5. What a missed opportunity. Hopefully it's not too late for them as I think it's one of the nicer, and more tasteful vehicles on the road.
As a counter to all the replies, I have owned nothing but Hyundai and Kia since high school, and my family has owned several Kia and Hyundai vehicles. It would take something very major for me to consider another brand.
Their warranties are outstanding and long. My Kia engine was part of a recall, had an issue, but was then replaced out of warranty for free in less than a week during 2020. The engine now has a lifetime warranty. All of their warranty repairs, for small things, were done without hassle.
When we took a look at buying another car a few years ago, Kia and Hyundai were by far the best quality car out of everyone, including Honda. I think people to still shit on Kia and Hyundai because the names aren't Honda or Toyota. They have their issues, but in my experience, the warranty and recalls they did covered everything at no cost. And at this point, my Kia is an 8 year old model which was at the tail end of its model design even then.
I have zero concern about my Kia's reliability. I even drove my much older Hyundai well over 100,000 miles with hardly any maintenance before trading it in.
I was in the same boat until my car was stolen. If you haven't heard of it, look up the Kia Boys, though the same rules apply to Hyundais.
If you do manage to get the car back, you find yourself much more interested in car anti-theft measures, and will then discover that there are very limited options for parts due to the epidemic of them being stolen (66% of cars stolen in 2021 in Milwaukee, the center of the epidemic were Kia/Hyundai). And there is no indication that the company will be of any help going forward. The only real option is to not buy pre-2021 Hyundais/Kias.
The stolen cars were model years less than 2022 and were trims that needed a key to start the vehicle. Models that's used pushed button starts were unaffected.
I take the green screw part with me if I have any concerns, and sometimes even if it's parked in it's usual place at home.
I figure if a their tries to start the vehicle and it doesn't even turn on, they're likely to move to the next vehicle rather than muck about trying to troubleshoot mine.
You are now the second person to recommend me an idea in that vein; I have just been using a steering wheel lock since I can't actually get an immobilizer rn. So I think I will actually materialize on your idea. Appreciate the comment.
One step further I've thought of would be to buy two and remove the brass threaded contactor from one of the green hand screws and replace it with a nylon part so you could screw the dummy unit in to make it appear as though the unit is complete, thereby potential throwing off a savey would-be their who is familiar with the the trick of removing the contractor.
Hmm another thought - tie the gas pedal to the steering wheel with a steel chain/lock.
Sure, they can cut your chain with bolt cutters, but that's not exactly inconspicuous, and it encourages would be theives towards easier marks. Probably cheaper than a wheel lock, too.
It is unfortunate for sure, but it doesn't affect fob only / pushbutton start cars. Kia and Hyundai have rectified the issue on newer models though and are at least giving away free wheel locks in certain areas, or so I've read.
Another issue with some models of Kia and Hyundai is some insurance companies are now refusing to insure them due to how easy they are to steal. Imagine buying a car and calling up your insurance company to add it to your policy and...nope. I've never heard of that before.
This is an international problem, whith every location having a model/brand that's preferred by the thieves. Market forces and all that.
In South Africa, the best car security you can have by far is to simply park next to a VW Polo/Golf. The VW will _always_ be stolen first. Don't forget to set a reminder to go out at some point, so that you can move your car and park it next to another VW, as the first one would be stolen by then.
A close second are Toyota Hilux and Fortuner.
All these cars are super popular, both to own and steal. Result is insurance premiums that can be double normal rates, especially if you fall in the "young and reckless" demographic.
I rented a Sonata once and drove it 3500 miles without issues. But since then my impression of Hyundai has deteriorated. Had another die on me while driving on I-85 in a rush hour Atlanta. It was scary. Then all these reports of engine fires and theft because of lack of immobilizers.
So - people shit on Kia, because they remember what it was like before Hyundai owned it.
My sister bought a Kia around 2000. It was garbage. You have to go a ways farther back, but once upon a time Hyundai wasn't very good either. At some point (I guess in the 90's?) people started talking about how Hyundai had caught up to Toyota and Honda, and Ford and Dodge needed to do the same.
I've driven many Kia rentals the past ~15 years, and they are awesome. Even remembering all of what I wrote above, I was surprised at times at how premium the fit and finish was, and how powerful and smooth the ride was.
I had a 2006 Kia Spectra and learned to drive manual with it. Lasted for 10 years until it got rusty enough from winter salt that I wanted something else. Other than oil changes and front struts it was trouble-free.
Yea, in the past decade or so, both Kia and Hyundai have stepped up their game to compete with Honda and Toyota. Great warranties, easy to work on, etc etc. I'm curious what the world will look like in another 20 years. Will Hyundai's get more expensive than Toyota? Will Honda bring prices down to better compete? Or will some Chinese startup roll in and attempt the same playbook as the previous brands? I any case, I think it's a net positive for consumers.
I own two Hyundai (2007 Entourage, 2015 Sonata), and a 2022 Honda Odyssey. My initial impression of the Honda is far better than it was for my Hyundais. We'll see how it progresses over time, but as of now, I don't plan to buy Hyundai again. The only thing I hate about my Honda is I can't turn default-to-off that stupid setting that kills the engine and restarts it automatically whenever you stop the vehicle at a light or stop sign.
I leased a Kia Niro EV last year (EV FOMO made me unwilling to commit to a car right now, plus the used car market was obscene). I’ve been generally delighted with it, excluding the stupid Bluetooth auto connect nonsense.
I'd like to buy Kia or Hyundai, but personally I find the interiors both look and feel "cheap", even on the high-end models like the Kia Stinger. Interiors from BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Volvo look and feel so much more luxurious.
Guess what, most if not all cars today have what's called an ECM which is essentially a computer that controls your engine among other things. It's certainly a very easy task to flash that ECM as long as your inside that car and can plug in common off the shelf devices and have your car very quickly be unable to start.
Unless you're buying a car that's a decade old you cannot find what you want.
it's about aero, not weight. EVs have great range at low speed and at high speed rolling resistance is 90+% of your drag. glass holds a very smooth curve extremely well.
Unfortunately the second you talk about banning large trucks in cities, someone comes along worrying about the policy applying to their rural town / homestead.
In most of the US you can. It would be very difficult to drive in the US in a way that avoids those trucks without restricting yourself to some tiny core.
Ive never had a Hyundai but I recently rented a Sonata and wow! It had all the high end perks of other cars like top down parking view and a beautiful widescreen for my apple CarPlay! And driving it was great! I was seriously impressed and I enjoyed driving it for the several days I had it.
It is sad to see even the more 'conservative' (design wise) car companies following this design. Lexus gets a lot of flak for boring/old tech interiors but give me their 2010s design over 'modern' touch screen/capacitive button all-the-things any day. Shame they haven't got more plugin hybrids or EV options though, their build quality/design in my experience makes a lot of other cars feel rushed.
My parents had a 2021 Hyundai Santa Fe top trim, and the design was a mess. A part from lane keeping, it had nothing my 10+ years older Lexus RX didn't have, and I found so many aspects of driving it counter-intuitive. I'm glad they are keeping real buttons, but I also hope they start removing things/make them simpler.
It's crazy to me that people think a "boring" interior is a bad thing. I want my car to be as boring, functional, and familiar as possible. I never want to think about my car except when it needs maintenance.
On the mazda 6 at least, there's a touchscreen for the native nav/media/etc software, but the touchscreen is disabled if you use Android Auto and are forced to use the dial interface. Go figure.
This has been linked to on reddit, and it's being called out that a few 2023 Hyundai models have capacitive buttons and touchscreen controls; Tucson, Ioniq, Verna at least.
I loved the look and interior of the Ioniq 5. However when testdriving it, it felt sitting on a plank getting tossed about while going over roundabouts. I also had it loose grip and have the FWD kick in in situations and conditions that have never been an issue at higher speeds in my previous (smaller and lower) cars and my current XC90.
maybe it had something to do with the large amount of power it has. But it felt scary enough for me to not try it.
Hmm. I've driven on snowy roads and found it to be better at handling than any other car I've driven, even counting cars that had dedicated snow tires (whereas the Ioniq only had all-season tires).
It also has a "snow mode" to help with particularly bad roads. I found at least one review that puts its snow handling down as a "pro", so it's not just me. [1]
I did get the Limited AWD with the 20" wheels. Not sure if that makes a difference.
I suppose the tires do matter a lot. I’ve driven an AWD (not sure whether it was a limited edition). The grip was indeed better in AWD mode, at the loss of range but the tossing around is still there. Maybe that would have been fixed completely by Sport seats.
Still, I’ve never had a car lose grip like the Ioniq 5. For the FWD cars that is expected, but also the RWD I have is easier to handle.
I have a Genesis G70 2021. It is fantastic; best car I've ever owned. I don't see myself buying anything other than Genesis, if my budget permits. So many awesome features and almost all of them are controlled by dials. I absolutely love it.
A friend had a Hyundai Elantra. He needed new brakes so we went to Autozone, picked up some pads and then we jacked it up. I was flabbergasted - they were the easiest brakes to change in any car I have ever done. One bolt, swing the calipers up, pop the old pads out, plug in the new ones, swing the caliper down and put the bolt back in. Had both done in 20 minutes. It was amazing. A car actually DESIGNED to be serviced.
A few months later the crank angle sensor went out - again it was the easiest car to work on I have ever seen. The sensor was out in the open, not buried under a bunch of crap. One 10mm bolt, and the harness connector was easily accessible too. Five minutes and we were done.
Oh yeah, car had 250,000 miles on it and still ran like a top while getting 40MPG. Other than using a little oil. For a "cheap" car I was beyond impressed.
Good to hear it was made that easy. Last Prius I rented there was no way to display km/h and Toyota’s official response was “just buy next year’s model”.
1) Nobody ever provides any evidence that touchscreen based car interfaces are less safe. You might imagine having to briefly glance at a screen is less safe, but that's not evidence. The only thing I've ever seen people cite is some unscientific magazine article that claimed touchscreens take slightly longer to operate for certain strangely-chosen controls, which is not at all the same thing as measuring safety.
2) People never have a very good answer for which physical buttons cars like Teslas are missing. There's physical controls for all driving functions, volume, music play/pause, music next/previous. Adjusting climate is in a muscle-memoryable fixed position, not in some menu. You certainly aren't supposed to be adjusting your mirrors or something while driving.
This is not particularly relevant, the tested features are not really available as no-look controls in any car, nor are they the driving critical controls people imagine these touchscreens replace.
> Participants were required to use voice commands, touch screens and other interactive technologies to make a call, send a text message, program audio entertainment or program navigation, all while driving down the road.
> Nobody ever provides any evidence that touchscreen based car interfaces are less safe.
That's a bit like the old joke that the efficacy of parachutes at preventing free-fall deaths has never been proven scientifically. (Well, until this 2003 study[1])
Some chains of causality are so obvious that we don't need to prove them scientifically: Many people find touchscreens hard to use without taking their eyes off the road. Taking your eyes off the road can lead to crashes.
“We don’t need to prove it because I believe it” isn’t a compelling point. There’s many ways the answer could be counterintuitive. For example, perhaps people know they have to take their eyes off the road so they operate those controls during safer conditions. But most importantly, I don’t even think it’s true that there are cars where key controls are only on difficult to access touch screen! Hence my whole point about Teslas actually having all relevant physical controls. Plus, all these cars with zillions of physical controls now have big shitty touchscreens too. It’s not clear that’s a better UX, as many people in this thread complain about.
Tesla's windshield wiper controls are pretty obnoxious. I think the climate controls are pretty bizarre too, even if you can look at them while you operate them, and I don't know how well the music controls would work if they were reliable, but I found them to be so random I couldn't operate without looking.
Good thing is on a freeway you can engage auto-throttle and lane keeping which are good enough that you can look away from the road for a few seconds. It makes it ok for the rest of the UI to be bad, but that's not the same as it being good.
One physical button to wipe, without even leaving the wheel. How hard is that? And they wipe automatically otherwise. Not sure what you mean, unless you mistakenly think it’s necessary to go through some screen menus to find the controls.
For long time I wondered why UI in spacecrafts is so inconvenient. Apollo computer UI seems to be lacking. Soyuz UI, while seems to improve over years (ha, it would be strange, over so many years...), still looks clunky. And then - Crew Dragon comes with touch screens. Don't they understand it's a big step back? There are benefits of "fluid" interfaces, but where is the attention to important features, ability to use "main" tools without re-learning where they are and how they look like, while having the tactile feedback?
I have been in the room, so to speak, when the design of a fusion reactor control room was being discussed. I feel the answer is simply: because engineers "design" these things.
I feel like the design of spaces is simply not considered very well if at all. I get the feeling that maybe aircraft do it best? Or at least that's the impression that I have had.
Did engineers really design the touch screens on Dragon? I feel like those were in the first mock-ups that came out. I assumed that it was just a “concept car” type detail and they would have MFDs in the real spacecraft.
Touchscreens seem like a very marketing/design feature.
The idea of tactile feedback is that you can look at one place - like a screen, which gives you information in ideally most convenient way - while, without looking, operate buttons, knobs, levers etc., at the same time.
If you have, for example, a screen which shows you docking crosses in the center of the picture and control buttons on the periphery of the picture, you still need to move your focus from the view to controls to operate them. This is a simplified example, just to illustrate my point.
This can be seen in plane cookpits, where a lot of things are migrating from physical buttons to the screens. But there are still a lot of knobs, buttons, levers...
The key seems to be to move the info to a screen, but still control the screen with physical buttons and not touching the screen. E.g. move the status display of the A/C to the central screen, but turn a knob to adjust the temperature.
One big difference is that spacecraft crews actually train on their craft, just like aircraft pilots, and extensively. So they know what all the controls are for, what they do, what to do in an emergency, etc. When a pilot wants to fly a different model of airplane, they have to be retrained (or cross-trained rather) on that model, since the controls and procedures may be different.
For some strange reason, people expect to just jump in the driver's seat of a car and drive away with zero training.
The cabin controls are okay on Hyundais, I guess. I remember having to use the touchscreen to set the rear temperature controls. This is confusing when the main screen is occupied by Android auto. So it isn't like you have button control over everything.
I'd recommend Mazda for getting pushbutton controls right.
I'm a big fan of the Commander knob on my Mazda (despite absolutely everything else about their infotainment being hot garbage). It's so easy to use without being distracted, more so even than physical buttons. But unfortunately, it seems like Android Auto is going more and more away from supporting non-touchscreen inputs. First they added forced "look at the road" breaks when you were scrolling a large list, which actually made it more dangerous when scrolling with the knob in a Mazda since it would just take longer. And their new layout is pretty terrible for a rotary input as it has no clear tab flow.
I have owned a Hyundai, and I have zero idea why everyone is so convinced that their physical buttons reduce driver distraction. In the six years I had it, I never managed to totally figure out where the HVAC buttons were and in what order they cycled the different modes.
I love buttons but you don't really need them with a properly designed climate control system. Yet many cars are fitted without climate control so the driver is always fiddling the buttons or subjecting passengers to cruel temperatures.
Wonderful. I recently rented a model 3 and found it incredibly frustrating that it required multiple touches to adjust settings that would be a single button press on a more traditional car. Don’t even get me started on the windshield wipers - a total nightmare in winter storms and located on the left stalk? These are safety concerns. As long as humans are operating these dangerous vehicles, I vote for fewer driver distractions.
As an owner it works great. Windshield wipers have a sensor for automatic control, and if you want to manually adjust, voice recognition is highly accurate these days. I switch between my Prius and Tesla all the time as my wife shares the vehicles, and I much prefer the Tesla controls. But I'll get off of your lawn if you'd like.
I mean the voice control features specifically. Didn’t hear anything about the auto high beams and wipers which could imply they worked better than the voice recognition.
I'm a native speaker, maybe I have good enunciation. I'm amazed at how accurate the voice recognition is. It almost never makes a mistake, even with obscure location names. It displays on the screen what it thinks you said and even updates it as more heavy duty ML requests come back with better results.
I'm usually listening to audiobooks. Right now Tesla doesn't support any audiobook reader, so voice commands momentarily mute the book without pausing.
Next issue is the quality of voice recognition. It just sucks.
Oh, and wipers are a pure fucking BS in Teslas. They removed a $5 infrared precipitation sensor, and it STILL doesn't work well.
I don't own Tesla, I have a strong Punjabi Accent when i speak English. Many bigger companies phone trees based on voice "commands" are useless for me. It never understands me. My Ford Sync voice controls too struggle to understand me. I prefer buttons.
At least it's hands free unlike the pile of shit that is Subaru Outback's infotainment. Takes upwards of 20 seconds to change any settings after the car turns on because it lags so bad.
Jesus Fuck is the Subaru infotainment system just an absolute nightmare. I love Subaru cars. I have owned several.
My most recent (23 Impreza) was the first with full-blownsies infotainment. It is just an absolute shitshow.
Slow, laggy, buggy, hard to understand menus. It randomly turns black and takes a minute or two to turn back on when starting driving. If you get in turn the car on, and put it into a gear without waiting for 20-30 seconds, the screen and therefore radio will be completely unusable for anywhere from 30 seconds up to five minutes afterwards.
It will probably make production costs cheaper in the long run to avoid as many buttons as possible, unless legislation forbids it due to safety concerns. I’m on team Hyundai in this case, but if you want to produce the cheapest possible car, you will have to reduce the amount of components that needs to be installed.
It was doing its best on automatic but the wipers were sporadic at best. This was a major winter storm and visibility was awful …the model 3 had no idea where the lane lines were and apparently no idea how bad the precipitation was.
I think I’m just going to keep buying and driving 15 year old cars until the new cars are an order of magnitude better. I can buy 10 half decent 15 year old cars for the price of new Tesla!
(15 years old is the magic number in MA where the car no longer has to pass emissions checks during inspection)
Plus, you can probably fix them yourself! None of this "hack it yourself and void the warranty, or pay a goon to hookup a computer to your car to 'fix' it."
I wonder how long it will take for people to start selling jailbroken cars...
To me, this is definitely a major safety hazard to rely on voice command. If you just get splashed and in a stressed out voice you ask for wipers and your car might not understand you.
It would def draw a pause if I were driving a Turo rental. It's great to have the option of voice. But I can actuate the wipers much quicker with a hand stalk than I can speak it.
The way to do it is to press the wiper button (press in on the stalk button) to swipe one and then it gives you options for manual wiper speed selection via an on-screen control.
I am absolutely not defending Tesla at all, and do genuinely believe they do things that are incredibly stupid in auto design.
But - at one point, when the shift was the right stalk, wipers were controlled via a switch, knob, or other mechanism either on the dashboard or on the left stalk.
So. It's not like changes haven't happened before.
They were still physical controls that offered tactile feedback and never moved so you could always operate them blindly.
Also my parents are older and something in their skin makes them routinely almost invisible to capacitive touch controls - heck I still have trouble from time to time getting displays to register reliably.
I loathe touch controls and will never buy a vehicle that only has touch controls. Luckily all my current cars are in excellent condition and I pamper the crap out of them. If I'm lucky I'll be able to be buried in them :p
Yeah, hilarious how people are complaining about wipers when they literally have a 1-shot button on the stalk to trigger a quick blast at any time. Hold down for 2 seconds to get wiper fluid/de-icer. Seems like Tesla actually has the safety feature you want.
This will trigger it to run once, in the slowest setting. And then you have to wait for this to finish before it updates to the speed you've set on the touchscreen. Tesla could have also solved this by just letting the user decide if it should be a single wipe or toggle a certain setting.
Being able to toggle a single wipe, with or without wiper fluids is also something every single car I've ever operated has had. In addition to be able to control it from the stalk.
Not everything has to be reinvented. They walked back a little on the steering yoke, but for some reason they still remove the stalks and have touch buttons on the steering wheel. The one thing that everyone with the yoke categorically hated.
And navigating a software menu (which changes at random times when it updates itself) just to open the fucking glove compartment. What was wrong with a physical latch?
Fine, then have a lock that's accessible electronically. The usual case of just opening the glove compartment when it's not locked can still just be a physical latch.
There are so many good reasons to carry keys. Why carry a yubikey, or a license for that matter? Because good security is about what you have, not just what you know. It's about authentication.
In the spirit of the present article, mechanical locks (especially for anything car related) are better. You can't hack into them. If you force or break them, you are forced to leave physical evidence behind that you did so. Not so for a Bluetooth or WiFi hack. This is why I will not enable my smart garage door opener. I don't even have pay by phone, because they offer an attack vector via NFC directly to my bank account. I carry credit cards instead.
Sure, carrying all those pieces of metal is annoying. I got a KeySmart to help mitigate this. I carry my car key in my wallet with my cards. It's worth it, and there are ways around the costs.
Then put a physical button (with deep travel) on the glove compartment. If it isn't pin-protected it works exactly as a physical latch would, just with an extra redirection through some microcontroller. When you enable the pin lock, pressing the button opens the pin input on the screen.
The screen is surprisingly good. I feel like a lot of the comments there are a bit like when smartphones changed from buttons blackberry style to touchscreens iPhone style. For sure buttons are better for some use cases but a touchscreen is nice too. It’s okay that you have to press the touchscreen to configure the automatic AC. It’s not something you do often anyway. However you may use the navigation or the media player more often. The model 3/y also has nice buttons on the wheel anyway, not some cheap touch buttons. With the exception of the wipers speed selector. They fucked up on this.
Physical buttons on the blackberry were far superior - except for the space they took. So a touchscreen on something that has a physical constraint is a reasonable trade off.
There are ZERO constraints preventing them from still including physical buttons except for impractical hipster design philosophies. Want to have touch screen in addition to physical buttons? Knock yourself out. But I will never buy a car with pure touchscreen controls.
I almost didn't buy a Tesla because of my concerns over the lack of controls, but turns out that while driving, it's rarely if ever necessary to touch the screen, because there's voice commands for everything (navigate to X, climate control off, etc). Plus often you don't need to do anything at all: the lights switch on automatically if it's dark, the windshield wipers activate automatically if there's moisture, etc.
For me, the weirdest/most dangerous quirk is that the 'gears' (drive/reverse) are located on the right stalk, on several occasions I've toggled it in the wrong direction.
YMMV I suppose but the "auto" options for climate + wipers do not work well for me.
Single droplet in the right spot => furious wiping. 100 droplets in the wrong spots => no wipe.
Climate - My preferred mode is to have the A/C on but not actually directed straight at me (so through the windshield vents), but auto also blasts through the front.
My only request would be an option to override the auto wipers (even on autopilot) and without the touchscreen. This could be done effectively by adding a double press action and auditive feedback to the left stalk button.
A voice command takes longer to execute than a press or flick of a finger IMO.
It would be interesting to see what the cognitive loads are between a physical movement and a set of voice commands. I remember reading a study that found talking to another person in the vehicle was the equivalent to having had a certain amount of alcohol. I'm sure there's a difference between voice.commands and conversation, but interesting nome the less.
Until the voice command fails and you have to resort to digging through a touchscreen UI.
For whatever reason, my wife's voice does not do well with voice control (despite being an American with an average American accent). And I have a slight Scottish accent (pronounce my Rs and /hw/) which, despite being mild (lived in the US for nearly 40 years) still causes trouble with voice control.
In my Model 3, voice commands work flawlessly for my wife.
For me, it never hears me. Doesn't matter if I talk loud or quite, fast or slow. I'm a native english speaker with no regional accent. Tesla also has no explanation.
Thing is, even if it worked for me, I'd still trade it for dedicated buttons. It borders on aggravating when my wife is driving to be mid conversation and have her suddenly yell out "wipers on".
Voice commands fail the universal design principle. I haven't tried Tesla's but I hate using voice commands and it's not an option for everyone. Not every language is supported and if you have a heavy accent or, like me, a speech impediment, even the industry leading software with training does not work most of the time. Pushing a button is quicker than speaking, especially if you have to say the same thing multiple times.
Most of the world doesn't speak english as their primary language, and TBH I have yet to see a single person here in Europe (Swizerland) to command their phones using voices, or any other device (nests etc are extremely non-popular here, never saw it here and I work of english-speaking corporation).
I mean literally 0 times, this is very US-centric (and maybe UK/Australia/NZ) way of thinking. So US car working safely only via voice command? That means it isn't working for me.
TBH I would never ever want such a critical piece as car commanded by voice. We are 4, no way car will reliably grok everything for it 100% of the time and nothing else (that's the bar to compete with for buttons, not a nanometer lower).
The automatic windshield wipers in Teslas is a joke. They're so bad that I'm having trouble even formulating how bad it is, you really have to experience it. They've clearly not been very well tested in areas places where it rains so often, and in so many different ways, that we have dozens of different words just to describe what it.
1. It will take multiple seconds to react even if the entire windshield is completely covered in water. Like zero visibility. I've had this happen on multiple occasions where water from the opposite direction is splashed over on my car. To manually start them I have to first toggle it with my left arm on the left stalk, then set it to full speed with my right arm on a touch screen. All while at high speeds and trying to perform an emergency stop / regain control. The manual toggle on the right stalk wipes one time, in the slowest speed. You also have to wait for this to finish before it will actually adjust the speed you selected on the touch screen.
2. When they're in automatic mode and I enter a tunnel they will turn off, which is good, but you'd imagine that Tesla with all these supposed self-driving capabilities were able to deduce that it will most likely be raining at the other side of the tunnel, and be prepared to turn them on quickly. They don't.
3. When I manually toggle a single wipe it seems to reset whatever algorithm they use to decide if the cameras are detecting that it's actually raining. I can't really see any reasonable scenario where I'm not also using windshield wiper fluids that this makes any sense.
4. It will randomly just start in glaring sunlight, often at maximum speed. To add insult to injury, if you're in a country that uses a lot of salt on the roads during winter it will then coat your entire windshield in it, causing it to speed up, making it progressively worse, until you can do the "toggle dance" with both your hands to disable it.
Recently Tesla decided that you can't turn off things like automatic windshield wipers and high beams when you want to use adaptive cruise control or similar features. I understand that it has to be able to detect cars in front of it, but I don't understand the rationale of forcing these features to be on automatic. Just let the drivers know they have to turn this on in situations where the car isn't confident it has enough light or visibility to do it.
They recently fixed some of the issues with high beams. You don't go around blinding everyone like you did previously all the time. But it will also just randomly turn off because it sees a sign or a parked car, or take 4-5 seconds to turn back on again. Making them practically useless. In scenarios where I have to use high beams it's often critical that they turn right back on after passing ongoing traffic. If I have them in automatic mode you can't toggle it back on again. You have to wait for it to figure it out. The type of headlights that Tesla now uses, often referred to as "matrix lights", are capable of selectively turning blinding off parts of the light beam, but for some reason they don't use this capability for anything other than making them write "Tesla" on walls in front of the car if you perform the "light show".
I bought a aftermarket product[0] that connects to the ODB-port that lets me overrides these things. And it lets me put programmable physical buttons to do things like toggle windshield wipers in the car. The concept of having user programmable buttons in the car is something I really like, and I think this is a concept that should be explored much more. All the buttons in a car should be programmable. There's more[1] and more aftermarket upgrades to Tesla's that adds capability like this, but everything is living on the whim of a guy who'll just terminate people's API access on Twitter, so there's that. The weird thing is, besides the windshield wipers, automatic high beams and some...
Voice commands can be inconvenient and unnatural. In the middle of a conversation having to wait for someone to pause and then interrupt a conversation to interact with a vehicle is poor user experience. It goes against our natural ability to multitask. Also not great when you have sleeping passengers.
Ah yes, the only other control method that manages to be worse than touchscreens. It works well if you speak absolutely perfect english, but for those of us for whom English isn't our first spoken language, you can kiss voice controls goodbye. Just a complete pile of trash, and incredibly frustrating when the car repeatedly misunderstands you.
Is (among other things) having windshield wipers control on left stalk being a dangerous thing? That cars I had in other countries (with opposite side driving) had signals on right & wipers on left stalk.
The cars I've driven in the UK have varied. The only ones I remember for certain are Nissan Micra (indicators on the right) and BMW 3 series (indicators on the left), and the others have varied. My fingers only seem to know which is which when the car is driving, and I still sometimes hit the wrong stalk if the car is stationary.
Compared to putting the steering wheel on the wrong side it seems like a minor point.
Not really - just mildly embarrassing, like spilling your coffee when opening a door.
Where I come from imported cars vary left or right stalk. So it’s common to see people accidentally washing windows especially in rentals. No great harm and mostly amusement value since it’s very obvious to everyone, everybody’s done it, and nine times out of time they just try again the other way and get it right after that.
Probably not. You'd figure it out pretty quickly the first time you need to go around a corner or change lanes.
FWIW, ever car I've ever owned or driven in the US has left stalk for turn signals and right stalk for wipers. Headlights are often on the left stalk as well, but sometimes a physical on the dash (usually to the left of steering wheel).
Regardless, I have a strong dislike of touchscreen UIs in cars. Fine for the main radio, as long as I have physical controls on the steering wheel. But for open the globe box, or adjust the seat, or changing the wiper speed? GTFO, that's asinine.
Wipers on the left stalk is entirely normal for cars that have column shifters since those are always on the right. There's plenty of new trucks using column shifters, mostly on those with bench front seats. I'd honestly prefer a column shifter (and therefore wipers on the left side) if it gives me more real estate on the center console. New automatic shifters are sometimes entirely electronic so there's no constraints on where it can go. Having a center console electronic shifter is a skeuomorphic design. Wasting space on something you touch a few times every trip and only when completely stopped seems unnecessary.
Perhaps people thought cars would be self-driving so people could ignore the road while playing with touchscreens.
Of course Tesla's 2016 demo video of its self-driving feature was faked^1. There were several crashes, some fatal, resulting from Tesla's alleged self-driving feature. The company is being sued by multiple parties for breach of warranty.^2 Stay tuned.
Not wonderful. People are comfortable with buttons but with this comfort comes a loss of innovation on new ideas that are better than buttons.
Audi is working on advanced technology where by simply pinching the air in front of your infotainment and moving your hand left or right, you can control volume as if you were moving an analog slider widget. You can also grab the air and rotate your hand left and right to control climate temperatures.
So the innovation over buttons is gestures. Sort of like pushing buttons.
"Advanced technology". Touchscreens while driving can be finicky and dangerous for removing attention from traffic. Who's to say this advanced technology is going to be as seamless as you imagine, instead of requiring my hand to be located just-so before it reads? Never understood why "if it isn't broken don't fix it" is such a horrible idea to people like you.
This should be a government regulation rather than a promise. I have a lot of sympathy for laissez faire (in the absence of regulatory capture) but we don’t want market forces being shaped by death.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 306 ms ] threadhttps://www.palisadeforum.com/threads/cant-see-buttons-in-br...
I much prefer buttons over a touch screen, but designers need to remember to make them readable.
Keep pushing touch controls, I keep not buying your shit.
Especially with those crappy tiny touch areas.
Even if we assume a sophisticated system that can triangulate your voice, trying to talk to the car while driving, and having other passengers talking seems like a recipe for distraction.
Could I learn the touch interface? Of course, but driving is often done subconsciously and touch is not amenable to that type of automatic interaction.
I wanted a car, not a toy.
(I am aware of the irony regarding the unfortunate proportions of the Bolt making it look like a toy car… lol)
I had my eyes set on the Genesis GV60, but that car’s entry model (if you can find it) is $60k.
The Bolt was $33k - 7.5k in tax rebates. It is an enormous value.
It isn’t the Genesis for sure… but it’s 80% of that car for 40% the money.
Four grids of uniform buttons, they think that's an improvement over a touchscreen? There is zero practical distinction between taking your eyes off the road to see which button you're pushing vs taking your eyes of the road to see which part of the screen you're touching.
GOOD HVAC/radio design means you can perform ALL essential functions WITHOUT taking your eyes off the road AT ALL, once you've spent five seconds learning what's where. The controls should be in locations where it's hard to mistake one thing for another. The controls should also be differently shaped and different types. Give us knobs and sliders!
Is anyone even awake in car design depts anymore?
If i'd be using those raised markers I wouldn't take so much time to adapt I think?
The top set of buttons arranged in a line are much worse. They're two sets of 4 in a sense, but they're nearly undifferentiated from the hazard lights button, so in reality it's one long strip. I strongly suspect that people will take their eyes off the road to look at those buttons more often than not.
(Yes they're media controls, but let's be honest: people will use them to skip tracks while driving.)
Buttons in car control panels require users to leave the default position of hands-on-wheel and acquire the new button. That’s an expensive operation, and it’s well-studied — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
Also, keyboard layouts are static — learn QWERTY once, use it forever. Car control panels are usually different between cars, so learnability is harder. Many people regularly drive multiple cars, increasing difficulty again.
This is over blown. You only have to learn your car's radio once per car.
Or you could learn Dvorak and switch between the two.
With a row of buttons, you can count and you do not need visual attention.
With a screen, instead, you must look even to understand whether you are on a clickable object at all!
The result is a dashboard that has decent form and decent function as opposed to great form terrible function. They aren't going for impeccable function here.
When a company tries to do the right thing and publicly calls out flaws in design iterations that we have disliked, lets not shoot them down for not getting it perfect.
To say its "form is everything where function is ignored" is just an overreaction.
You can have buttons AND screen, like in Tesla for example.
Not to mention voice and beyond that even simply automation.
Of course some people will say Teslas don’t have buttons, but those people don’t know what they are talking about and can be safely ignored.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/images/GUID-7F31F314-174E...
What happened to the ~5 decades of design ranging from "decent" to "great"? Even the worst-designed dashboard of the early 00s was better than what we have now in many cases. Give me my damn knobs back.
But having looked at the picture, it seems fine. There are four sets of buttons that do different things. It will take negligible time to locate the one you want, after which you can stop looking at the panel. The buttons won't move and you'll be aware when you've pressed them.
Exactly. Drive that car every day and you won't even need to count after a while. And even if you do you count by feel, no need to look.
Anecdote: I drove a friend's Tesla. I couldn't figure out how to adjust the a/c *.
* I mean, I could have probably done it with the manual and 10 min. But in less "advanced" cars you just turn the damn knob.
If you spend enough time in your own car you will get pretty darn good at finding your buttons with the smallest of glances. I don't think car designers really see the benefit, when they're constantly changing their dashboard designs.
Touchscreen however is a no go.
Designs should change and improve as technology improves, however it needs to move in a responsible direction. What we had 50-70 years ago is quite different from what we have now.
Also, as per the other content: you can type and remember 100+ buttons.
Buttons should be unique visually and by shape, and perform as you expect them to (no eating/missing/etc inputs).
The cost of a physical button with less consistency than a touch screen, at least initially. Worst of both worlds.
Practically, I don't need to take my eyes off the road to press an analog button, that I am familiar with, having a small chance to fail (to register the interaction). Touchscreens are notorious for not registering interaction, which is why using a touchscreen keyboard is inferior.
> Give us knobs and sliders!
Ironic ask.
They’ve prioritized visual consistency over usability. For example, why do the Volume and Tuner knobs look identical? They’re for different purposes, used in different ways and in different contexts. They’re even usually used by different _people_ — the volume knob is more likely to be used by the passenger, for instance.
And yet, they’re more related to each other than they are to the buttons placed between them, like Search and Map. All those buttons seem essentially arbitrary to me. Are Seek and Track really as important as Setup? Why have a rarely-used and interruptive feature like Setup right next to an often-used and non-destructive feature like Favorite (I’m guess that’s what the star means)?
I’m still glad they’re real buttons rather than a touchscreen. But you’re totally right — this is exceptionally lazy design and implementation of physical buttons.
And if I may — I’ve seen replies already to the effect that the usability of this interface doesn’t matter, either because it’s not a big deal to begin with, or because drivers will get used to anything, or for another reason. That’s missing the point — usability is for everyone, all the time. Even exports make mistakes with unusable controls.
Given that they’re so far apart, I don’t see why they should be physically different from one another. Also, the standard position of the volume knob is on the left, the tuner knob on the right. This is how it has worked in any car radio I’ve ever seen when the knobs are arranged horizontally like that. They’re both within easy reach so trying to statistically determine which occupant is most likely to operate which knob doesn’t seem very useful.
I agree with everything else you’ve written. I hate it when disruptive controls are mixed in with less-consequential ones. This design could use some improvement, but it’s also substantially better than the touchscreen-only alternative.
Could they be even more distinct? Sure. Are these still a huge improvement over a touchscreen? Absolutely.
(There was also an indentation for a slider on the side)
[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2807442.2807487
Some elements were not located there, but that was not the most used ones and then it was ok to look at the screen.
Taking a glance to co-locate your finger and a button or knob is far faster than doing so with an element on a touchscreen. And the latter requires visual attention throughout the interaction.
Also, I would wager that keeping eyes on road while mentally finding a button or knob without looking is actually more distracting than taking a quick glance for it.
There is, in fact, one large difference. With a button you know you’ve pushed it. Once you see where to press your eyes can go back to the road while you actually press the button since the feedback indicating it’s been pressed is tactile.
That’s just a button though. That scenario is magnified with any sort of adjustment slider.
I just got out of a rental with a touchscreen climate controls and it was significantly less safe just adjusting the heat.
Personally I find any interface that can move while you use it to be borderline anger-inducing (the Google Cloud Platform console comes to mind immediately). In a car it's deadly. Gimmicks move gadgets though, so we had to let some designers and product managers get their bonuses/promotions and then pivot into an "epiphany" (sans the mea culpa) to get to now.
Reading this comment before opening, I for some reason expected a giant panel of 16 identical buttons in a square.
Aside from the studies, on a personal level I have a car with a touch screen and one without. The one without is, simply, easier to use.
I have a Tesla where autosteer can be engaged by two moves of a stalk.
I have a Nissan where the feature is controlled by a one button within two rows of buttons beneath my left knee.
Buttons are not always an improvement.
The design in the linked picture looks just about like any other non-touchscreen car in the world, and is perfectly usable.
*Rotary Encoders*
The best type of input for a car is a rotary encoder, a knob with tactile "clicks" that register as you turn it. Good ones can also be pressed down like a button, and moved in cardinal directions like a d-pad.
Have one for your volume knob: pressing it down toggles muting.
Have one for the main controls: twisting moves the cursor, swiping changes which app is selected.
Have one on a steering wheel stalk, to cycle between display modes on one of the dashboard display's rounds.
We need more rotary encoders.
People trash talk it, but I actually like it.
- on home screen icons for functionality would never stay in the same place. They were shuffled based on "recency"
- in some menus you could only scroll to the very top and to the very bottom, in others the scrolling would wrap around
- in some menus you went further down by shifting the knob right, in some by clicking
And other minor and not so minor annoyances
> Have one for your volume knob: pressing it down toggles muting.
Check.
> Have one for the main controls: twisting moves the cursor, swiping changes which app is selected.
Check.
> Good ones can also be pressed down like a button, and moved in cardinal directions like a d-pad.
Check.
And... take your eyes off the road to see where the cursor is?
Maybe I've been driving the wrong cars, but I don't expect to be able to feel around blindly to find the right button to press (although, to be honest, that does seem like it'd be doable with this Kona design). I do expect, however, to be able to glance at the button panel and quickly get a fix on the button location so that I can look back at the road while my fingers to the rest. This design would certainly enable the latter.
My car has physical controls for most things, and I use CarPlay for music/podcasts and navigation, and even for that purpose it's extremely distracting to use it while driving when compared to the physical interfaces for A/C, seat heaters, mirror adjustment etc. I generally avoid as much of the CarPlay interface as possible while driving.
Voice commands are not the silver bullet solution here, they have a lot of problems such as requiring all passengers to stop talking, and it interrupts the radio, podcast, or music, and generally it's awkward to use voice commands during a phone call. Voice commands are probably fine for some low stakes input like asking to call someone, changing music tracks etc.
The first is how HVAC systems work in a house, old cars, and new cars.
- Home window and central ACs (at least all the ones I've seen) can't adjust the temperate of the air that comes out, it's tied to external values like whether the air recirculation is on, the temperature of the outside air, wind, etc. For example if it's 90f out and you turn on the AC and the desired temp is below that it will output 70f. There's many variables, size of the system whatever, point is YOU CAN'T CONTROL THE TEMPERATURE OF THE AIR COMING OUT OF THE SYSTEM
: You set a desired temperature
: If that temperature is above (AC) or below (heat) the compressor and fan turn on
: The system outputs a fixed air temperature, as cold as possible for all the variables BUT NOT your desired temperature
: When the desired temperature is reached (or a few degrees in either direction to prevent rapid cycling) the compressor turns off. The fan may also turn off or continue to run depending on the settings.
Cars:
In older cars and newer cars when automatic climate control is off or unavailable the system outputs the TEMPERATURE YOU CONTROL. You aren't setting a desired temperature but an output temperature. One exception to this is cars that turn off the compressor when your interior air is below the desired.
Many newer cars have automatic climate control. You set the desired temperature and it adjusts both the air temperature, fan speed, and position until you reach the desired temperature.
That means if it's 90F in the car and you want 69F the initial output air temperature will as cold as possible, possibly lower than your desired to assist in getting to your desired. This is accomplished via air mixing with the heater core. *It's more complex than this but for the sake of simplicity
I believe the goal was that you would set a fixed temperature, turn on auto, and rarely touch the system. This is even more possible in my car because there's dedicated defrost buttons that override the system when on and return it to the previous setting when you turn it off.
This means there's less interaction with the system and therefore less need for dedicated buttons and less distraction, assuming that's how it's used.
Steering wheel:
The steering wheel has a volume control:
https://www.topgear.com/sites/default/files/2022/02/TopGear%...
Both + and - are on one long strip with no gap between other buttons. When you press it there's a small amount of movement and haptic feedback. It does not respond to touch unless you slide.
The operation is as follows: Press + and the volume increases by 1 Press - and the volume decreases by 1 Slide your finger from left to right the volume increases multiple values depending on the amount of contact and speed of the swipe Slide your finger from right to left ....
Again, the sliding action mimics the operation of a phone. I don't think it's unreasonable for the designers to assume the operation would be natural for people.
Overall there's a greater learning curve however a learning curve for a car isn't important in most situations since you usually keep a car for a few years. I've gotten used to it and I would have liked real buttons I don't see a problem. Taking my eyes off the road can happen for many things, like GPS, text messages, etc. That's something I need to known not to do because simply reduces the reasons doesn't seem like the ideal solution.
In my 900 there's basically 2 heat settings, ICE COLD and FIREY. It's best controlled by adjusting the return air flap / fan speed or cracking the windows. It's never right, it's always fiddly. I don't like it, except on very cold days it has no problem.
I notice that the 9000 I spend much less time fiddling with buttons, but when I do... it takes me longer. On my 900, I don't even think about it, like when you drive stick shift, you just shift, no mental thought. You think it and do it in one motion, like using vim hotkeys.
So - now I will be back to driving my 900 this week after I finish buttoning up the interior pieces, and I don't know if I like it more or less.
not sure why I typed this, I like saab.
"NORCROSS, Ga., Oct. 4 -- The real-world success of Saab's safety engineering heritage is once again underscored by the latest reports from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI). According to the IIHS rating system, the Saab 9000 had the lowest driver fatality rate among 153 1990-1994 passenger cars, wagons, trucks and sport utility vehicles. As listed in the Insurance Institute's September, 1996 report, the Saab 9000 scored the lowest driver fatality average -- better than such safety stalwarts as Volvo. Saab's average score of 25 was well below scores posted by every competitor, including the Volvo 940/960 (45) and the BMW 5-series (52). (A score of 100 indicates 2 fatalities per 10,000 registered vehicle years.) Data on the current-generation Saab 900, which debuted for the 1994 model year, was not yet available. "
Last year with physical tach and speedo, first year with adaptive cruise.
And it’s a mk7 so it still has buttons for most things.
Oh and it’s a manual, which is getting obnoxiously hard to find on anything.
It is a good place for additional controls that the driver may need to use, without taking hands off the steering wheel.
I recently bought what I thought was a car, only to find it is a tech-ridden abomination.
I want a vehicle that is reliable. I want a vehicle that is simple. I do not want a rolling AI/touchscreen.
Even just from a security standpoint I want minimal software in my car.
Their EVs seem well built, from watching Sandy Munro videos, anyways. (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igFytqIMp0A)
But they're also so-far all in the upper tier of price ranges. Nobody is really making a 'budget' EV yet, apart from maybe GM with the Bolt.
CV joints, drivetrain, power steering ... in a "reliable" vehicle, will last at least double or triple that!
Around 80k miles upgrading to better aftermarket suspension components is usually worth it.
If you have some Toyota 22RE-esque timing component eating abomination or some Navistar 6.0-esque headgasket eating abomination the thing won't last long enough for normal wear to dominate the equation.
All that said wish there was more audio commands and overall remote start gets close to Tesla (who is far from perfect too).
Their warranties are outstanding and long. My Kia engine was part of a recall, had an issue, but was then replaced out of warranty for free in less than a week during 2020. The engine now has a lifetime warranty. All of their warranty repairs, for small things, were done without hassle.
When we took a look at buying another car a few years ago, Kia and Hyundai were by far the best quality car out of everyone, including Honda. I think people to still shit on Kia and Hyundai because the names aren't Honda or Toyota. They have their issues, but in my experience, the warranty and recalls they did covered everything at no cost. And at this point, my Kia is an 8 year old model which was at the tail end of its model design even then.
I have zero concern about my Kia's reliability. I even drove my much older Hyundai well over 100,000 miles with hardly any maintenance before trading it in.
If you do manage to get the car back, you find yourself much more interested in car anti-theft measures, and will then discover that there are very limited options for parts due to the epidemic of them being stolen (66% of cars stolen in 2021 in Milwaukee, the center of the epidemic were Kia/Hyundai). And there is no indication that the company will be of any help going forward. The only real option is to not buy pre-2021 Hyundais/Kias.
You can see all the models affected and rollout of software to address it here: https://hyundaiantitheft.com/
https://images.app.goo.gl/d5GXhBocg3gEjhbZA
I take the green screw part with me if I have any concerns, and sometimes even if it's parked in it's usual place at home.
I figure if a their tries to start the vehicle and it doesn't even turn on, they're likely to move to the next vehicle rather than muck about trying to troubleshoot mine.
It's low tech, and non-obvious.
Sure, they can cut your chain with bolt cutters, but that's not exactly inconspicuous, and it encourages would be theives towards easier marks. Probably cheaper than a wheel lock, too.
Its not professional criminals stealing these cars, its 13 year old kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbTrLyqL_nw
Was a huge headache.
That’s living in a lawless neighbourhood kind of problem.
Move somewhere safe. Where cars don’t get stolen. You’ll probably find most other crime statistics beneficial too there.
https://www.autoblog.com/2023/02/09/hyundai-kia-models-state...
In South Africa, the best car security you can have by far is to simply park next to a VW Polo/Golf. The VW will _always_ be stolen first. Don't forget to set a reminder to go out at some point, so that you can move your car and park it next to another VW, as the first one would be stolen by then.
A close second are Toyota Hilux and Fortuner.
All these cars are super popular, both to own and steal. Result is insurance premiums that can be double normal rates, especially if you fall in the "young and reckless" demographic.
My sister bought a Kia around 2000. It was garbage. You have to go a ways farther back, but once upon a time Hyundai wasn't very good either. At some point (I guess in the 90's?) people started talking about how Hyundai had caught up to Toyota and Honda, and Ford and Dodge needed to do the same.
I've driven many Kia rentals the past ~15 years, and they are awesome. Even remembering all of what I wrote above, I was surprised at times at how premium the fit and finish was, and how powerful and smooth the ride was.
https://www.idlestopper.com/product/idlestopper/1
Unless you're buying a car that's a decade old you cannot find what you want.
Here's some pictures, that thing is so cute https://gmauthority.com/blog/2022/09/gms-wuling-mini-ev-cabr...
I'd especially love it as a vacation rental. A Hawaiian trip with that thing would be great.
Also F150s and similar are somewhat commonly used as commuter vehicles.
My parents had a 2021 Hyundai Santa Fe top trim, and the design was a mess. A part from lane keeping, it had nothing my 10+ years older Lexus RX didn't have, and I found so many aspects of driving it counter-intuitive. I'm glad they are keeping real buttons, but I also hope they start removing things/make them simpler.
[0]: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hyundai-kia-p...
Lane assist is unreal. It eases 90%+ of the standard driving fatigue.
Loving it so far.
maybe it had something to do with the large amount of power it has. But it felt scary enough for me to not try it.
It also has a "snow mode" to help with particularly bad roads. I found at least one review that puts its snow handling down as a "pro", so it's not just me. [1]
I did get the Limited AWD with the 20" wheels. Not sure if that makes a difference.
[1] https://www.hotcars.com/2023-hyundai-ioniq-5-review/
Still, I’ve never had a car lose grip like the Ioniq 5. For the FWD cars that is expected, but also the RWD I have is easier to handle.
A few months later the crank angle sensor went out - again it was the easiest car to work on I have ever seen. The sensor was out in the open, not buried under a bunch of crap. One 10mm bolt, and the harness connector was easily accessible too. Five minutes and we were done.
Apparently it's no accident - their attention to detail carries over into their construction equipment too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuUi4Fc_8hE
Oh yeah, car had 250,000 miles on it and still ran like a top while getting 40MPG. Other than using a little oil. For a "cheap" car I was beyond impressed.
I don’t know why it was there but I did like to push it.
2) People never have a very good answer for which physical buttons cars like Teslas are missing. There's physical controls for all driving functions, volume, music play/pause, music next/previous. Adjusting climate is in a muscle-memoryable fixed position, not in some menu. You certainly aren't supposed to be adjusting your mirrors or something while driving.
> Participants were required to use voice commands, touch screens and other interactive technologies to make a call, send a text message, program audio entertainment or program navigation, all while driving down the road.
That's a bit like the old joke that the efficacy of parachutes at preventing free-fall deaths has never been proven scientifically. (Well, until this 2003 study[1])
Some chains of causality are so obvious that we don't need to prove them scientifically: Many people find touchscreens hard to use without taking their eyes off the road. Taking your eyes off the road can lead to crashes.
1. https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
Good thing is on a freeway you can engage auto-throttle and lane keeping which are good enough that you can look away from the road for a few seconds. It makes it ok for the rest of the UI to be bad, but that's not the same as it being good.
I feel like the design of spaces is simply not considered very well if at all. I get the feeling that maybe aircraft do it best? Or at least that's the impression that I have had.
Touchscreens seem like a very marketing/design feature.
If you have, for example, a screen which shows you docking crosses in the center of the picture and control buttons on the periphery of the picture, you still need to move your focus from the view to controls to operate them. This is a simplified example, just to illustrate my point.
Cockpit of an Airbus A380: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rLdZ3.jpg
The key seems to be to move the info to a screen, but still control the screen with physical buttons and not touching the screen. E.g. move the status display of the A/C to the central screen, but turn a knob to adjust the temperature.
For some strange reason, people expect to just jump in the driver's seat of a car and drive away with zero training.
I'd recommend Mazda for getting pushbutton controls right.
Maybe it’s been improved with hardware upgrades? His is around a 2017 I think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8
Next issue is the quality of voice recognition. It just sucks.
Oh, and wipers are a pure fucking BS in Teslas. They removed a $5 infrared precipitation sensor, and it STILL doesn't work well.
My most recent (23 Impreza) was the first with full-blownsies infotainment. It is just an absolute shitshow.
Slow, laggy, buggy, hard to understand menus. It randomly turns black and takes a minute or two to turn back on when starting driving. If you get in turn the car on, and put it into a gear without waiting for 20-30 seconds, the screen and therefore radio will be completely unusable for anywhere from 30 seconds up to five minutes afterwards.
It is just awful. Awful.
(15 years old is the magic number in MA where the car no longer has to pass emissions checks during inspection)
I wonder how long it will take for people to start selling jailbroken cars...
Sign me up!
This is a huge improvement over my 2008 Kia where I twist the stalk and don't have to look at it and I can keep my eyes on the road.
OTOH, my old Kia doesn't have Full Self Driving. Ah well.
Don't worry, neither does Tesla :)
But - at one point, when the shift was the right stalk, wipers were controlled via a switch, knob, or other mechanism either on the dashboard or on the left stalk.
So. It's not like changes haven't happened before.
Also my parents are older and something in their skin makes them routinely almost invisible to capacitive touch controls - heck I still have trouble from time to time getting displays to register reliably.
I loathe touch controls and will never buy a vehicle that only has touch controls. Luckily all my current cars are in excellent condition and I pamper the crap out of them. If I'm lucky I'll be able to be buried in them :p
Being able to toggle a single wipe, with or without wiper fluids is also something every single car I've ever operated has had. In addition to be able to control it from the stalk.
Not everything has to be reinvented. They walked back a little on the steering yoke, but for some reason they still remove the stalks and have touch buttons on the steering wheel. The one thing that everyone with the yoke categorically hated.
Disgusting.
I’d hate to try to operate vehicle controls with the same hit-and-miss interface. Give me tactile controls any time.
In the spirit of the present article, mechanical locks (especially for anything car related) are better. You can't hack into them. If you force or break them, you are forced to leave physical evidence behind that you did so. Not so for a Bluetooth or WiFi hack. This is why I will not enable my smart garage door opener. I don't even have pay by phone, because they offer an attack vector via NFC directly to my bank account. I carry credit cards instead.
Sure, carrying all those pieces of metal is annoying. I got a KeySmart to help mitigate this. I carry my car key in my wallet with my cards. It's worth it, and there are ways around the costs.
I think the tesla glove box is easier for a driver to open than a manual one. Two rapid taps & it's waiting for you
There are ZERO constraints preventing them from still including physical buttons except for impractical hipster design philosophies. Want to have touch screen in addition to physical buttons? Knock yourself out. But I will never buy a car with pure touchscreen controls.
For me, the weirdest/most dangerous quirk is that the 'gears' (drive/reverse) are located on the right stalk, on several occasions I've toggled it in the wrong direction.
how do they work in small spaces when there's active noise around (small children screaming for example)?
Single droplet in the right spot => furious wiping. 100 droplets in the wrong spots => no wipe.
Climate - My preferred mode is to have the A/C on but not actually directed straight at me (so through the windshield vents), but auto also blasts through the front.
It would be interesting to see what the cognitive loads are between a physical movement and a set of voice commands. I remember reading a study that found talking to another person in the vehicle was the equivalent to having had a certain amount of alcohol. I'm sure there's a difference between voice.commands and conversation, but interesting nome the less.
Having an actual conversation with someone is much more distracting because you need to listen to them, preserve social norms, etc.
For whatever reason, my wife's voice does not do well with voice control (despite being an American with an average American accent). And I have a slight Scottish accent (pronounce my Rs and /hw/) which, despite being mild (lived in the US for nearly 40 years) still causes trouble with voice control.
- You do not have a generic north american english accent
- Are not speaking English and standard english.
- Have any sort of speech impediment
- Can’t remember what something is called or a specific command
- Want immediate feedback
Oh and they have a tendency to fail at random.
I have no skin in the game personally though. I just thought it would be interesting to see the figures in comparison.
For me, it never hears me. Doesn't matter if I talk loud or quite, fast or slow. I'm a native english speaker with no regional accent. Tesla also has no explanation.
Thing is, even if it worked for me, I'd still trade it for dedicated buttons. It borders on aggravating when my wife is driving to be mid conversation and have her suddenly yell out "wipers on".
Voice commands fail the universal design principle. I haven't tried Tesla's but I hate using voice commands and it's not an option for everyone. Not every language is supported and if you have a heavy accent or, like me, a speech impediment, even the industry leading software with training does not work most of the time. Pushing a button is quicker than speaking, especially if you have to say the same thing multiple times.
I mean literally 0 times, this is very US-centric (and maybe UK/Australia/NZ) way of thinking. So US car working safely only via voice command? That means it isn't working for me.
TBH I would never ever want such a critical piece as car commanded by voice. We are 4, no way car will reliably grok everything for it 100% of the time and nothing else (that's the bar to compete with for buttons, not a nanometer lower).
1. It will take multiple seconds to react even if the entire windshield is completely covered in water. Like zero visibility. I've had this happen on multiple occasions where water from the opposite direction is splashed over on my car. To manually start them I have to first toggle it with my left arm on the left stalk, then set it to full speed with my right arm on a touch screen. All while at high speeds and trying to perform an emergency stop / regain control. The manual toggle on the right stalk wipes one time, in the slowest speed. You also have to wait for this to finish before it will actually adjust the speed you selected on the touch screen.
2. When they're in automatic mode and I enter a tunnel they will turn off, which is good, but you'd imagine that Tesla with all these supposed self-driving capabilities were able to deduce that it will most likely be raining at the other side of the tunnel, and be prepared to turn them on quickly. They don't.
3. When I manually toggle a single wipe it seems to reset whatever algorithm they use to decide if the cameras are detecting that it's actually raining. I can't really see any reasonable scenario where I'm not also using windshield wiper fluids that this makes any sense.
4. It will randomly just start in glaring sunlight, often at maximum speed. To add insult to injury, if you're in a country that uses a lot of salt on the roads during winter it will then coat your entire windshield in it, causing it to speed up, making it progressively worse, until you can do the "toggle dance" with both your hands to disable it.
Recently Tesla decided that you can't turn off things like automatic windshield wipers and high beams when you want to use adaptive cruise control or similar features. I understand that it has to be able to detect cars in front of it, but I don't understand the rationale of forcing these features to be on automatic. Just let the drivers know they have to turn this on in situations where the car isn't confident it has enough light or visibility to do it.
They recently fixed some of the issues with high beams. You don't go around blinding everyone like you did previously all the time. But it will also just randomly turn off because it sees a sign or a parked car, or take 4-5 seconds to turn back on again. Making them practically useless. In scenarios where I have to use high beams it's often critical that they turn right back on after passing ongoing traffic. If I have them in automatic mode you can't toggle it back on again. You have to wait for it to figure it out. The type of headlights that Tesla now uses, often referred to as "matrix lights", are capable of selectively turning blinding off parts of the light beam, but for some reason they don't use this capability for anything other than making them write "Tesla" on walls in front of the car if you perform the "light show".
I bought a aftermarket product[0] that connects to the ODB-port that lets me overrides these things. And it lets me put programmable physical buttons to do things like toggle windshield wipers in the car. The concept of having user programmable buttons in the car is something I really like, and I think this is a concept that should be explored much more. All the buttons in a car should be programmable. There's more[1] and more aftermarket upgrades to Tesla's that adds capability like this, but everything is living on the whim of a guy who'll just terminate people's API access on Twitter, so there's that. The weird thing is, besides the windshield wipers, automatic high beams and some...
Ah yes, the only other control method that manages to be worse than touchscreens. It works well if you speak absolutely perfect english, but for those of us for whom English isn't our first spoken language, you can kiss voice controls goodbye. Just a complete pile of trash, and incredibly frustrating when the car repeatedly misunderstands you.
Voice control goofs with my South African accent all the time...
Compared to putting the steering wheel on the wrong side it seems like a minor point.
FWIW, ever car I've ever owned or driven in the US has left stalk for turn signals and right stalk for wipers. Headlights are often on the left stalk as well, but sometimes a physical on the dash (usually to the left of steering wheel).
Regardless, I have a strong dislike of touchscreen UIs in cars. Fine for the main radio, as long as I have physical controls on the steering wheel. But for open the globe box, or adjust the seat, or changing the wiper speed? GTFO, that's asinine.
Of course Tesla's 2016 demo video of its self-driving feature was faked^1. There were several crashes, some fatal, resulting from Tesla's alleged self-driving feature. The company is being sued by multiple parties for breach of warranty.^2 Stay tuned.
1. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/01/tesla-staged-2016-self-...
2. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.40...
Audi is working on advanced technology where by simply pinching the air in front of your infotainment and moving your hand left or right, you can control volume as if you were moving an analog slider widget. You can also grab the air and rotate your hand left and right to control climate temperatures.
"Advanced technology". Touchscreens while driving can be finicky and dangerous for removing attention from traffic. Who's to say this advanced technology is going to be as seamless as you imagine, instead of requiring my hand to be located just-so before it reads? Never understood why "if it isn't broken don't fix it" is such a horrible idea to people like you.