IMO, voice controls are good additional control modality, but not a good primary one, since the discoverability is zero. (And also they're usually just...not very good.)
Causing drivers to get road rage because they can't figure out the correct phrasing for voice controls probably also isn't a good idea.
Google Assistant still regularly misinterprets what I say <.<
Not to mention most voice assistants are fucking awful slow in language. It's like they pick a rural dweller as their speech model instead of a city slicker.
Just give me a button instead, it'll be quicker and less distracting.
Not all drivers can speak. Not all drivers speak in a way a voice control can reliably understand them. Not all drivers are in environments where voice commands can be easily understood, like loud music. If you are driving a car you likely have the ability to push a button.
And even when the driver can speak, use the language, be understood and the voice controls are reliable, sometimes they don't actually want to disturb the passengers sleeping in the car just to crack the sodding window open a bit!
I took a ride with an owner of a brand new BMW with glass cockpit and minimal buttons. He complained to the dealer about not being able to find any of the actions in the endlessly nested menus. The dealer's response: Use voice controls.
He tried it, and it's even worse than Siri in terms of reliability. Absolute unmitigated disaster.
Tell a Tesla to "go home" sometime, and it will respond what's obviously the best interpretation of your wish, namely playing Boney M's minor 1979 hit "Gotta Go Home" on Spotify. Fortunately, "stop wipers", "stop navigation" or in fact any kind of stop at all will instantly pause the disco assault.
Some reactions are instinctive and don’t require thought.
Imagine mid-sipping a drink and something falls out of a truck… garble garble garble —-crash.
Voice controls in an emergency wouldn’t work unless you require like 500 feet (maybe more) car to car separation. And then you have people with temporary voice conditions (losing voice) and permanent voice conditions (mute/dumb)
> But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn, and any SOS features like the European Union's eCall feature.
Those are exactly what is at issue.
This also needs to deal with multiple languages and regional accents for Europe.
If I, an American, rent a car in Germany, do I need to speak German in order to engage the windshield wipers? For that matter, navigating the on screen controls may also be problematic.
Yes, I have it. It's great. I much prefer a quick swipe on the side of the touchscreen to having a giant physical gear selector wasting a ton of space.
I honestly love just about everything about the UI of the refreshed Model S, from the yoke to the turn signal buttons to the on screen gear selector. Only thing I don't like is the horn button for the two times a year that I honk it.
Wasting what space? Sure, the gear selectors on a lot of cars are in the center console, and maybe I’d rather store something there. But I have never, in my entire history of driving cars, wanted to put anything right behind the steering wheel — first, it’s really awkward to get anything else there and second, any dangly thing there could tangle with the wheel, thus killing me.
So no, please keep the critical driving controls in fixed locations that are easy to access without looking away from the road or looking away. IMO that includes the horn, the turn signals, the wiper control, cruise control settings, and turn signals. And things I might want to adjust in a moderate hurry while driving should have fixed, tactile locations; climate control and sound volume are in this category.
My first car nailed all of this. Recent cars, not so much.
Like voice control is a reliable method of communication lol. Have an accent? Sorry can’t use your car.
Mute?
Cough?
Lost your voice at a concert?
Have the windows down?
Come on…
I'm not entirely sure you've ever used voice controls.
I've never had experience with any car voice controls which didn't make me want to drive my car into a divider just to end the pain. Voice controls are so frustrating to use that I'm sure they are more distracting to use than even a touchscreen. I might be able to keep my eyes on the road easier with voice controls, but, my brain is going to be quickly annoyed and focused on trying to suss out why the voice control system is not understanding me, or am I using the wrong phrase, or do I need to put the windows up (impossible for me 6+ months of the year) so the car can hear me better?
It's like trying to pair bluetooth with a non-carplay (or non-android auto -- which I haven't used but heard good things about) with virtually all OEM and many aftermarket receivers. A uniquely frustrating experience which makes me wonder if QA departments at automakers actually exist.
Being able to honk the horn or turn the windshield wipers on from the back seat would certainly be an interesting feature, especially for people with kids.
I've heard some of the newer cars have pretty good voice controls, especially on the more expensive models. However, the companies tend to put these behind a subscription wall, which I hate. I don't want my car to be always connected to the cloud. I'll do my navigation via my phone, and nothing else requires connectivity (except perhaps if I had an EV and wanted to schedule charging stops).
Obvious limitation is something like Maps and media.
My guess ones that use mechanical dials (i.e. Lexus until ~ year ago) cause more distraction than touchscreen by simply being harder to use and taking more time to solve your problem.
Given how well chatgpt's voice recognition works - why not just put it on all cars!
> Obvious limitation is something like Maps and media
I would love to see some data to see how dangerous it is to operate Maps and Media apps on a touch screen while operating a moving vehicle. This is data modern automakers should have access to. I suspect the answer is that it does reduce safety.
Nobody has access to that data, even if you're excluded it to extreme cases like "an at-fault crash happening as the user was manipulating the map software directly". We can't bridge the gap between that and accident reports.
And that doesn't get into the more subtle cases, e.g. a crash that happens later due to an earlier loss of situational awarenesses.
It's also hard to quantify the opposite. E.g. I sometimes have to manipulate the map while driving, and resent the distraction. But afterwards I'm more likely to be in the right lane earlier, not be distracted because I'm trying to read a traffic sign in the 1-2 second window I might have etc.
There are enough sensors in a car to know when a collision has occurred. The car is capable of capturing touchscreen use metrics. Bonus points if you can find metrics for the same region/timespan for cars with tactile controls. You can then do any year 1 statistics algorithm to see if using the touchscreen is correlated with collisions. Yes, this doesn't prove causation. A correlation is enough to raise the flag about a safety issue.
EDIT: A decent statistical analysis will also uncover if using the touch screen is negatively correlated with accidents -- if people that use maps in general are less likely to get into an accident. This again won't prove causation but would be of interest to the general public and regulators.
Check how Mazda did it with their ring control. I love it in mine. No touch screen needed.
It's amazing that accessibility is such an afterthought that having a physical wheel that tabs forward and backward through a UI as the primary means of using it is unfathomable until it's actually implemented.
If it’s like the old BMW iDrive systems, it’s pretty good but I think it’s a bit like comparing a blackberry and an iPhone. Sure the physical keyboard on the blackberry has advantages.
> Sure the physical keyboard on the blackberry has advantages.
Yes, being able to operate it without looking at it and capable of navigating arbitrary 3rd party apps. And because the tab position is stateful you can perform complex actions incrementally. Touch screens win for phones but you would hate one as your laptop keyboard. It's not a better or worse situation as much as a fit-for-purpose situation.
I just wish Android Auto had an option to disable activity boundaries for spinning so I can spin from Maps to media, and use the joystick control for directional selection (i.e. it tries to find the next button in that direction). I was excited for Coolwalk but then never got used to switching between Maps and media with the joystick. In the end I just reverted to pressing the Nav and media buttons then spinning.
I've only used a Lexus that had a touchpad. I do however regularly use a Mazda with its commander knob, and it is far safer than a touchscreen in my opinion. You can do most navigation without looking at the screen, with just an occasional glance to confirm you're doing what you think you're doing. Whereas a touchscreen requires constant attention while you're manipulating the screen.
The only thing that annoys me about Commander Knob + Android Auto is that AA still forces attention breaks as you scroll through big lists (e.g. Spotify playlists) which is really stupid because you're not usually looking at the screen if you know you need to scroll say 75% down. You're just looking occasionally to see how far you've made it. By making the task take longer, it's reducing safety.
The biggest safety issue by far with Mazda+AA is Google's baffling regression in handling voice input for common tasks while driving.
>Google's baffling regression in handling voice input for common tasks while driving
Is it just me or is Google Maps voice input in AA completely busted now? I used to be able to press the "Search" bar on the touch screen in the app, say the search term and it would just show the results. Likewise for adding stops along the way. Now for the former I need to explicitly say "navigate to X" (or it says that it doesn't have a screen and refuses to do anything???) and for the latter I have to say something like "add a navigation stop at X", the assistant lists our the result (??????) and asks me which one I want to choose. Of course I don't see anything on the map in either case.
My Mazda is so weird. Android Auto has a completely random load time. It could be a few seconds, or it could take over 1 minute. Often I don't know if left or right is the fastest way to get somewhere, so I'd like to check google maps or waze, but it won't finish loading until a while after I've guessed and committed myself. It'll play the radio instead of my phone audio at some starts, then usually switch to phone audio automatically. There are times when the map will "freeze". New frames are only rendered as a response to moving the knob. I have a USB cable and Bluetooth both connected (no idea why both). There is no logical place to put your phone (I bought a holder accessory, it's great). There's no physical music pause button. People who like car accidents and being careless and don't mind pointless death and destruction like to point out you can pause music by fatfingering the knobe through a bunch of menus.
This is probably Spotify's fault, but when you're in a song search, the "next song" button goes to the start of the currently playing song, instead of the next song. The "next song" button works correctly for all other Spotify list-ish things AFAIK, just not search. And search is obviously the place you need a skip button the most.
I haven't seen most of the issues you describe, but I do know that AA is incredibly finicky with the quality of cable you use. When I first bought my car I would use a random cable from Amazon and Mazda's infotainment would straight up crash (can't blame that part on AA though). Mazda's infotainment is pretty notorious for being terrible; that it takes so long to connect (and get past the safety disclaimers EVERY SINGLE TIME) is truly annoying. I will say that I just bought a wireless AA dongle off Amazon and since I got that it's a lot more reliable because I'm not swapping cables all the time, though my Mazda still will take a while to connect to AA, then start playing my phone music, then switch back to radio for now apparent reason. It feels like the two subsystems are competing.
Open/Close all windows comes to mind. Fading audio forward/backward/center is a PITA on a Tesla. There's tons of things one should be able to automate - don't you have any imagination?
Around 10 years ago, I started looking into buying a new car. I couldn't believe the number of cars that switched to touch controls even 10 years ago. It boggles my mind just how car makers thought it was safer/easier to have touch in a car while one is driving. I refused to buy any car that replaced physical buttons with touch controls 10 years ago and I still have this rule today.
Then again, it also boggles my mind how car makers in the US continue to use flashing red lights as the turn signal instead of yellow lights. You can barely see the red light in sunlight and it's harder to tell the red light from brake lights. Furthermore, the same car will have yellow signal lights in the front and side. So yellow signal lights in front and side, red in the back. Just make it all yellow for turn signal!
I would the main driver was economics. It would be easier and cheaper to manufacture one big screen in the middle compared to a bunch of physical controls with wiring.
Also makes it easier to change things later in the design if you do not have a bunch of physical controls to move.
Do not forget the massive "tablets are the future of computing" hype because Apple released a thing. Touchscreens were super cool by association. It was all pretty stupid. I say that as someone who creates mostly software for touchscreens... using keyboard and mouse because they are much better input devices. You just need the space and the budget for them.
> Then again, it also boggles my mind how car makers in the US continue to use flashing red lights as the turn signal instead of yellow lights. You can barely see the red light in sunlight and it's harder to tell the red light from brake lights.
I'm also starting to see really thin - single narrow LED strip - turn signals that are barely visible next to the much larger headlight nearby.
> It boggles my mind just how car makers thought it was safer/easier to have touch in a car while one is driving.
Does anyone actually think that though? Or was it considered “good enough” in light of its other benefits like reducing costs, reducing BOM, eliminating part design work, reducing wiring complexity, adding flexibility and customizability, (potentially) increased reliability, making it easier to jam the multitudes of controls and options a modern car has into a more usable and understandable interface, etc.
Don’t get me wrong, when I bought a new car, one of the selling points was the manufacturer was one of the few to still offer physical control and navigation of the touch screens (in fact the touch functionality is completely disabled at any speed faster than 5 mph). But I don’t think “safer and easier to use while driving” has ever been the driver for touch interfaces in cars.
> It boggles my mind just how car makers thought it was safer/easier to have touch in a car while one is driving.
It is likely that neither safety nor ease of use were part of the automaker's "thought process".
It is much more likely that a first misguided "designer" created the first touch panel control and somehow sold it to "management" as being "futuristic" and/or "ahead of the competition". And once the first car model arrived with one, the rest, like firefox to chrome, felt the need to play the imitation game for fear of being seen as not as "trendy" or "futuristic" as that other guy. I.e., purely the "fashion trend" aspect.
Then, as they proliferated, the reduced BOM costs from removing every other previous mechanical control was reverse justified as the reason for continuing to add them to ever more car models.
There are other reasons of course - planned obsolesence is a big one. Why would they want cars to work after the primary owner is done with it? With software-everything they can lock the car to the first 3 or 4 owners, and then remotely kill it.
It doesn't even have to be actively disabled, just stop providing the replacement head unit as a part because "we don't have that software anymore".
My understanding is that the real driver is in being able to decouple the design of the controls from the rest of the interior design. I read somewhere that being able to design those in parallel with fewer dependencies makes a significant different in getting the car into production on time.
Yep. Putting as much of your UX as possible in one place makes product development a LOT more efficient. It doesn't always make the product better, though.
There's a simple selling point to touch panels that most people here seem to be missing: it decouples the software/firmware from the hardware.
Car manufacturers want to be able to change cars after they are sold. This can be in the positive via OTA updates that fix firmware issues or in the negative by providing "subscription" features that provide a passive income beyond the initial sale. Tesla has been paving a path here with its grandiose claims of "full self-driving" and industrial manufacturers like John Deere have been experimenting with bringing smartphone-style DRM and rent-seeking to motor vehicles. Replacing as many "hardcoded" physical controls with flexible and fungible virtual controls is a logical part of the transition.
Why bother producing five different physical "editions" if you can just produce one and then downgrade it in four different ways by gimping the firmware or disabling controls in the UI? This way you can also upsell the features later or put them in a subscription model.
It's the same reason why headlights are white and taillights are not (unless reversing, in which case the tail becomes the head temporarily, and thus white reversing lights.)
I know Technology Connections complains about it all the time, but I don’t feel like he’s even made a case, he just asserts over and over “and we ALL agree it’s awful” as if he asserts it strongly enough it will become true.
Why is it a problem? How is a red blinker actually measurably worse than an amber one?
I have never had any sort of issue interpreting a blinking red taillight as turning? With red, you can more easily tell the direction of travel and the aesthetics of a single color are far nicer. I frankly don’t see the problem.
Commenter a couple levels up says you can’t see red blinkers in the sunlight? I don’t think that’s true on any measurable level, amber is a far closer match in hue to sunlight than red.
"A 2008 US study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggests vehicles with amber rear signals rather than red ones are up to 28% less likely to be involved in certain kinds of collisions,[81] a followup 2009 NHTSA study determined there to be a significant overall safety benefit to amber rather than red rear turn signals,[82] US studies in the early 1990s demonstrated improvements in the speed and accuracy of drivers' reactions to the stop lights of vehicles ahead when the turn signals were amber rather than red,[76][83][84][85][86]"
Whoever wrote that section of the Wikipedia page either didn’t read the cited documents or heavily cherry-picked.
The cited document for that “up to 28%” actually states that a first analysis found amber lights leading to a reduction in being struck “between 3 and 28%” Quite a range of uncertainty.
The very same document also states that in their second analysis they found no correlation between signal color and odds of being struck.
Another one of the cited documents goes so far as to say
> Richard Van Iderstine: We have studied the crash involvement of vehicles having yellow rear turn signal lights versus red ones. With our data, we have found it challenging to prove that yellow is better than red.
Based on the actual text of the citations I’m inclined to believe there’s very little difference.
And I don’t see how there could be. The only practical difference I see between a red signal and amber signal is that the signal might ever so briefly interpreted as a brake light activating before the first cycle completes. The course of action of the driver behind in either case is to slow down, so it’s a distinction without a difference in action.
So a red light turns on. What does it mean? For the next 0.5 s you don't know. Maybe it will turn off, maybe it won't. In the meantime, you have delayed your braking action and decreased your margin of safety. Or you have started braking for no reason, endangering people behind you (and yourself).
> You can barely see the red light in sunlight and it's harder to tell the red light from brake lights
I can't say that I've ever had trouble seeing the red turn signals in the sun. Being able to see them in the sun from a few hundred feet away is legally required in most, if not all, states.
are you me? I did the exact same thing in roughly the same timeframe. Went to a toyota dealership, when I realized all the vehicles were touch I asked if I could get one without and they told me they don't do that anymore.
I walked out and just continued driving the corolla I had (still have it to this day). When I needed a minivan I purchased an older honda odyssey and fixed it up.
Good. My Tesla doesn't have a stalk for wiper control and it's just awful UX. The auto function is erratic (often triggers on a sunny day, doesn't pick the right level in the rain). Might be fine for sunny California infrequent use, but terrible for England.
I'd much rather have easy full control at my fingertips than have to faff about with scroll wheels or the touch screen.
Exactly. I love the car in so many other ways that it just really makes some decisions stand out as ridiculous. Why try and skimp $50 manufacturing cost on stalks and sensors in a $50k vehicle when it's otherwise such a great car?
Ultimately poor wiper controls and fixed headrests are hardly the end of the world, but they could trivially make it so much better...
Couldn't agree more. Tesla is the biggest violator. In new Teslas, they are removing physical stalks, so if you want to reverse the car, you have to use on-screen controls!
Have you seen the other BEVs available in America? There really isn't much choice if you don't want an SUV -- your options are basically a Tesla or a Chevy Bolt.
I just got a Mercedes EQB and it's great. Depending on trim it's either about the same price or somewhat cheaper than a Model X. There are physical controls for damn near everything too. The voice assistant isn't terrible, but Carplay/Android Auto is standard anyway so who cares.
I bought a used Model 3 that has the stalk and works fine.
(The lack of wiper controls is absolutely ridiculous and is part of the Jonny Ive-ification of cars)
As for why they are in business, it is because they were first to market with Electric cars, and as a consumer I trust they are better at battery management than other companies that are not all-in on electric. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that the degenerate billionaires that run other car companies are not better than the degenerate billionaire who runs Tesla.
(I would not buy the new models wo/ physical controls, my next electric car will probably be something Chinese in 10 years)
Never having driven a Tesla, I'm legitimately curious how much of a difference the infotainment makes.
The onboard system of my Chinese BEV is not great to be honest (rest of the car works well) but it has Android Auto so it navigates and plays my media.
Since as a sole driver I have to keep my eyes on the road at all times, it seems possible that passengers could benefit but I would like to have some first hand reports.
Or is it common for some people to sit in the car and use the infotainment just for fun?
i've rented electric cars for the last three years and own a Model 3. massive difference.
yes, the tesla doesn't have buttons. however, basically every common operation you'll do can be done in five actions or less.
if i want to navigate somewhere with our tesla, i simply tap the navigation search bar, enter the destination like I would on Google Maps, select and drive. Or i can share the destination with the Tesla app from Google or Apple Maps.
It's at least four taps with CarPlay to do this...and you're hoping that it doesn't crash mid-drive (like it's done to me so many times before). Google Automotive actually does a really great job here, but that's only shipped with select cars.
i can swipe left or right on the cabin temp to adjust upwards or downwards. many cars have dedicated controls for them, but some, like the Kia EV6, use that strip for multiple uses, so you think you're changing cabin temp, but you're actually adjusting sound volume.
ADAS (Lane Keep Assist, Autosteer, adaptive cruise, etc) is where the Tesla experience shines most brightly. On EVERY OTHER CAR, configuring ADAS involves navigating a labyrinthine maze of menus, guessing what a bunch of acronyms mean (LKA, HDA, VCC, etc. Toyotas are the worst at this), and, when it's on, figuring out if it's actually on (autosteer is the worst about this) and hoping you'll develop muscle memory in changing speed and stuff from the steering wheel.
On Teslas, you single- or double-tap the gear stalk or press a button on the steering wheel. To configure, tap the car, tap "Autopilot," go nuts. The only acronym in this menu is FSD, and it's spelled out (full self-driving). the small speed indicator turns blue if traffic-aware cruise control is on; the wheel on the display turns blue if autosteer is on; and the display shows you its view of the world at all times.
What makes you say that? An EV is more than the drivetrain (where Tesla’s are said to be more efficient). EVs from other manufacturers have batter suspension, noise insulation, steering etc.
Have never seen their infotainment system. My BMW i4 has CarPlay - what else would I want?
> if you want to reverse the car, you have to use on-screen controls!
So? If you're switching to reverse then by definition you're stopped (or nearly so) and can afford to take your eyes off the road. The control is no further than most cars' center tunnel-mounted gear levers. Plus it only has the two common drive/reverse settings accessible via the swiping action, rather than all the rarely-used options. (Do you know how many times I've shifted into Neutral or Low by mistake in an unfamiliar car...?)
That you can still look at your surroundings with the stalk and keep a tab on what people around you are doing.
Without the stalk someone can walk into a blind spot and you didn’t catch them because you were finding reverse on the screen.
The person next to you is getting ready to open their door.
Or simply you want to make a 3 point turn quickly without being stopped in the middle of the street fiddling with a screen
Yes, many people find these touch screens annoying, and they’ll tend to buy cars with physical controls. But just like people who prefer physical keyboards on their phones, these consumers are a vocal minority who aren’t big enough to cater to.
If touch screens make cars less safe, then we should see higher liability insurance rates for such cars. So far that doesn’t seem to be the case.
The same argument can be made about other products too but it only distracts from the real problem.
Bad practises and products do stick around regardless of their actual usefulness and benefits.
For example take headphone jack. Nobody forced anyone to buy an Apple phone without a headphone jack, yet it is a challenge now to find a good premium/mid-range phone with a headphone jack. Other OEMs are simply copying Apple and people too get along with the new trend.
The same is happening with touch controls too. Once a popular desirable brand introduces an (anti)feature, its competitors misunderstand the feature as a contributing factor for its desirability and blindly copy it without getting into actual merits.
You overestimate how much people want headphone jacks. Most people today use Bluetooth headphones and don’t miss their headphone jacks at all. I honestly forgot that my phone lacked a headphone jack until you pointed it out. That is how little I use wired headphones.
Moreover, why would every manufacturer copy a design that consumers don’t want? If the feature is so widely desired, it would only take one manufacturer not removing the headphone jack to win market share. Your model of the world requires every manufacturer to be incompetent in the same way. A much simpler explanation is that phones are a very competitive market and the manufacturers have calculated that, like physical keyboards, headphone jacks are not a feature most people care about. They prefer the headphone jack be sacrificed for better water resistance, better battery life, and lower cost.
No but because so many people still buy tesla because they're cheap and despite the lack of controls, suits at other manufacturers think they now have to get rid of physical controls as well.
> Tesla is probably at greatest risk here, having recently ditched physical stalks that instead move the turn signal functions to haptic buttons on the steering wheel.
I hate to break it to the article writer, but a haptic button on the steering wheel, while absolutely not easy to use, is a physical control.
Touchscreen controls are the feature on my Tesla I dislike most. Try poking a small icon an arms length away while bouncing over typical Midwest roads and you'll see that it's impossible to do while keeping your eyes on the road. Physical controls would be fantastic, but at the very least they could:
* Radically improve the ability to control the car with the scroll wheels on the steering wheel.
I don't mean assigning certain functions to the buttons, I mean having a cursor I could glance at, then put my eyes back on the road while I click right twice, up once, click again and then scroll to change whatever.
* For the love of all that is holy, ANCHOR controls to the top or bottom of the screen where you can brace your hand on the bezel while trying to poke the buttons. Pretty much the opposite of the fan control that is right in the center of the screen.
> I mean having a cursor I could glance at, then put my eyes back on the road while I click right twice, up once, click again and then scroll to change whatever.
They added a menu kind of like this in a recent update. Long press the left scroll wheel and then you can control a bunch of things using a menu that's controlled entirely by the wheel, no touchscreen.
On my car I can assign one specific function to the left scroll wheel, like the fan speed. What I want is something like the experience of using Windows without a mouse. I should be able to navigate the entire UI without touching the screen.
It's not really "assigning" a function. It's simply a menu that remembers where you were. You can always navigate through the menu to control all of the other functions as much as you want.
Post ALB there isn’t the same feedback thru breaks as there are steering. Steering systems have been highly engineered so you can get feedback from the road while still having power assist.
If my steering wheel isn't connected to my front wheels mechanically, that's asking for a lot of trust. Previously a severe mechanical issue would be the only thing to worry about. Maybe on an EV with always connected and charged batteries it would be better, but on ICE I can imagine a number of ways the electrical system suddenly fails and now the wheel does nothing, even if just for a short lag.
At least on brake by wire ICE systems I could let engine braking slow me if the brake system fails somehow (even if I have to blow the engine to save my life, worth the trade).
Having previously driven a car with a mildly unreliable power steering system, it’s an extremely good thing that the power steering was backed up with a mechanical linkage (that worked very well — it was surprisingly subtle when the power steering crapped out at 30mph).
A drive-by-wire system had better be a lot more reliable and also notice impending failures.
The opposite is true. Those old AMCs without power steering were just as easy to steer on the highway as any other car (once you managed to get up to speed) but the parking lot was a chore and parallel parking was neigh impossible.
Fancier power steering systems basically fully disengage at speed because you don’t need them; they’re for moving the wheels when you’re stopped or nearly so.
A combination of whatever fiddling the mechanic did and making sure the fluid was topped off seemed to solve the issue. Also, it was a good, if somewhat old, car, and the mechanical steering was quite good. I was able to steer it without much difficulty at pretty much any speed even in no-power-steering mode.
But yes, I agree, unpredictable steering response is dangerous.
I personally cannot stand power steering systems. There’s always a dead zone and the feedback is delayed, in some vehicles more noticeably than in others, but it’s always there.
I feel like I have had several close calls that would have been accidents for sure had I been driving with power steering.
What car do you have without power steering? Or, are you referring to electric as opposed to hydraulic power steering? I haven't seen a car without power steering since the early 00s (which was a 90s car).
The steering deadzone is not purely a function of power steering. Some of it is design or could be attributed to that, but a bunch of it also comes from slop in the physical connections in the steering column, as well as the suspension bushings, your tyre profile, etc.
I once drove an early car with an electric steering assist system. (It was either a renta or a test drive, I think it was an American car, and I don’t remember what brand or model.). It was terrible. There was essentially no feedback from the road to the wheel.
It turns out I was mistaken! I haven’t done enough research to determine the actual cause of the effect I have noticed. It might be hydraulic vs electric but I don’t want to make that assumption and be wrong again - I’m going to have to research the steering in other cars I’ve noticed that issue in.
There’s definitely a different feel to the electric motor driven assist. Though there are just many different implementations probably the specific one you had was particularly quirky.
Relatedly I had a Hyundai i30 for a while which has a well known fault where the plastic gear connection (called a Spyder Bush) from the electric motor to the steering column would break. Resulting in slop and a clunk. Not hard to imagine similar failures or bad design.
Mechanic connections can, and do, fail. Ask Ayrton Senna. AFAIK, steer by wire are already doing full redundancy, like it was a plane.
There has been a number of plane accidents related to physical connection between the yoke and the actuators (cables loosing tension under high temperatures, or cut/trapped on a deck failure). Electric cables does not suffer that, and they are easily doubled.
SbW makers are already making software that does constant surveilance of the system, something that traditional systems has never done.
The number of dead people caused by the steering column going straight through their chest in a collision is huge. That shouldn't happen with SbW.
I hate the trend towards car controls in a screen, but Drive by Wire sounds like a real advance towards better cars to me. DbW without redundancies and continuous tracking could be a safety issue, but with them I don't think it's an issue. Fly by Wire has a good safety record.
There must be a physical connection though? How do you stop if you're out of power? If not, I can only think of truck-like system where brakes are "on by default" and user input disactivates them.
Experimenting? It’s been around for a long time. My 1999 Jetta had it. It’s smoother and you can control the fuel adder on throttle opening from all angles.
Sure, it’s not instant, but stabbing the gas in a non dbw is not great either.
In electric cars there is no other way than dbw
Well I see what you mean. Steer by wire is part of drive by wire if you want to be specific. But before that was a thing “drive by wire” meant a throttle body controller by the ECU.m for many years. So if you go to a shop and say DBW what the other end hears is “stepper throttle”
It's be really cool if there were some giant high power potentiometer connected directly from the batter to the motors in an EV. Just smash the pedal, see a blast of plasma and you take off. Just like slot cars. I can't see a single downside to this :p
Electronic power steering already exists. It's used in a lot of cars, and has been for at least 10 years. Your car may have one of these systems in it.
In an electric power steering system there are steering angle and torque sensors that know what direction the wheel is turned an how hard it has turned, and this is connected to an electric motor that powers the gears to move the steering rack.
There are still regulations in place that require a mechanical connection to the steering wheel and rack, but try and turn the wheel with the car off and see if your wheels move... But when the car is running when you turn the wheel you're just a voting remember in the system.
There are no such regulations for throttles. Pretty much every car since the late 80s has electronic throttle control and there are no mechanical linkages from pedal to throttle body.
> “There are still regulations in place that require a mechanical connection to the steering wheel and rack”
Are you sure? Fully “steer by wire” vehicles with no mechanical steering link are already in production. The Tesla Cybertruck is the most well-known example.
Toyota/Lexus has also been demonstrating steer-by-wire for a while (Lexus RZ), and it will apparently ship in consumer vehicles later this year.
Are any of these cars available outside the US? From what I've been able to tell, US regulations are much weakest in this regard which is possibly why there are so many words cars there.
(In some aspects the US automotive regulations are actually stricter than in Europe. For example, in Europe there are some vehicles (eg: Audi) where the wing mirrors are replaced by screens/cameras, but this is not permitted in the US. Adaptive matrix headlights are also not allowed in the US.)
Most of the modern steering systems are just hydraulic or electronic power steering which boosts your input with a hydraulic or electric assist motor. You're still moving the mechanical linkage at any time you're steering, it's just that when the car is off the assist motor is disabled and because modern cars have massive tire contract patches, huge weights, and a lot more caster compared to yesteryear, it's damn near impossible to turn the wheels when the car is off and not moving. If you simply disabled the assist, started the car, and let it roll, you would find that it is only maybe 1.5 times harder to turn the wheel than a classic car with skinny tires and larger steering wheels and such. You're still fully controlling the direction the wheels are turned in said systems, the assist motor simply adds force.
Turning my car at low speed with the engine off feels much harder than 1.5 times the turning of an old times car of similar weight. I could hardly make it turn at all when it happened. I don't think I'd be able to make it through a real turn on a road. And I have a small car of about 1000 kg.
Yup, cars designed for power steering don't work as well without it as cars specifically designed to operate without power steering. Not just the steering wheel size, the whole steering geometry is probably different.
> it's damn near impossible to turn the wheels when the car is off and not moving.
That was also strongly discouraged on older cars and only possible with big steering wheels and good grip. Just move very slowly and the turning becomes really easy even without assistance (and which is what you were thought when this was still a thing in countries with required driving lessons).
Exactly, just have to move it a bit. I owned an old Fiat when I was a teenager so I was lucky to learn how to drive a car without assists. I prefer the assists most of the time though!
> Pretty much every car since the late 80s has electronic throttle control and there are no mechanical linkages from pedal to throttle body
Electronic throttles became widespread much later than the 80s. Pop the hood of common 2000s economy cars and you’ll find a mechanical throttle linkage.
Yes, the throttle cable operates the opening of the throttle. Downstream of that is the airflow meter which is an input to the fuel injection computer so it knows how much air is going in.
No, it’s the feedback loop. You feel the hydraulic system for the brakes and the steering. If you have an accelerator cable then you feel that tension as well… but the accelerator feel is less important.
You don't feel the hydraulic feedback in the brake pedal (just the ABS buzzing), and gas pedals in many modern EFI vehicles feel more like foot-operated potentiometers than throttle linkages.
> gas pedals in many modern EFI vehicles feel more like foot-operated potentiometers than throttle linkages.
In my EV it literally is a potentiometer. I really miss the feel of a physical throttle linkage on the snow and ice, I feel it's much more difficult to judge grip.
Also, since it's just a pot, I don't know why there's not a speed mode for it, it to make it operate the cruise control speed set-point rather than torque.
> I really miss the feel of a physical throttle linkage on the snow and ice, I feel it's much more difficult to judge grip.
The throttle is separated from the wheels/ground by the transmission and the whole engine, which makes me wonder if the response you felt probably was a combination of eg rpm/physical vibration and a few other factors. It should be possible to recreate these even in an EV, then.
The throttle feeling of a cable operated throttle is more about how much air the engine wants to breathe. I’d say it’s kinda still related to rpm, but it might be a completely different feeling on a turbo engine, that I haven’t experienced.
On most turbo engines these days they are electronically operated and have no linkage anyway. That's even the case in most modern petrol cars where people think there still is a linkage. And that trend has been going on for at least 20 years.
Right, but how does the changes in engine wanting to breathe manifest through the throttle pedal feel? Changes of vibrations? Changes of resistance? Changes in lag from pushing the pedal to the engine responding? Perhaps on the direct throttle car you could simply hear the engine better?
It changes resistance. My dad had an old, full mechanical/hydraulic automatic car and it was an extremely visible feeling from the throttle pedal when it changed gears or when it engaged the extra clutch (it had torque converter and some extra clutch on top of it for fuel efficiency)
The sound of the engine also changes greatly depending on the throttle position and engine load but for me it was more audible and I couldn’t feel it from the throttle. Modern cars are pretty good with sound insulation from the engine, but I’ve heard some “sporty” cars direct the intake sound to the cabin for giving the noisy sports car experience to the driver without being obnoxious with the exhaust side.
There is a noticeable difference in feel between ICE cars with physical throttle cables and those with electronic throttles…the drive-by-wire models have a very small amount of lag between pedal input and engine response. If you’re attuned to it, or drive “spiritedly”, the effect is quite noticeable. I think mainstream cars mostly switched over around 20 years ago, I remember learning about it when I googled for why the accelerator pedals in new cars felt so weird to me.
I think there are a few reasons for it, one of which is simply increasing efficiency by smoothing the accelerator input a bit. I’ve only driven an electric car a few times, so I’m not sure if they also have this delay, but I would expect they do.
> one of which is simply increasing efficiency by smoothing the accelerator input a bit
Right, it feels very much like I'm just changing a set-point. Putting the car in eco mode makes it very noticeable, but even though it's less noticeable in sport mode it's still not the same.
Many modern cars have a turbo that makes this almost impossible to tell. It almost feels irrelevant, compared to planning ahead for the inevitable wait for the turbo to build pressure.
That's what I had thought, but mechanic that replaced the throttle pedal assembly called it a potentiometer (had a weird pulsing in the force feedback).
I read the "unintended acceleration" report from NASA. The Toyota cars involved had two independent hall effect sensors. Hopefully there's been no backsliding since then.
Every vehicle I've ever driven since I learnt to drive 20 years ago has had an electronic throttle body, a digital accelerator and ABS. Welcome to 2024.
I did learn to drive manual, but I'd never buy another car like that. Maybe it's fun for racing, but for every day driving, automatic requires less effort and longevity isn't a concern today.
"Old" cars tend to have brake pedals where the pressure is used to judge how much force you are applying - find the point where it bites and then modulate the force. Many "modern" cars brake pretty much as soon as the pedal moves, and the amount of braking is determined by the position of the pedal, rather than the force applied at a certain point. I have no idea how they do this, but whenever I switch to a car with the "old" style, I always end up braking way too hard until my brain recalibrate.
Remember to press both left and center pedals to stop.
Manuals proliferate in EU, but we have also always had automatics on the road - and a significant increase since DSGs hit the market - so no one who has driven a few normal cars would be surprised by two pedals in an electric.
Using the clutch before you need to when braking is bad form. The engine will assist in braking if you let it, especially in the low gears, and this doesn't use any fuel -- dumping the clutch immediately consumes more fuel to keep the engine running. Put the brake pedal in first, and then the clutch pedal as you approach idle RPMs.
It's still not correct. You press the brake to stop. You press the clutch to not stall. They're separate concerns, or maybe more accurately one is only a response to the other - you clutch as you're about to stop because otherwise you'll stall, you don't brake and clutch at the same time because you decide to stop and not stall at the same time.
If you really want to nit, the only function of a clutch is to slip during start from standstill. All other steps of driving can be done without touching the clutch pedal and with less wear, including shifting and stopping. That's just not a nice way to drive.
If you don't press the clutch during a stop, you risk increasing your stopping distance both due to engine inertia and due to it fighting back below idle - especially in a diesel van. We only have muscle memory when we panic, and it's bad if someone is taught in a way that makes them miss a pedal.
That's also part of why you are taught with stick over here - better be trained to press a pedal too much than a pedal too little. If you do take the license in an automatic, you get a mark on your license disallowing you from driving stick.
I think "proliferate" is the wrong word. Automatics seem to be on the rise - I learned on a manual but have only been driving automatics for a decade. They're also more accessible and I'm not sure there are any EVs that emulate manual transmission as there's literally no point. So if anything, manuals are largely on the way out.
I don't know where you live, but if you're feeling smug about being in Europe, Europe is going automatic. 30% and rising if I recall correctly plus EVs don't need manual transmissions anymore.
Except DD2 and KZ, well true, they only have 2 pedals, but they also have a hand operated clutch. But you only need it to start the kart. You shift without the clutch, and for starting you can have it in neutral and just push it in first when you have build a little speed and sit in the kart. I suppose if you have one with an electronic starter you need it.
For vehicles manufactured as of approximately January 2024: To sound the horn, press the middle of the steering yoke (or steering wheel). For vehicles manufactured prior to approximately January 2024: To sound the horn, press and hold the horn button on the right side of the steering yoke (or steering wheel).
"press and hold" doesn't seem like it'd be easy to do if all you wanted was a quick toot.
Thanks for that link, which has images. Jesus, the pre-2024 horn is insane. It's one tiny button among many on the right side (of that stupid yoke, but I digress...) The whole point of having the horn in the middle of the steering wheel is you can just mash it with your palm, no need to hunt for anything. Really wonder how that ever got into a production car in the first place.
> Really wonder how that ever got into a production car in the first place.
Teslas are the Dunning-Kruger cars. Designed by people who seemingly do not really know how to design cars (a wheel is boring; let’s put a yoke because video games! Look how cool we are! Also, touchscreens!) and built with poor quality control. I was not aware of the horn button, but if I had to guess, Tesla would be my first choice.
It's weird that Tesla is being called out over the horn.
In driver's ed they tell you to not to use your horn when you're annoyed at other drivers - only use it if there's an imminent danger to avoid a crash.
But you better hope it works because if it doesn't, the airbag behind it explodes.
...
I'm not sure Tesla improved the situation, but it definitely seems like the situation has room for improvement.
> In driver's ed they tell you to not to use your horn when you're annoyed at other drivers
This is definitely not a cultural universal. Different countries have different practices. In some places the horn simply means “I’m here, check your mirrors”, in other places it means “You bastard!”, and in some other places it means “We are both stuck in traffic let’s make as much noise as possible to pass the time”
> only use it if there's an imminent danger to avoid a crash
Therefore the difference between the horn being readily accessible and being hidden away could be the difference between life and death.
> Therefore the difference between the horn being readily accessible and being hidden away could be the difference between life and death.
Being readily accessible is a must. The point I was trying to make (poorly; it was late) was that having the horn button in the middle of the wheel is about the worst place imaginable if you lay on the horn to avoid a crash and it happens anyway, because some portion of your arm is probably going to be broken when it gets crushed between an exploding airbag and your rapidly-decelerating body.
Exactly - you need to have quick access the horn in a safety critical use case, so it shouldn't be a small button you have to find among other small buttons. You should be able to mash the center of the steering wheel.
>But you better hope it works because if it doesn't, the airbag behind it explodes.
... what? I had a car who's horn stopped working and the airbag didn't explode or go off.
> And specifically the horn button being capacitive co-located with the voice assistance and windscreen wiper buttons.
... Wait, is this a real thing, or just a joke about them being bad at UX? If a real thing... goodness, I'm quite surprised that doesn't break some mandatory safety rule.
My grandmother used to have a car where the horn was a button at the end of one of the stems. I think it was on the same stem that controlled the wipers. I wish I remembered what kind of car it was. I think it was from the 40s.
First generation Chevy Volt (2011-2016) has a button at the end of the left stem that sounds an alternative polite (aka "pedestrian") horn. It's several very rapid, but somewhat quiet honks, that sound like "brrrap".
I like that. I used to have a car that would give that kind of polite honk with a light press and a louder honk with a harder press. I’ve always wished that were still a thing.
My parents had one of these... I believe it was Ford Corcel from 1978 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Corcel), a South American model, according to Wikipedia, based on Renault 12.
My 1995 Renault Clio had it as a button on the indicator stalk. Worked very well, in my view. Much easier than pressing the centre of the steering wheel. There's often no need to even move your hand!
Probably a French thing. My dad’s 70’s Peugeot had the horn where in most cars today is the windscreen washer action, ie pull towards you the right stalk.
I would prank my 6-7yo cousin at the time that all you had to do is ask the car to beep and it would do
Although it seems to have changed, my 1990's Twingo also had the horn on the indicator stick but a 2000's Megane already has it in the steering wheel proper.
I had the same on a 2003 Twingo. Very handy, except for that time when I horned at a poor jogger on the side of the road instead of activating the turn signal :(
Touché! It's interesting how early vehicles were very different in their controls, but seemed to mostly converge and stabilise for a few decades, before again diverging and changing rapidly.
The Model T (Ford) had a throttle on the steering wheel and 3 pedals, but not the ones you'd expect today:
Congress didn’t “mandate” it, they made it such that the federal government could only buy vehicles that used the PRND sequence for auto transmissions. If you don’t want any corporate welfare you can make your transmission shift in any order you feel like.
Except for radios. It's very annoying that every radio had a different UX, likely in the name of innovation and differentiation. I think that's a safety issue for e.g. rental cars.
The radio is a feature in which a move to change station should not take more than a fraction oft a second. If it takes more you should stop. That is valid for any action but for some reason people start adjusting their entire audio setup while driving...
Tesla Cybertruck uses steer-by-wire with almost no redundancy. Electric power steering was bad enough to cause crashes, this is just ambulance chaser's dream.
No. Almost all cars except some concepts and prototypes have mechanical link between the steering wheel and the steering rack. Even if the link is augmented by a hydraulic or electronic booster.
If a booster fails you have a chance of overpowering it, it's not that strong. A faulty steer-by-wire will swing you into the oncoming lane with no recourse.
This doesn't necessarily follow. Planes became pressurized and got oxygen masks, it's very unlikely that cars ever do. Having steel cables and/or hydraulic lines for the 4-6 dimensions of aircraft controls adds up to some serious extra weight worth fighting for on a plane, while one steel rod might never be more problematic than the heap of problems its absence creates.
As long as the steering wheel is there it might as well be connected to the rack, forever.
Motors have nothing to do with this, you still have to have the suspension struts, and the wheels still have to be mechanically linked by the tie rod and usually the sway bar.
Also inside the wheels makes no sense at all, google unsprung weight.
Anywhere in aviation it's redundant transducers (the thingies that transform rotation into some sort of signal), redundant flight law computers implemented by independent teams on dissimilar hardware, a stupidly robust vote/compare module, I think mostly analog, and usually a last resort direct mode.
When all of that is implemented in cars and weathers for 10-20 years I might consider it.
Otherwise, seeing as Toyota's regen braking code had like 10k global variables, I'm not touching that with at 10 foot pole.
Acceleration/braking can be quite bad but there's normally neutral and ignition switches. With steering there's literally nothing between you cruising along a highway and you splattered on some concrete pillar 200ms later.
That is more than likely generated code. Model based development and code generation (by certified toolchains) are the norm in automotive and aerospace.
Nope, ColPAS and ParPAS solutions both normally have the mechanical connection of the steering column between the rack and pinion mechanic and the steering wheel, they mainly differ by the way of introducing the mechanical assist force to the system. (on the steering column, or at the rack and pinion mechanism).
They generally have the following root safety requirements:
- the assist system must not cause "blocking" (unturnable wheels/steering wheel)
- the assist system must not cause unintended steering
- the assist system must be able to restart in less than 20 milliseconds
- the assist system must stay passive after a number of unsuccessful startups/unrecoverable errors (typically 3). In this case the mechanical steering column still provides a way for the driver to control the car.
It has been 10+ years since I last worked such a system, but drive by wire was only on the horizon, not the norm, and as far as I know the authorities only allowed drive by wire solution some 2-3 years ago, with product development lifecycle of around 5 years that means they are still not the norm among new cars I believe.
Back then more redundancy in the electric motors (more gradual failure if one phase goes bust, not going into deadlock in certain angles when any of the 3 phases is malfunctioning) and authenticated communications on the system bus (which was considered trusted earlier) were on the roadmap for the next gen steering systems, which are mandatory requirements before you can get to steer by wire.
Why even put it on the bus? Adding a couple of meters of cable per critical system like steering or even 10 for braking couldn't offset the complexity of bus steering.
On the contrary, adding just "a few meters of cable" per each critical system, and adding separate sensors instead of using the same critical sensors would greatly increase complexity. Also so really underestimate the cabling and sensor needs for modern requirements.
Having redundant bus and redundant sensors usable by multiple subsystems is a better way.
Well, I have heard of power assist using a single simple potentiometer as a steering wheel position sensor in some really cheap cars... I'm not sure how much of an urban legend that is, but nowadays it surely wouldn't cut it for road permission in the EU.
On one hand you are right, but only if we can ignore the highly increased risk of electric malfunction from the extensive traditional (non bus based) wiring. This was a common problem in the 1980s when electric gadgets became numerous, but no standard bus was used on many such cars.
To overcome this the plan back when I was working on that product was to use 2 system buses, one isolated internal for the safe critical sensor/control network, and one user facing untrusted bus, with a ECU designed to serve as a firewall basically.
Why even have the firewall? Wouldn't a true airgap be preferable? At the same time, having say steering and brakes on the same bus adds a single point of failure to both steering and brakes, which is not ideal.
Cost and risk management. These systems undergo rigorous safety evaluation, auditing, and testing. This is a manageable risk (very low) given the business requirements and the threat model.
Peugeot through the 505 put the horn button on a stalk on the steering column. The 505 ended production for most of the world in the early 90s and I've not seen any of their more modern cars so I've no idea how long that design lasted.
The French made some really… interesting choices with their cars.
And in that situation it probably was easy to use because most likely you REALLY needed it, which these laws are trying to make sure happens: it's easily accessible.
I disagree, whenever in the past I needed to use the honk, I've failed to do so because it's hard to press and requires you to take one hand off the wheel, which is the last of your instincts when you panicking, or both if you are juggling your gearstick.
Your instincts suck. Sorry to be blunt. It's similar to correcting a slide: your brain won't do it automatically, but it's worth learning because it's a safety feature.
If somebody enters your lane at speed, the safest thing to do is to let them know you're there. Swerving or breaking in response multiplies the problem, as now there are two cars driving erratically. The horn won't always resolve everything, but it's by far the most effective way to get somebody's attention in a hurry.
>Swerving or breaking in response multiplies the problem, as now there are two cars driving erratically.
Holding your steering wheel with a single hand will cause you to drive erratically too.
>The horn won't always resolve everything, but it's by far the most effective way to get somebody's attention in a hurry.
That's why it should be possible to activate it with an easy to reach button or lever, preferably next to the emergency lights, instead of a heavy pressure button right in the center of the steering wheel.
Using the horn to prevent myself from being squashed by yank tanks with a hood and tailgate height significantly taller than my car (and most adults) helps the commute. They'd have to shut down part of the road to clean the car bits and the red goo off the road otherwise. If my country legislated those absurd vehicles out of existence I wouldn't need to lay on the horn to make my existence known.
> It helps when people try to merge into the side of your car
fair enough!
> when someone forgets to watch traffic signals after stopping at a red light
I dunno. If you wouldn't blow a horn while walking the sidewalk when inconvenienced, I don't think drivers should either. You're not the only two people on the street, there's other people around here and they don't need to be abused by impatient drivers. ymmv, ianal, etc.. of course.
I don’t lay into the horn like a jerk when someone is inattentive to a traffic light. I just give a quick tap to get them to snap out of whatever it is they’re distracted by. I also wait at least a few seconds. Most people seem to appreciate this because they don’t want to block traffic, either.
> 99% of time there is absolutely no reason to honk
Could it also be that in different places, there are different expectations, and different environments that makes people use the honk for various purposes?
I get that in the US it seems to mostly be a social signal of "fuck you", but in Spain where I mainly drive, I've avoided a couple of accidents by honking after seeing cars slowly coming close to my own car on the highway, especially when passing lone cars when things are no so busy. People seem to stop paying attention then.
Then in Peru the honking is seemingly constant, and people honk in prevention when they pass you, like a "just in case" honk. Honking seems to be a way of life there, rather than for emergencies.
I really like Mazda's setup. Honda CRV setup is pretty good too. It seems like a lot of manufacturers are moving towards at least restoring physical controls for climate.
Yea, I generally agree with that. At least in my '14 model, it also has some weird internal gate where it won't let you scroll through more than 5-10 items in a list while you're going more than 5 MPH. And if you're stopped, and scrolling further than that, it resets you to the start of the list if you start moving. It's infuriating when I'm just trying to play an album that doesn't start with A-D.
I can understand disabling touchscreen scrolling while driving, but at least save my place in the list.
In my 2016 Mazda 3 the physical selector is superb - rotating it scrolls through on-screen CarPlay buttons, pressing it activates the highlighted item. Way less dangerous IMO than reaching to the screen, trying to touch it with some degree of precision.
The idea that a touch screen is cheaper than buttons and that this is the driving factor I find hilarious. It's some top tier bean counter shit.
I mean, yeah, sure. It'd be cheaper for my tyres to be made of wood. I don't give a toss, a new vehicle costs tens of thousands, what's $50 for a few buttons?
edit: Top tier bean counter replies! Is it contagious?
I just randomly picked Ford for this. Ford had like 176 billion in revenue last year, but their cost of goods was like 150 billion and their final net income was 4.35 billion. Ford sells on the order of 5 million vehicles per year.
If you can generate $50 dollars of COGs reduction in a car, that's 250 million per year. Yes, that's basically nothing in terms of their COGs, but that's like 5% increase in net income (if they can channel all of the savings into the net income anyways). Alternatively, if you want to be less cynical, Ford's R&D budget comes from that ~20 billion dollar slice between their revenue, COGs and final net income. 250 million is still a pretty ~1% slice of their R&D budget.
> I don't give a toss, a new vehicle costs tens of thousands, what's $50 for a few buttons?
I don't think you've ever worked in manufacturing.
It's not just the cost of the buttons.
A larger cost is the fabrication of the housing for all the buttons: design the housing that goes into the dashboard/console, create a jig/die, continue creating new jigs/dies as the old ones wear out, keep the factory floorspace available even after the car has gone out of production, etc. This has to be done for each car model (yeah, even if you're using blanks).
Another cost that dwarves the cost of buying buttons is the fitment: the fitment robots have to be purchased, programmed and maintained just to put those $50 buttons in. It has to be done for each car model.
And, of course, design changes late in the process cause the manufacturer to spend all that money all over again.
Spread over the lifetime of the car (how long they keep providing parts for it), a minimum of around 5 years, that $50 is negligible compared to the tens of millions of dollars poured into fabricating and fitting of those $50 buttons.
Compared to a touchscreen, all that's done is to ensure that the dashboard design has a housing for the touchscreen. Done, and works for all models from baseline to top-end with no more money needed.
I did not watch the video linked in the previous post (yet!), but a fun fact is that for the F-35, they decided it was a great idea to use touchscreens instead of push buttons, and they are finding out the hard way it was.. ..not the best of choices.
It turns out that not having tactile feedback means that pilots are pressing the wrong button about 20% of the time. Even more so under g-loads..
That won’t for a round trip in most driver centric cities.
Lucky for me my gf lived 25mi away and had a Leaf so whenever she came home after work or school she would have to charge it again before leaving. Who wants to do that in winter in the rain? Just stay the night!
Touchscreens tend to be a plague in cars—the last place you want sluggish non-responsive visual attention magnets. What's worse, a poorly engineered and implemented one may render your vehicle inoperable (safety-wise) and thus force you to expend exorbitant amount of money to get them replaced. Physical buttons are high availability and do not depend on absurd amounts of complexity to perform basic functions. It's impossible not to pay attention to this after being burned once by it. Even if a car may offer some limited physical buttons (such as defrosting) for the least ease of access, it may happen that you're unable to revert its secondary effects until you get it fixed.
This was the primary reason I bought my 2024 Mazda3, instead of alternatives in market. The Mazda was the only option that had physical controls for everything. In fact it disables the touch screen altogether when you exceed 10mph, forcing the use of physical controls. It works flawlessly with wireless carplay
They do sell en EV in some places, the MX-30. It’s a terrible EV that was outdated before its release, so that’s perhaps why they don’t try to sell it more. We are talking about the company that still invest in internal combustion engines so don’t have too high hopes.
Toyota has not been a leader in full-EVs because they believe that most customers want a non-charging hybrid solution — one they "just put gas in to" and forget about anything else.
IMHO, this is the correct solution for all but a handful of commuters (e.g. a WFH citydweller could probably enjoy a full EV, but not for vacations).
Yeah, I know it’s an intentional strategy. I’m just commenting that I wouldn’t have particularly high hopes in the near term for Mazda EVs due to the Toyota partnership. Toyota are one of the leading companies researching solid state batteries, though (or so it seems), so that could be a game changer.
Yeah, I was hoping to replace mine with something like a modern 6 PHEV but they went full on SUV these days. A pity, their interior and UX design is still second to none
Yep. My 2011 Mazda3 is great but getting on in age and we'd like to switch to an EV. Sadly Mazda's not in the running at all :( Probably will get either the Ioniq 5 or Kia EV6, whichever has fewer touch screen controls.
Car manufacturers still like their cars to look good and some people do look at those ratings when buying a car. Or you think people bought the old Volvo 240 because it’s sexy?
Not too familiar with this specific sector, but I can see two reasons why this could be more than nothing
1. If the evaluator is well established it's likely companies would be negatively impacted if they get lower scores even if it just means lower sales rather than an outright ban
2. It seems that while Euro NCAP is not a regulator it is pretty involved with national agencies, so this might be a signal that things are starting to move towards official rules. Of the "self-regulate or you will be regulated" variety
Having been driving Tesla for nearly a year went on a trip last week and got 2015 Toyota. Air con wasn't easier to control even after 6 days of driving. Still had to look at 10+ buttons all crammed up in 6cm diameter ring and figure out what is what.
With Tesla 99% of time I just flip temperature slider at bottom corner. For rest - open larger menu for very intuitive extra controls.
Kinda insane how mass media is picking up worst implementations from legacy auto and extrapolate that to a car that has best UX. It's literally 180 degree turn disinformation.
Reminds me of the adidas run tracking app. I need to go forward and back in the menu to even start a run. Then it does a countdown. So you start, because why wait until the end of the countdown. Once your phone is in the pocket. Then it decides that you need confirm something like (GPS signal is weak) through a popup. Of course you have no idea it did that. So you pull out your phone once you get back to your car, only to realize it wasn't tracing anything at all.
On the opposite end, it's never smart enough to realize that you're no longer running and you got in your car and started driving. So it will happily add tens of kms. Then to correct it you somehow need to change the distance, time and km separately.
It's like it's an incredible combination of both smart and stupid at the same time. You have to tap, double tap, slide, and press and hold at different places in the UI too.
Not to mention that on cars like Tesla, UI updates will change the location of these buttons.
This drives me INSANE. The other one: some of the Tesla UIs feel like they were made with "minimalism" in mind. For instance the rear defroster vs the windshield defroster. I still, 3 years into my model Y, have no idea which is which, and every time I need to defrost the front windshield it's like a fight against the HVAC system and buttons and touchscreens to make it do anything.
I love my tesla, probably to the point of being annoying, but I **HATE** the ridiculous "minimalist" UI stuff, and I absolutely hate it when they push a UI update which moves things around.
How is it possible to love a car that does things you hate when there are other cars at the same price that does everything the object of your love does, and doesn't do the things you hate?
In part Europe thew answer for the first is "all of them".
(And yes that works. I recently finished a 2k+ road trip in Germany and had no issues at all. Plug and charge worked flawlessly on every DC fast charger I visited. AC charging worked by swiping my RFID card).
>other cars at the same price that does everything the object of your love does
Because there aren't? My tesla has FSD which I use for the majority of my driving, it looks cool, it's really fast, I really like the in dash display (just don't like UI updates, and some very specific parts of the HVAC controls).
This is such a funny question to me. Do you love your city? Is there *nothing* you dislike about it?
I don't have a problem so much with the touch screen itself. It's a waste for a lot a things and I frequently just turn my screen off, but it is nice to be able to bring up a map with directions and arrival estimates.
But I am constantly disappointed by just how awful and useless the software is.
Need some directions? Sorry, I can auto-play this music station you haven't used in a week, but if you want those directions you looked up on your way out the best I can do is (maybe) have the address in your recent search history.
Want to resume the music you were streaming from your phone through your media center? Yeah, just give me a few minutes to load up this other UI and...Are you sure you have a music app on your phone? Maybe you just need to add it to the car app? Here, let me bring that up on your phone screen. Hold up. There's some audio coming through the bluetooth, I'll just play that.
Want to see why the "Check Engine" light came on? Oh, well for that you need to buy a $50 dongle with Bluetooth and install an app on your phone.
I hate them in all applications that don't benefit from touch and even in many that do. For example, electric cookers. Despite being easier to clean I still find them absolutely infuriating to interact with, plus cats can activate them.
Most of the time, though, they are implemented simply because it's cheaper. There's no benefit to speak of. In fact, I think the only device for which a touch interface works is a smartphone. I can't think of any others.
Most are pretty good in my experience, with the exception of Tesla. Tesla’s auto-wipers are comically bad. They NEVER work well because they try to use a tiny camera mounted to the top of the windshield to determine when to trigger them. The camera is probably unable to actually focus on the windshield itself, especially since it is also used for the driver assistance features and has to be focused at road-distance, so my guess is they’re using some kind of algorithm to try and detect distortion caused by rain drops on the windshield for an image captured with focus significantly further away than the windshield surface itself. And that challenge has so far remained unsolved. Tesla just pretend to have working auto-wipers.
The worst is when the touchscreen freezes and there is no master breaker switch to throw to reboot it “in flight.” You have to pull over, shut the car off, open the door, close the door, then start the car to reboot it.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 279 ms ] threadZero-force, zero-feedback, zero-travel controls should be illegal for such functions.
Google Assistant still regularly misinterprets what I say <.<
Not to mention most voice assistants are fucking awful slow in language. It's like they pick a rural dweller as their speech model instead of a city slicker.
Just give me a button instead, it'll be quicker and less distracting.
Market opportunity?
He tried it, and it's even worse than Siri in terms of reliability. Absolute unmitigated disaster.
(Siri is actually pretty great at accurately recognising words, it’s just not always so good at doing something useful with them…)
Even Tesla’s is really bad: “Turn off the wipers” frequently gets interpreted as “turn off the wife please” or other similar nonsense.
Imagine mid-sipping a drink and something falls out of a truck… garble garble garble —-crash.
Voice controls in an emergency wouldn’t work unless you require like 500 feet (maybe more) car to car separation. And then you have people with temporary voice conditions (losing voice) and permanent voice conditions (mute/dumb)
“Hey car, signal left”
“Hey car, reverse”
You’re kidding, right? Even if this worked far better than Siri, it’s too slow.
*bong* i don't have that answer
Those are exactly what is at issue.
This also needs to deal with multiple languages and regional accents for Europe.
If I, an American, rent a car in Germany, do I need to speak German in order to engage the windshield wipers? For that matter, navigating the on screen controls may also be problematic.
Here's a picture of a German car - https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/dashboard-luxury-ge...
Do you know which button to push to get the hazard lights on?
It's remarkably similar to my Honda. https://www.sheehyhonda.com/honda-dashboard-light-meanings/ and my parents' Chrysler https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/chrysler/300/2019/photos...
https://www.theverge.com/22348668/tesla-prnd-drive-mode-park...
I honestly love just about everything about the UI of the refreshed Model S, from the yoke to the turn signal buttons to the on screen gear selector. Only thing I don't like is the horn button for the two times a year that I honk it.
So no, please keep the critical driving controls in fixed locations that are easy to access without looking away from the road or looking away. IMO that includes the horn, the turn signals, the wiper control, cruise control settings, and turn signals. And things I might want to adjust in a moderate hurry while driving should have fixed, tactile locations; climate control and sound volume are in this category.
My first car nailed all of this. Recent cars, not so much.
"BREAK!"
"BREAAK!!!!"
"OH GOD PLEASE BRAKE!"
crunch
Problems can occur if it the voice system brakes (pun intended). ;)
I've never had experience with any car voice controls which didn't make me want to drive my car into a divider just to end the pain. Voice controls are so frustrating to use that I'm sure they are more distracting to use than even a touchscreen. I might be able to keep my eyes on the road easier with voice controls, but, my brain is going to be quickly annoyed and focused on trying to suss out why the voice control system is not understanding me, or am I using the wrong phrase, or do I need to put the windows up (impossible for me 6+ months of the year) so the car can hear me better?
It's like trying to pair bluetooth with a non-carplay (or non-android auto -- which I haven't used but heard good things about) with virtually all OEM and many aftermarket receivers. A uniquely frustrating experience which makes me wonder if QA departments at automakers actually exist.
"Ok, calling Hank Armstrong"
My guess ones that use mechanical dials (i.e. Lexus until ~ year ago) cause more distraction than touchscreen by simply being harder to use and taking more time to solve your problem.
Given how well chatgpt's voice recognition works - why not just put it on all cars!
I would love to see some data to see how dangerous it is to operate Maps and Media apps on a touch screen while operating a moving vehicle. This is data modern automakers should have access to. I suspect the answer is that it does reduce safety.
And that doesn't get into the more subtle cases, e.g. a crash that happens later due to an earlier loss of situational awarenesses.
It's also hard to quantify the opposite. E.g. I sometimes have to manipulate the map while driving, and resent the distraction. But afterwards I'm more likely to be in the right lane earlier, not be distracted because I'm trying to read a traffic sign in the 1-2 second window I might have etc.
EDIT: A decent statistical analysis will also uncover if using the touch screen is negatively correlated with accidents -- if people that use maps in general are less likely to get into an accident. This again won't prove causation but would be of interest to the general public and regulators.
It's amazing that accessibility is such an afterthought that having a physical wheel that tabs forward and backward through a UI as the primary means of using it is unfathomable until it's actually implemented.
Yes, being able to operate it without looking at it and capable of navigating arbitrary 3rd party apps. And because the tab position is stateful you can perform complex actions incrementally. Touch screens win for phones but you would hate one as your laptop keyboard. It's not a better or worse situation as much as a fit-for-purpose situation.
The only thing that annoys me about Commander Knob + Android Auto is that AA still forces attention breaks as you scroll through big lists (e.g. Spotify playlists) which is really stupid because you're not usually looking at the screen if you know you need to scroll say 75% down. You're just looking occasionally to see how far you've made it. By making the task take longer, it's reducing safety.
The biggest safety issue by far with Mazda+AA is Google's baffling regression in handling voice input for common tasks while driving.
Is it just me or is Google Maps voice input in AA completely busted now? I used to be able to press the "Search" bar on the touch screen in the app, say the search term and it would just show the results. Likewise for adding stops along the way. Now for the former I need to explicitly say "navigate to X" (or it says that it doesn't have a screen and refuses to do anything???) and for the latter I have to say something like "add a navigation stop at X", the assistant lists our the result (??????) and asks me which one I want to choose. Of course I don't see anything on the map in either case.
I can't imagine how bad it is when you
Coincidentally it's back to working in the first case I described. Adding stops is still broken:/
This is probably Spotify's fault, but when you're in a song search, the "next song" button goes to the start of the currently playing song, instead of the next song. The "next song" button works correctly for all other Spotify list-ish things AFAIK, just not search. And search is obviously the place you need a skip button the most.
Because saying "roll down the left window" is still a fucking nuisance compared to a click of a button.
Then again, it also boggles my mind how car makers in the US continue to use flashing red lights as the turn signal instead of yellow lights. You can barely see the red light in sunlight and it's harder to tell the red light from brake lights. Furthermore, the same car will have yellow signal lights in the front and side. So yellow signal lights in front and side, red in the back. Just make it all yellow for turn signal!
Also makes it easier to change things later in the design if you do not have a bunch of physical controls to move.
But if any car makers had done any proper UX testing, they'd quickly find out that physical buttons in a car is a non-negotiable.
I'm also starting to see really thin - single narrow LED strip - turn signals that are barely visible next to the much larger headlight nearby.
Does anyone actually think that though? Or was it considered “good enough” in light of its other benefits like reducing costs, reducing BOM, eliminating part design work, reducing wiring complexity, adding flexibility and customizability, (potentially) increased reliability, making it easier to jam the multitudes of controls and options a modern car has into a more usable and understandable interface, etc.
Don’t get me wrong, when I bought a new car, one of the selling points was the manufacturer was one of the few to still offer physical control and navigation of the touch screens (in fact the touch functionality is completely disabled at any speed faster than 5 mph). But I don’t think “safer and easier to use while driving” has ever been the driver for touch interfaces in cars.
I mainly gripe about losing physical buttons for main functions such as temperature control, radio/music control, lights, windshield wipers, etc.
It is likely that neither safety nor ease of use were part of the automaker's "thought process".
It is much more likely that a first misguided "designer" created the first touch panel control and somehow sold it to "management" as being "futuristic" and/or "ahead of the competition". And once the first car model arrived with one, the rest, like firefox to chrome, felt the need to play the imitation game for fear of being seen as not as "trendy" or "futuristic" as that other guy. I.e., purely the "fashion trend" aspect.
Then, as they proliferated, the reduced BOM costs from removing every other previous mechanical control was reverse justified as the reason for continuing to add them to ever more car models.
There are other reasons of course - planned obsolesence is a big one. Why would they want cars to work after the primary owner is done with it? With software-everything they can lock the car to the first 3 or 4 owners, and then remotely kill it.
It doesn't even have to be actively disabled, just stop providing the replacement head unit as a part because "we don't have that software anymore".
Car manufacturers want to be able to change cars after they are sold. This can be in the positive via OTA updates that fix firmware issues or in the negative by providing "subscription" features that provide a passive income beyond the initial sale. Tesla has been paving a path here with its grandiose claims of "full self-driving" and industrial manufacturers like John Deere have been experimenting with bringing smartphone-style DRM and rent-seeking to motor vehicles. Replacing as many "hardcoded" physical controls with flexible and fungible virtual controls is a logical part of the transition.
Why bother producing five different physical "editions" if you can just produce one and then downgrade it in four different ways by gimping the firmware or disabling controls in the UI? This way you can also upsell the features later or put them in a subscription model.
Technology Connections channel had a video about that a while back:
https://youtu.be/O1lZ9n2bxWA?si=xKRgMFK1DFBrB3i0
Flashing yellow = car is pointed towards you
It's the same reason why headlights are white and taillights are not (unless reversing, in which case the tail becomes the head temporarily, and thus white reversing lights.)
Why is it a problem? How is a red blinker actually measurably worse than an amber one?
I have never had any sort of issue interpreting a blinking red taillight as turning? With red, you can more easily tell the direction of travel and the aesthetics of a single color are far nicer. I frankly don’t see the problem.
Commenter a couple levels up says you can’t see red blinkers in the sunlight? I don’t think that’s true on any measurable level, amber is a far closer match in hue to sunlight than red.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_lighting#Turn_signa...
The cited document for that “up to 28%” actually states that a first analysis found amber lights leading to a reduction in being struck “between 3 and 28%” Quite a range of uncertainty.
The very same document also states that in their second analysis they found no correlation between signal color and odds of being struck.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120712231313/http://www.nhtsa....
Another one of the cited documents goes so far as to say
> Richard Van Iderstine: We have studied the crash involvement of vehicles having yellow rear turn signal lights versus red ones. With our data, we have found it challenging to prove that yellow is better than red.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37484-2004No...
And yet another of the cited sources states
> Analyses revealed that there were no statistically significant differences in rear-end accident rates between the red and amber turn-signal systems.
https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/81...
—-
Based on the actual text of the citations I’m inclined to believe there’s very little difference.
And I don’t see how there could be. The only practical difference I see between a red signal and amber signal is that the signal might ever so briefly interpreted as a brake light activating before the first cycle completes. The course of action of the driver behind in either case is to slow down, so it’s a distinction without a difference in action.
I can't say that I've ever had trouble seeing the red turn signals in the sun. Being able to see them in the sun from a few hundred feet away is legally required in most, if not all, states.
Do you have trouble seeing brake lights too?
This is probably a US government regulation thing. Because those same cars sold elsewhere in the world does have flashing yellow lights as indicators.
I walked out and just continued driving the corolla I had (still have it to this day). When I needed a minivan I purchased an older honda odyssey and fixed it up.
As do Subaru BRZ/Toyota 86/Toyota GR86.
I'd much rather have easy full control at my fingertips than have to faff about with scroll wheels or the touch screen.
A Tesla with some aftermarket modes (the sexy buttons for example) is still interesting despite its shortcomings. The perfect product doesn’t exists.
Ultimately poor wiper controls and fixed headrests are hardly the end of the world, but they could trivially make it so much better...
Ergonomic design at its finest.
Disclaimer: mine is a subsidized employee lease.
As for why they are in business, it is because they were first to market with Electric cars, and as a consumer I trust they are better at battery management than other companies that are not all-in on electric. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that the degenerate billionaires that run other car companies are not better than the degenerate billionaire who runs Tesla.
(I would not buy the new models wo/ physical controls, my next electric car will probably be something Chinese in 10 years)
Oh, and they replaced ultrasonic sensors with cameras in newer cars.
The onboard system of my Chinese BEV is not great to be honest (rest of the car works well) but it has Android Auto so it navigates and plays my media.
Since as a sole driver I have to keep my eyes on the road at all times, it seems possible that passengers could benefit but I would like to have some first hand reports.
Or is it common for some people to sit in the car and use the infotainment just for fun?
(I swear that I'm asking in good faith)
yes, the tesla doesn't have buttons. however, basically every common operation you'll do can be done in five actions or less.
if i want to navigate somewhere with our tesla, i simply tap the navigation search bar, enter the destination like I would on Google Maps, select and drive. Or i can share the destination with the Tesla app from Google or Apple Maps.
It's at least four taps with CarPlay to do this...and you're hoping that it doesn't crash mid-drive (like it's done to me so many times before). Google Automotive actually does a really great job here, but that's only shipped with select cars.
i can swipe left or right on the cabin temp to adjust upwards or downwards. many cars have dedicated controls for them, but some, like the Kia EV6, use that strip for multiple uses, so you think you're changing cabin temp, but you're actually adjusting sound volume.
ADAS (Lane Keep Assist, Autosteer, adaptive cruise, etc) is where the Tesla experience shines most brightly. On EVERY OTHER CAR, configuring ADAS involves navigating a labyrinthine maze of menus, guessing what a bunch of acronyms mean (LKA, HDA, VCC, etc. Toyotas are the worst at this), and, when it's on, figuring out if it's actually on (autosteer is the worst about this) and hoping you'll develop muscle memory in changing speed and stuff from the steering wheel.
On Teslas, you single- or double-tap the gear stalk or press a button on the steering wheel. To configure, tap the car, tap "Autopilot," go nuts. The only acronym in this menu is FSD, and it's spelled out (full self-driving). the small speed indicator turns blue if traffic-aware cruise control is on; the wheel on the display turns blue if autosteer is on; and the display shows you its view of the world at all times.
Have never seen their infotainment system. My BMW i4 has CarPlay - what else would I want?
So? If you're switching to reverse then by definition you're stopped (or nearly so) and can afford to take your eyes off the road. The control is no further than most cars' center tunnel-mounted gear levers. Plus it only has the two common drive/reverse settings accessible via the swiping action, rather than all the rarely-used options. (Do you know how many times I've shifted into Neutral or Low by mistake in an unfamiliar car...?)
What exactly is the risk?
Yes, many people find these touch screens annoying, and they’ll tend to buy cars with physical controls. But just like people who prefer physical keyboards on their phones, these consumers are a vocal minority who aren’t big enough to cater to.
If touch screens make cars less safe, then we should see higher liability insurance rates for such cars. So far that doesn’t seem to be the case.
The same argument can be made about other products too but it only distracts from the real problem.
Bad practises and products do stick around regardless of their actual usefulness and benefits.
For example take headphone jack. Nobody forced anyone to buy an Apple phone without a headphone jack, yet it is a challenge now to find a good premium/mid-range phone with a headphone jack. Other OEMs are simply copying Apple and people too get along with the new trend.
The same is happening with touch controls too. Once a popular desirable brand introduces an (anti)feature, its competitors misunderstand the feature as a contributing factor for its desirability and blindly copy it without getting into actual merits.
Moreover, why would every manufacturer copy a design that consumers don’t want? If the feature is so widely desired, it would only take one manufacturer not removing the headphone jack to win market share. Your model of the world requires every manufacturer to be incompetent in the same way. A much simpler explanation is that phones are a very competitive market and the manufacturers have calculated that, like physical keyboards, headphone jacks are not a feature most people care about. They prefer the headphone jack be sacrificed for better water resistance, better battery life, and lower cost.
If you need to look at the screen and your finger for basic functions, that's not different from using mobile phone while driving.
How I feel like that this price is not considered for the end user, at all…
But using touch screens for any mid-level or luxury car is a bad choice from every aspect.
I hate to break it to the article writer, but a haptic button on the steering wheel, while absolutely not easy to use, is a physical control.
Absolute majority would like to disagree.
* Radically improve the ability to control the car with the scroll wheels on the steering wheel. I don't mean assigning certain functions to the buttons, I mean having a cursor I could glance at, then put my eyes back on the road while I click right twice, up once, click again and then scroll to change whatever.
* For the love of all that is holy, ANCHOR controls to the top or bottom of the screen where you can brace your hand on the bezel while trying to poke the buttons. Pretty much the opposite of the fan control that is right in the center of the screen.
They added a menu kind of like this in a recent update. Long press the left scroll wheel and then you can control a bunch of things using a menu that's controlled entirely by the wheel, no touchscreen.
Are there really cars where the horn is not a physical button/ring on the steering wheel?
IMHO the driving UX peaked in the 1960s, and was largely unchanged into the 2000s, until touch screens started taking over.
Compare:
https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads...
https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/2010...
https://www.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2017/07/Tesla-Mod...
At least the steering wheel and pedals still behave the same.
For now, companies are experimenting with drive by wire. Don't think I like that concept.
At least on brake by wire ICE systems I could let engine braking slow me if the brake system fails somehow (even if I have to blow the engine to save my life, worth the trade).
A drive-by-wire system had better be a lot more reliable and also notice impending failures.
It's not a problem at those speeds, having it crap out when turning slowly and sharply around fast traffic is much more likely to be deadly.
If your steering assist conks out just as you're trying to turn at slow speed you could end up heading into oncoming traffic, at an angle at least.
It's actually pretty dangerous, good thing you don't drive it any more.
But yes, I agree, unpredictable steering response is dangerous.
I feel like I have had several close calls that would have been accidents for sure had I been driving with power steering.
The steering deadzone is not purely a function of power steering. Some of it is design or could be attributed to that, but a bunch of it also comes from slop in the physical connections in the steering column, as well as the suspension bushings, your tyre profile, etc.
These systems have improved.
Relatedly I had a Hyundai i30 for a while which has a well known fault where the plastic gear connection (called a Spyder Bush) from the electric motor to the steering column would break. Resulting in slop and a clunk. Not hard to imagine similar failures or bad design.
There has been a number of plane accidents related to physical connection between the yoke and the actuators (cables loosing tension under high temperatures, or cut/trapped on a deck failure). Electric cables does not suffer that, and they are easily doubled.
SbW makers are already making software that does constant surveilance of the system, something that traditional systems has never done.
The number of dead people caused by the steering column going straight through their chest in a collision is huge. That shouldn't happen with SbW.
I hate the trend towards car controls in a screen, but Drive by Wire sounds like a real advance towards better cars to me. DbW without redundancies and continuous tracking could be a safety issue, but with them I don't think it's an issue. Fly by Wire has a good safety record.
Because there are dozens of people helping keep each plane safe.
In an electric power steering system there are steering angle and torque sensors that know what direction the wheel is turned an how hard it has turned, and this is connected to an electric motor that powers the gears to move the steering rack.
There are still regulations in place that require a mechanical connection to the steering wheel and rack, but try and turn the wheel with the car off and see if your wheels move... But when the car is running when you turn the wheel you're just a voting remember in the system.
There are no such regulations for throttles. Pretty much every car since the late 80s has electronic throttle control and there are no mechanical linkages from pedal to throttle body.
Are you sure? Fully “steer by wire” vehicles with no mechanical steering link are already in production. The Tesla Cybertruck is the most well-known example.
Toyota/Lexus has also been demonstrating steer-by-wire for a while (Lexus RZ), and it will apparently ship in consumer vehicles later this year.
https://www.drive.com.au/news/toyota-lexus-steer-by-wire-sys...
(In some aspects the US automotive regulations are actually stricter than in Europe. For example, in Europe there are some vehicles (eg: Audi) where the wing mirrors are replaced by screens/cameras, but this is not permitted in the US. Adaptive matrix headlights are also not allowed in the US.)
That was also strongly discouraged on older cars and only possible with big steering wheels and good grip. Just move very slowly and the turning becomes really easy even without assistance (and which is what you were thought when this was still a thing in countries with required driving lessons).
Electronic throttles became widespread much later than the 80s. Pop the hood of common 2000s economy cars and you’ll find a mechanical throttle linkage.
All 90s cars I've had or worked on had a real cable from gas pedal to throttle body.
In my EV it literally is a potentiometer. I really miss the feel of a physical throttle linkage on the snow and ice, I feel it's much more difficult to judge grip.
Also, since it's just a pot, I don't know why there's not a speed mode for it, it to make it operate the cruise control speed set-point rather than torque.
The throttle is separated from the wheels/ground by the transmission and the whole engine, which makes me wonder if the response you felt probably was a combination of eg rpm/physical vibration and a few other factors. It should be possible to recreate these even in an EV, then.
We had an older non-turbo car before the EV.
The sound of the engine also changes greatly depending on the throttle position and engine load but for me it was more audible and I couldn’t feel it from the throttle. Modern cars are pretty good with sound insulation from the engine, but I’ve heard some “sporty” cars direct the intake sound to the cabin for giving the noisy sports car experience to the driver without being obnoxious with the exhaust side.
I think there are a few reasons for it, one of which is simply increasing efficiency by smoothing the accelerator input a bit. I’ve only driven an electric car a few times, so I’m not sure if they also have this delay, but I would expect they do.
Right, it feels very much like I'm just changing a set-point. Putting the car in eco mode makes it very noticeable, but even though it's less noticeable in sport mode it's still not the same.
Of course, could be he was wrong.
I did learn to drive manual, but I'd never buy another car like that. Maybe it's fun for racing, but for every day driving, automatic requires less effort and longevity isn't a concern today.
Manuals proliferate in EU, but we have also always had automatics on the road - and a significant increase since DSGs hit the market - so no one who has driven a few normal cars would be surprised by two pedals in an electric.
To stop, not to slow down.
One can also just put the car in neutral and let it roll to stop occasionally correcting with the break pedal, if we want to be pedantic.
If you don't press the clutch during a stop, you risk increasing your stopping distance both due to engine inertia and due to it fighting back below idle - especially in a diesel van. We only have muscle memory when we panic, and it's bad if someone is taught in a way that makes them miss a pedal.
That's also part of why you are taught with stick over here - better be trained to press a pedal too much than a pedal too little. If you do take the license in an automatic, you get a mark on your license disallowing you from driving stick.
And specifically the horn button being capacitive co-located with the voice assistance and windscreen wiper buttons.
Which in a safety situation was difficult to locate and press.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/models/en_us/GUID-DEB259C...
For vehicles manufactured as of approximately January 2024: To sound the horn, press the middle of the steering yoke (or steering wheel). For vehicles manufactured prior to approximately January 2024: To sound the horn, press and hold the horn button on the right side of the steering yoke (or steering wheel).
"press and hold" doesn't seem like it'd be easy to do if all you wanted was a quick toot.
One can easily see this "meme" if one searches for images of "driver honking horn":
https://www.google.com/search?q=driver+honking+horn&tbm=isch
Teslas are the Dunning-Kruger cars. Designed by people who seemingly do not really know how to design cars (a wheel is boring; let’s put a yoke because video games! Look how cool we are! Also, touchscreens!) and built with poor quality control. I was not aware of the horn button, but if I had to guess, Tesla would be my first choice.
Sometimes even Elon admits he was wrong.
In driver's ed they tell you to not to use your horn when you're annoyed at other drivers - only use it if there's an imminent danger to avoid a crash.
But you better hope it works because if it doesn't, the airbag behind it explodes.
...
I'm not sure Tesla improved the situation, but it definitely seems like the situation has room for improvement.
This is definitely not a cultural universal. Different countries have different practices. In some places the horn simply means “I’m here, check your mirrors”, in other places it means “You bastard!”, and in some other places it means “We are both stuck in traffic let’s make as much noise as possible to pass the time”
> only use it if there's an imminent danger to avoid a crash
Therefore the difference between the horn being readily accessible and being hidden away could be the difference between life and death.
Being readily accessible is a must. The point I was trying to make (poorly; it was late) was that having the horn button in the middle of the wheel is about the worst place imaginable if you lay on the horn to avoid a crash and it happens anyway, because some portion of your arm is probably going to be broken when it gets crushed between an exploding airbag and your rapidly-decelerating body.
>But you better hope it works because if it doesn't, the airbag behind it explodes.
... what? I had a car who's horn stopped working and the airbag didn't explode or go off.
If you hold your horn down trying to alert someone that you’re about the slam into them, your hand is going to be on the wheel as the airbag deploys.
... Wait, is this a real thing, or just a joke about them being bad at UX? If a real thing... goodness, I'm quite surprised that doesn't break some mandatory safety rule.
Yes: https://antiquecarmuseumofiowa.org/wp-content/uploads/1913-F...
Well ... "are" is kinda stretching it...
I would prank my 6-7yo cousin at the time that all you had to do is ask the car to beep and it would do
The Model T (Ford) had a throttle on the steering wheel and 3 pedals, but not the ones you'd expect today:
https://www.fordmodelt.net/images/ford-model-t-controls_smal...
Due to regulation.
The US Congress mandated the PRNDSL quadrant for automatic transmissions. (GM had PNDSLR, and people kept shifting into reverse by accident.)
Don't give them ideas...
This is the norm for most cars with servo steering.
If a booster fails you have a chance of overpowering it, it's not that strong. A faulty steer-by-wire will swing you into the oncoming lane with no recourse.
As long as the steering wheel is there it might as well be connected to the rack, forever.
It stops making sense to have a bunch of rods zigzagging everywhere.
Also inside the wheels makes no sense at all, google unsprung weight.
When all of that is implemented in cars and weathers for 10-20 years I might consider it.
Otherwise, seeing as Toyota's regen braking code had like 10k global variables, I'm not touching that with at 10 foot pole.
Acceleration/braking can be quite bad but there's normally neutral and ignition switches. With steering there's literally nothing between you cruising along a highway and you splattered on some concrete pillar 200ms later.
They generally have the following root safety requirements:
- the assist system must not cause "blocking" (unturnable wheels/steering wheel)
- the assist system must not cause unintended steering
- the assist system must be able to restart in less than 20 milliseconds
- the assist system must stay passive after a number of unsuccessful startups/unrecoverable errors (typically 3). In this case the mechanical steering column still provides a way for the driver to control the car.
It has been 10+ years since I last worked such a system, but drive by wire was only on the horizon, not the norm, and as far as I know the authorities only allowed drive by wire solution some 2-3 years ago, with product development lifecycle of around 5 years that means they are still not the norm among new cars I believe.
Back then more redundancy in the electric motors (more gradual failure if one phase goes bust, not going into deadlock in certain angles when any of the 3 phases is malfunctioning) and authenticated communications on the system bus (which was considered trusted earlier) were on the roadmap for the next gen steering systems, which are mandatory requirements before you can get to steer by wire.
Having redundant bus and redundant sensors usable by multiple subsystems is a better way.
Well, I have heard of power assist using a single simple potentiometer as a steering wheel position sensor in some really cheap cars... I'm not sure how much of an urban legend that is, but nowadays it surely wouldn't cut it for road permission in the EU.
Having to account for a DOS attack from a compromised head unit or some such just seems like a nightmare.
To overcome this the plan back when I was working on that product was to use 2 system buses, one isolated internal for the safe critical sensor/control network, and one user facing untrusted bus, with a ECU designed to serve as a firewall basically.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-alarmed-cybertrucks-steering-...
Why are you just making stuff up? Cybertruck has lots of redundancy.
Do you have any actual evidence that Cybertruck steer-by-wire design is bad?
The French made some really… interesting choices with their cars.
If somebody enters your lane at speed, the safest thing to do is to let them know you're there. Swerving or breaking in response multiplies the problem, as now there are two cars driving erratically. The horn won't always resolve everything, but it's by far the most effective way to get somebody's attention in a hurry.
Holding your steering wheel with a single hand will cause you to drive erratically too.
>The horn won't always resolve everything, but it's by far the most effective way to get somebody's attention in a hurry.
That's why it should be possible to activate it with an easy to reach button or lever, preferably next to the emergency lights, instead of a heavy pressure button right in the center of the steering wheel.
Not a thing over here.
fair enough!
> when someone forgets to watch traffic signals after stopping at a red light
I dunno. If you wouldn't blow a horn while walking the sidewalk when inconvenienced, I don't think drivers should either. You're not the only two people on the street, there's other people around here and they don't need to be abused by impatient drivers. ymmv, ianal, etc.. of course.
You’ve never had to give someone a “hey don’t back into me” toot in a parking lot?
You’ve never seen your friend Ricky, on the sidewalk?
99% of time there is absolutely no reason to honk. People only do it because the button is there and they're safely insulated from getting punched.
Could it also be that in different places, there are different expectations, and different environments that makes people use the honk for various purposes?
I get that in the US it seems to mostly be a social signal of "fuck you", but in Spain where I mainly drive, I've avoided a couple of accidents by honking after seeing cars slowly coming close to my own car on the highway, especially when passing lone cars when things are no so busy. People seem to stop paying attention then.
Then in Peru the honking is seemingly constant, and people honk in prevention when they pass you, like a "just in case" honk. Honking seems to be a way of life there, rather than for emergencies.
https://youtu.be/lv8wqnk_TsA?si=V4rPj1L3W5uZz_2J
For a while Ford was putting the horn on the turn signal stalk, I hated it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/l08q...
I like physical controls for everything else, but please make displays for e.g. CarPlay touch screens.
I can understand disabling touchscreen scrolling while driving, but at least save my place in the list.
I mean, yeah, sure. It'd be cheaper for my tyres to be made of wood. I don't give a toss, a new vehicle costs tens of thousands, what's $50 for a few buttons?
edit: Top tier bean counter replies! Is it contagious?
If you can generate $50 dollars of COGs reduction in a car, that's 250 million per year. Yes, that's basically nothing in terms of their COGs, but that's like 5% increase in net income (if they can channel all of the savings into the net income anyways). Alternatively, if you want to be less cynical, Ford's R&D budget comes from that ~20 billion dollar slice between their revenue, COGs and final net income. 250 million is still a pretty ~1% slice of their R&D budget.
I don't think you've ever worked in manufacturing.
It's not just the cost of the buttons.
A larger cost is the fabrication of the housing for all the buttons: design the housing that goes into the dashboard/console, create a jig/die, continue creating new jigs/dies as the old ones wear out, keep the factory floorspace available even after the car has gone out of production, etc. This has to be done for each car model (yeah, even if you're using blanks).
Another cost that dwarves the cost of buying buttons is the fitment: the fitment robots have to be purchased, programmed and maintained just to put those $50 buttons in. It has to be done for each car model.
And, of course, design changes late in the process cause the manufacturer to spend all that money all over again.
Spread over the lifetime of the car (how long they keep providing parts for it), a minimum of around 5 years, that $50 is negligible compared to the tens of millions of dollars poured into fabricating and fitting of those $50 buttons.
Compared to a touchscreen, all that's done is to ensure that the dashboard design has a housing for the touchscreen. Done, and works for all models from baseline to top-end with no more money needed.
It turns out that not having tactile feedback means that pilots are pressing the wrong button about 20% of the time. Even more so under g-loads..
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/technical-difficult...
There are two large levers, that, if I remember correctly, actuated the control rods. They were right next each other.
The engineers replaced the two identical knobs, with handles from beer taps (Michelob and Heineken, IIRC). This differentiated the two controls.
The new Teslas have button turning signal - caveat emptor.
IMHO, this is the correct solution for all but a handful of commuters (e.g. a WFH citydweller could probably enjoy a full EV, but not for vacations).
It has physical buttons for everything except the radio... much better vehicle.
> Euro NCAP is not a government regulator, so it has no power to mandate carmakers use physical controls for those functions.
Why isn't this headline clickbait, what am I missing?
edit: the headline used to have the word Regulator in it.
1. If the evaluator is well established it's likely companies would be negatively impacted if they get lower scores even if it just means lower sales rather than an outright ban
2. It seems that while Euro NCAP is not a regulator it is pretty involved with national agencies, so this might be a signal that things are starting to move towards official rules. Of the "self-regulate or you will be regulated" variety
With Tesla 99% of time I just flip temperature slider at bottom corner. For rest - open larger menu for very intuitive extra controls.
Kinda insane how mass media is picking up worst implementations from legacy auto and extrapolate that to a car that has best UX. It's literally 180 degree turn disinformation.
It's like it's an incredible combination of both smart and stupid at the same time. You have to tap, double tap, slide, and press and hold at different places in the UI too.
No amount of interface versatility/flexibility can come close to touching the utility of not having to take your eyes off your subject. NONE.
This drives me INSANE. The other one: some of the Tesla UIs feel like they were made with "minimalism" in mind. For instance the rear defroster vs the windshield defroster. I still, 3 years into my model Y, have no idea which is which, and every time I need to defrost the front windshield it's like a fight against the HVAC system and buttons and touchscreens to make it do anything.
I love my tesla, probably to the point of being annoying, but I **HATE** the ridiculous "minimalist" UI stuff, and I absolutely hate it when they push a UI update which moves things around.
It sounds like an irrational love for the car.
Well, the list of other cars that will kill you if you take your hands of the wheels is ... just about anything, right?
And then you're dead, so have no use for a charging network anyway, too.
So, basically, for just that one feature, you can use just about any other car.
The list is, essentially, everything else!
(And yes that works. I recently finished a 2k+ road trip in Germany and had no issues at all. Plug and charge worked flawlessly on every DC fast charger I visited. AC charging worked by swiping my RFID card).
(This is so near-universal that I vaguely suspect that there's a non-disparagement agreement you have to sign when you buy one).
Because there aren't? My tesla has FSD which I use for the majority of my driving, it looks cool, it's really fast, I really like the in dash display (just don't like UI updates, and some very specific parts of the HVAC controls).
This is such a funny question to me. Do you love your city? Is there *nothing* you dislike about it?
But I am constantly disappointed by just how awful and useless the software is.
Need some directions? Sorry, I can auto-play this music station you haven't used in a week, but if you want those directions you looked up on your way out the best I can do is (maybe) have the address in your recent search history.
Want to resume the music you were streaming from your phone through your media center? Yeah, just give me a few minutes to load up this other UI and...Are you sure you have a music app on your phone? Maybe you just need to add it to the car app? Here, let me bring that up on your phone screen. Hold up. There's some audio coming through the bluetooth, I'll just play that.
Want to see why the "Check Engine" light came on? Oh, well for that you need to buy a $50 dongle with Bluetooth and install an app on your phone.
Most of the time, though, they are implemented simply because it's cheaper. There's no benefit to speak of. In fact, I think the only device for which a touch interface works is a smartphone. I can't think of any others.