156 replies
11h18m
Now, Euro NCAP is not insisting on everything being its own button or switch. But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn, and any SOS features
This is much more reasonable than I assumed. Unlike seemingly most people here I have no problem whatsoever with fan controls or audio controls or whatever on the touchscreen, as long as it is responsive (of course the vast majority of car touchscreens are not, but some are). However, the absence of a physical speed control for the windshield wipers is the single worst design flaw of Teslas. Or at least it was, until they removed the physical turn signal controls. I'm very much in favor of requiring safety critical controls that must be used frequently or urgently to be physical.
But even then, how do you find the A/C or volume control on a touch screen without taking your eyes off the road, without accidentally touching something else? You just can't feel your way to the volume knob. Sure, you are a responsible driver and would only do that at a traffic light or other completely safe situation, but I don't know how many accidents touch controls in cars already caused with less responsible drivers, trying to adjust their AC while driving by an elementary school.
Volume is on the steering wheel.
A/C is automatic and I don't need to touch it the vast majority of the time. While driving the most I might want to do is adjust the temperature, and since it's not safety critical I can choose a convenient time. It's at the bottom of the screen so it is easy to do by grabbing behind the bezel and only requires a quick glance to align your thumb. In practice I glance at physical A/C controls when adjusting them too, so I don't see a big difference here.
If you really need to adjust the temperature so often and can't stand the thought of using the touchscreen, you can assign that function to the left scroll wheel.
It seems like you have a more sensible car than many. I was recently in one with really dumb automatic AC that needed adjustment very often, the AC settings were in a menu behing two clicks, there was no convenient landmark to orient my hand without looking, the temperature slider was very small and dense needing high precision and the temperature text was rather small. And the steering wheel buttons are, of course, not remappable.
I drive about a dozen different modern electric cars on a regular basis (carsharing) and all of them have at least a few of the above flaws (if not for AC then for something else that needs adjusting while driving).
What is carsharing, and how does it work insurance-wise?
Like rental, but per minute. Look up car2go, although maybe they're no longer in business in the US, i. Europe they changed their brand name.
It's like those scooters you can hire and leave (almost) anywhere, the benefit with a car is, if you park it idiotically, they can check that you were the last driver and forward the parking ticket to you.
Car2Go and Reachnow both ended in the US around 2020.
There are some other carsharing services in the US in some major cities (e.g. gig car share in sf/seattle), but I would argue overall there's less carsharing now compared to 8-9 years ago. Partly the age demographics have changed, ridesharing (uber/lyft) rose in popularity, and carsharing in the us has had its share of profitability issues.
Peak carsharing in the US to me was around 2017-2018 (car2go, reachnow, limepod, maven, ...)
I think cheap uber/lyft ate their lunch originally but what sealed it was the introduction of dockless bikes & scooters.
Of course those smart cars didn't really help either. They were great for parking and stuff but damn did it feel like driving a gocart. My foot was either at full throttle or no throttle.
...I do miss it though.
I think another kicker for carsharing at the time (~2020) was this forecasted revolution of driverless cars and robotaxis, which has sortof continued (waymo) but also collapsed (argo, cruise / tesla safety issues, etc. ) over the past couple years.
I liked carsharing from the stance that even if it didn't make me want to get rid of car ownership, it made me feel less inclined to invest as much into car ownership (i.e. keep an old used car with cheap insurance, use carsharing if my car needs maintenance or going on a trip where i dont want to worry about breaking down or if taking another mode of transit back.)
This line of thought kinda gets into the predicament of carsharing (and arguably rideshare/robotaxi) services owned by automotive companies - they're fairly deep in the business of selling cars much more than attempting a service business.
Zipcar is still around in Boston.
The kind of carsharing I use is company-run, so it's basically just rental, but billed by the minute and with parking spots scattered all over the city. I imagine they have a very expensive fleet insurance in the background.
There are also a handful of "peer-peer" carsharing systems where you let other people use your car and I have no idea how insurance would work there.
Avoiding to get into a "which car brand is best", I'll just say that I think there is simply a difference in the "DNA" of the car brands for how they approach the driving experience. It takes many many years and iterations and care about driving a car to produce a good car UX and some brands you can just immediately conclude that the CEO or the product managers don't care about driving and probably have never driven the specific model themselves, while in some brands you really feel they are a "driver's car".
This goes for tech in general and not just cars btw :)
That is good reasoning, but are you sure a high number of drivers are also waiting with adjustments, instead of fumbling on the screen while continuing to drive?
A lot of people send and read phone messages while driving. I highly doubt that same people gives a second thought before playing with the screen while driving, unless they are under a real stressing situation (pouring and twisted road at 2 AM).
Exactly. That is why physical buttons you can use without looking are so much better. For the perfect driver it does not matter so much, but that is a rare species.
If the choice is between
1. Physical controls that you can interact with without the need to take your eyes off the road
2. Touch screen that you need to look almost every time, much of the time while actually interacting with it. But you can mitigate that by using it more responsibly, waiting until you are at a stop, our out of range of anything you might need to react to (which might not happen for 10 minutes or even longer)
Then #1 is clearly the winner. Because 2 is more dangerous for everyone on the road (not just you with your own behavior, but everyone else that might act irresponsibly and hit you). We specifically craft laws to make people interact with their phones less (hands free only, etc) because "people must act more responsibly" is not a reliable solution.
It may depend on the car.
In my car, I basically never change the A/C. My dad used to have a same-vintage car for a while, but a different make, and it absolutely needed adjustment depending on whether the sun was shining on you or not, and possibly other parameters. They both had "automatic" A/C.
Now these cars are ~20 years old, maybe things have improved. I haven't ridden in my dad's ~2yo car for any long stretch during the summer to compare.
Automatic climate control is one of those things that sounds good and is nice when it works but never works properly in all situations. I much prefer manual controls.
so, physical control.
This is presumably one of those models with the screen that's not integrated in the dashboard and looks like an afterthought. Those usually have some kind of bezel you can grab to stabilize your hand, but the actual control is still touch-based and on the screen.
The HVAC controls are a safety critical control because they are what dehumidifies your windshield screen.
And quick changes of T or RH needing the user to crank up the heat, turn on the AC and direct the air to the windshield at full speed are very possible depending on where you are.
Imagine crossing a miles long tunnel under a mountain separating two weather zones.
Hands off my HVAC controls.
My mother-in-law has had a Mercedes for four years. It has a self-parking feature. She still doesn't know how to use it and probably never will. She couldn't possibly assign a function to the left scroll wheel either. And she's Mercedes Benz's target market.
I'm not sure how much I agree that temperature is not safety critical. It's relative for sure, less safety critical than breaks or transmission, but it can still impact safety in certain situations. In the city when you have a lot of red lights and stop signs, it's not a big deal to wait for the next stop. But on a free-way when you've got a ways to go before you can make a stop then uncomfortable temperature can create a distracted or nervous driver situation. I suppose you could pull over on the shoulder if it were that big of a deal, but even that isn't the safest thing to do on freeways and it's recommended to only do that if you're making an emergency stop.
In my opinion this shouldn't even have to be a big deal. The only reason we're even discussing it is because car manufacturers are moving from tactile buttons to touch screens. People are accustomed to working these types of auxiliary systems without stopping and historically have been able to do so without taking their eyes off of the road. People aren't going to stop doing those things because now they have to use a touch-screen.
I think this is missing something fundamental. If it's too hot or cold, folks are distracted - from driving. Perhaps you are less distracted than most.
Yes, they can reassign buttons. But the core problem is distraction, which causes users to go to the touchscreen, which creates even further distraction by capturing their visual attention.
No. Ventilated and heated seats are something I want to control easily. And when driving in the sun I have the AC set to 64. When driving at night it's set to 72.
And it's different if I drive with the top down depending on weather. I don't need to look at the buttons to do that now.
I don't change the AC while I'm in motion. All my cars have auto AC so I rarely touch them even as the temperature changes outside. I probably adjust the AC a handful of times a year. I'd rather not waste a lot of dashboard space on buttons that practically never get pressed, I'd rather have my map be even bigger and easier to quickly glance at and have more space to browse my media collection while stopped.
I don't understand how so many people have come across cars with seemingly terrible auto AC systems. Even my old 2000 Honda Accord had a competent auto AC system. I haven't had manual AC on any of my cars in decades. Whenever I rent a car it's always infuriating having to constantly muck with the AC system.
this is akin to it works on my PC so not an issue
I'm not talking about a single car, I'm talking about several different makes and models over the last couple decades.
Works on my machine implies it's something special about that one device. My experience has been auto AC has worked fine with several different car models from several different makers across the last 24 years of car manufacturing.
I am talking about a use case that works for you but not others - due to preference, hardware limitations etc.
My car can only turn AC on and off. What about me then?
I take it your AC controls aren't behind a touchscreen then?
I'm mostly arguing having AC controls on a screen aren't that big of a deal, because chances are if they're on a touchscreen they're auto, and if they're auto you really shouldn't need to ever really mess with them while moving. The only real exception to this would be defrosters, but I do agree there should be a least a physical defrost toggle button.
Fair enough, I wouldn't mind controls behind the screen for stuff you wouldn't need on daily basis. But I feel like we already had it with early screens and infotainment.
Functionality that might be needed when you drive (fogging up, change audio src, increase temp) should have physical interface.
So if you have auto AC it could go behind the screen.
But what I am afraid is that cars are sold with premium features as upgrades. So features that are fine behind screen would suck in cheaper models. And when looking at what BS automotive industry is pushing now (subscription services for physical features that are present), I am not hopeful this would be addressed.
I generally agree. Safety critical features need physical control options close to the driver's normal inputs.
I have two cars. One with a big screen and few physical buttons, and one with a small screen with lots of physical buttons.
Because of all the physical buttons, the screen had to be a lot smaller. The vast majority of those buttons relate to actions I really shouldn't be messing with when driving or are connected to the auto AC system which as mentioned doesn't really get used. So it is a ton of wasted space on the center console.
On the other car, the screen is very large. There's still important physical controls related to driving and defogging and adjusting media and what not, but they're all immediately around the driver's area not the center console. This allows for the maps for navigation to be very large and easier to glance at. The interface for changing media a lot easier to use when stopped and wanting to actually look at what choices I have or have my passenger make changes.
At least to me, I'd much rather have the center console be filled with the map and actually used input surface rather than just have it filled with tons of buttons which generally still shouldn't be used when driving.
Am I missing something or do these not make sense together?
I guess I should have phrased it as "chosen to own cars with seemingly terrible AC systems". Theromostatic controls are pretty cheap to implement, its not like you'd need some high-end extreme luxury car to have that feature be normal.
If the AC controls are on a touchscreen, chances are they're auto. If they're auto, you probably shouldn't have to mess with them at all while moving.
You need at least sun direction, temperature and humidity sensors and reasonable software behind them to have good automatic AC.
Basic thermostat is somewhere in center console, which doesn't help much if your chest is blasted with sun. Also temperature you feel is different depending on humidity.
I live in North Texas. I guarantee you we get a lot of days with intense radiant heat.
Both of my cars have glass roofs. Previously they had sunroofs. Lots of sunlight in the cabin.
I haven't had issues with automatic AC in decades in cars that aren't exactly luxury cars. It is a solved problem for at least every brand of car I've owned.
People have already died because of the screens “The ship's user interface [touch screen] was found to have contributed to the sailors' confusion.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_S._McCain_and_Alnic_M...
Seems to be a US Navy thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655#Potential_...).
On a more serious note, there's a big difference between a vehicle like a car that is operated by one person, and a ship with a large crew with dedicated tasks.
Each crew member should have been assigned the management and activation of a given portion of the touchscreen.
Morning briefing by the Captain: “John, you’ll supervise and operate the bottom left corner of the Touchscreen. Adam, as a left handed sailor, you’ll stand right to John and operate the bottom right corner of the Touchscreen with your left hand so there are no collisions in case of emergency”
Aye, captain
The control interface you know is the touchscreen of your smartphone, isn't it?
True. With a car there are fewer eyes monitoring the situation and frequently little or no time to correct from a mistake.
ProPublica did excellent reporting on this: https://features.propublica.org/navy-uss-mccain-crash/navy-i...
I know it will cost me karma to point it out, but in a Tesla you can use voice control to adjust your AC/radio/navigation while your eyes are on the road and your car's 10 eyes are on the road.
Does it work if you have a thick (non-American or non-RP) accent? Serious question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8
As one of the comments pointed out, it's even funnier if you turn on the automatic captions :)
Exactly. I have a mild accent, but my dad still has a thick brogue. Would a car understand him? Not if it's using the same algorithm as YT's captioning.
Yes you can. My last three cars have had a volume knob under the left thumb. My current car has a second volume knob behind the gearstick, and the A/C is the only analog dial along the center console. I can easily adjust both without looking away.
I have volume controls and similar on my steering while, and I never use them.... because I can never remember which is where. I prefer my stereo controls to be in the stereo controls area, my climate controls to be in the climate control area, etc. Spreading them out makes it more annoying to deal with.
Yeah I really dislike controls of any kind on the steering wheel. Should not have more than a horn button in the center.
My car has no physical climate controls etc. I just use the voice controls.
“Hey Google, set the driver’s side heated seat to one”
“Hey Google, turn off the steering wheel heater”
Judging from how google subtitles my videos on youtube, this would look like a comic gag for most people.
In my other car, which adheres to the “buttons for nearly everything” philosophy, the steering wheel heater (for example) is down by the driver’s left knee, even using it via the touchscreen is probably safer.
Experiences with this sort of thing are subjective, but I’ve never had any problems with Google Assistant in the car.
The turn signals wasn’t removed, they moved them to the steering wheel as physical buttons. Which ofc isn’t optimal, because you turn it…
You’re supposed to signal before you turn the wheel.
Way too often I see people signaling as they turn, not because they are trying to communicate with other road users but because it’s the law. Indicate your intent first and then take the indicated action.
Roundabouts..
Correct. But then maybe OP lives somewhere where roundabouts aren't very common so they never ran into that usecase.
I do, but I’m also an idiot. Worse, I’m an idiot that does not even own a Tesla. Maybe my temper in traffic got the better of me in that comment.
In my country there are a lot of roundabouts, but also crossroads do happen on a quite tight curve especially in smaller cities.
In the UK, which has loads of roundabouts, this issue is still common enough to notice, and derided.
And crossroads that aren't at 90 degrees. Like, you know, old cities that weren't built on a grid.
The one time i test drove a Tesla I abandoned a left turn because all the roads involved were curvy enough I couldn't get the turn signal to stay on ;)
Mind, it was just a test drive. I guess that if I practiced for years I could master the wisdom of Tesla controls.
Yeah, that might actually be an advantage of that new Tesla layout (never seen a Tesla from the inside): small fiddly sensor surfaces on the wheel are best operated while going straight, whereas the stalk keeps tempting the driver to leave operation to the hand movement that happens anyways when starting the turn. Guilty as charged, deeply sorry about that (I don't think it's a regular habit of mine, but we've all seen cars driven like that)
But, as a sibling comment already mentioned: roundabouts! One of the most important indicator engagements is made crazy awkward for people who keep "walking" their hands to neutral position while the wheel is turned instead of wrestling it like some animal.
Which does make me wonder: has any carmaker started engaging turn signals from navigation? I'd imagine that this could be an amazingly subtle user interface for following a route: just don't press the veto button when the car decides to engage indicators and steer as if the indicator decision had been your own. No more following robot voice orders. An established pattern I don't know about? Tried, but turned out to be terrible? Legal uncertainty (or legal negative certainty)?
Seems annoying if you want to do a turn when in a turn?
Absolutely, that's the roundabout scenario. Downsides do outweigh the advantages.
You might already be turning, but completely unrelated to an upcoming maneuver that you must signal.
So that’s why everyone who drives a Tesla never uses their turn signal?
I've seen hundreds of Teslas driving in the UK and they're just as likely to use a turn signal as anyone else (~99%).
I'm not sure I've seen a less substantive comment on hacker news that wasn't flagged.
People in the UK actually use their turn signals. Try driving around Central Texas. The joke, as another commenter pointed out, used to be BMW drivers. There is some kind of linear relationship between the luxury of a car and the lack of conscientiousness amongst many American drivers.
They used to own BMWs
That's a weird assertion, because if you're driving a Tesla and using autopilot/TACS you have to use turn signals to change lanes.
I would call them virtual buttons rather than true physical buttons, as they are capacitive touch buttons that don't depress and are missing a defined physical boundary. Granted, they are fixed in place and don't move. Except that, as you point out, they do move...
the new model 3 highland buttons feel and behave exactly like physical buttons.
"Designed for California" nonsense. It's pretty common to wear gloves while driving in the winter in Canada. Now you have to make sure your gloves are compatible with your car.
You're supposed to indicate before you turn, to be fair.
Not if you want to indicate that you're exiting a roundabout, in which you'll be constantly turning
They're not physical buttons. They're touch sensors. They don't move or click.
Teslas don't have physical blinker switches?? That is pure lunacy, are you telling me they're touchscreen activated now?
From the article:
those 'haptic' buttons are real buttons. with a click feel and everything. they are great (tested in highland model 3)
What people call "real buttons" usually require a certain force and travel to activate. Capacitive buttons require little to no force or feedback, sometimes not even solid contact.
I think the easiest way to understand the difference is to ask 2 questions: "can I put my finger on that button and not immediately trigger it" and "can I can physically tell that I am triggering it (ideally some physical travel)?" If the answers are "yes", then it's probably the kind of button people look for when talking about wanting "real buttons".
It depends. The solid state button under the MacBook trackpad is indistinguishable from the previous physical button.
I wrote more in the comment above but just to add that the old trackpad is not the best point reference. This is just Apple chasing thinness by making any button barely have any travel. Signal or wiper stalks have 2 orders of magnitude more travel.
The parent commenter was making the point that the particular buttons on the latest Model 3 (Highland) actually feel almost like physical buttons. They require pressure and won’t activate just by being brushed against.
Still, as blinker controls they don’t have tactile markings and a stalk would be much better.
You're correct. But I was addressing GP's wording (emphasis mine):
I was making the point that it's not a "real button" if, as you also say, it just "almost like" a real button. Knowing the M3 buttons, that "almost" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Press a classic hazard lights button, and a Tesla signal button and see if they really feel similar. No need to go to the vastly different stalk.
For any normal person a button involves not only the application of pressure but also the consistent feedback of travel. Things like Apple's taptic engine and similar techniques simulate already bad buttons with microscopic travel.
Apple has actually combined the two with their touchpads. When you press on them you get the "click" feedback. But its not actually a physical travel that activates, it's what they call "the haptic engine" that vibrates in a way that makes it feel like you've clicked a physical button. It works really well.
However, I think that such buttons are far more expensive than a physically activated button, even if the latter is engineered to last a lifetime of heavy use.
This was the little (to no) feedback of a press I was mentioning. Simulating the absolute bare minimum of travel. With the pressure sensors and the piezoelectric actuators it becomes a super-expensive, overengineered button simulator that works almost as well as the real thing.
Even Apple dropped the fancier 3D touch completely, and the less fancy Force touch is just for trackpads. Everything else is the cheaper Haptic touch doing away with pressure sensors entirely. It was fine for my iPhone 8 home button and old watch.
But a car is different. A hazard light button has ~5mm of travel. Blinker or wiper stalks have centimeters of travel. Same for rotary knobs. They're also well spaced from each other with hard to confuse actuation methods. In noisy and vibration prone environments, with time sensitive requirements, you want to have very clear and distinct ways to act and receive feedback that actions were performed, especially if critical for safety.
That's legitimately insane to me. Plus you don't even get that satisfying clunk of turning the blinkers on.
God the future is turning out so lame...
Some parts of the future are always lame! But luckily, they can get better if at least one person cares enough to make facilitate the change :)
The main problem is you have no tactile confirmation of the blinker status.
They may have left some blinking icon on on the screen, but you're watching the road and don't see it.
They may have left that confirmation 'click' sound on, but you can't hear it because you can't adjust the music volume :)
They are touch areas on the steering wheel. It's not on the screen, but they're not buttons. They don't click.
They do in the new models like the 3 refresh
On recent models they removed the stalks and put blinker buttons in the steering wheel.
It is even worse, because the buttons are placed on top of the steering wheel so when you turn they also turn in place and it is confusing.
Tesla planned that everything in the car would be automated, including driving. In such case people don't need a thought out UI and responsive controls and all that can be cut down to either save money or to focus on media entertainment for the passengers. That's why they replaced steering wheel with a yoke, buttons with screens etc. Unfortunately they forgot that car need to be fully automated first, and then redesigned later. Not the other way around.
Volume control is a very commonly used feature in cars. That should definitely should be a physical button. I drive a Lynk & Co (reskinned Volvo XC40) and it has a rotary knob on the center terminal for fan speed, temperature, and volume. Which are all within reach without me having to look or lean over. There's also a volume button on the steering wheel next to my thumb, which is great.
The only annoying part is that the left button pad on the wheel is the absolute worst. It's essentially a d-pad with a center press, but it's one single button cover. Which leads to a lot of wrong clicks.
But you are not legally required to use the volume control regularly in order to drive safely. You are not even legally required to have any kind of volume control in your car.
You are legally required to have and use the turn signals. You are legally required to have and use the windshield wipers (because you need to be able to see the road when it's raining). Same is true for the horn and hazard lights - those are safety-critical features, with their use at least partially regulated by law.
While I agree that volume control should be a physical button due to my personal taste, I would not go so far as to mandate it legally to be a physical button, with the reason being that it is not a safety-critical feature. The market can figure this out by itself. But for safety-critical features whose swift and correct use is mandated and regulated by law, I would absolutely mandate them to be provided to the user in a way that supports the swift and uninterrupting use expected from the driver, and that means: physical controls, placed reasonably reachable.
Volume control is pretty damn safety critical when the driver takes their eyes off the road to jab at the f&^king miserable touchscreen and accidentally wipes out your family.
Sir Issac Newton wrote down the laws about piloting a couple of ton of steel some time ago. Very unlikely to be repealed.
Every control that will be used by the driver for any purpose whilst the vehicle is in motion is safety critical.
That is true, but in that mind your kid in the back seat is safety-critical, so maybe we mandate no kids in the back? Or your wife next to you in the passenger seat, she could also make you remove your eyes from the road (happens quite a lot actually) - mandate no wifes in the passenger seat anymore?
You need to draw a line, otherwise really anything in your car can be safety-critical, you just need to imagine the right circumstances.
I would draw the line at the controls that are mandated by law. Every control mandated by law should not only be mandated to exist, but also be mandated to exist as a physical, easily reachable button.
Okay, that's at least limiting it somewhat. However, what about the setting for Bluetooth connectivity of the radio? It technically can be used while driving, and there's probably a non-zero count of people who have already used such a setting while driving to pair their phone or whatever. What about the time/date setting of the clock in your car? Same thing. Physical buttons for all of that?
I think you are doing a strawman here. Nobody but you is talking about "mandates", and then you go ridiculing imaginary mandates that nobody is defending.
Case: seat belts. First introduced in 1949, three-point seat belt invented in 1955, Saab made them standard in all their cars in 1958, Volvo in 1959 after being shown studies with fatalities. The first compulsory seat belt law was in 1970 (Victoria, Australia), and only began in the US in the 1980's (with great opposition).
Case: ABS. Patented anti-locks in 1930-ish, the modern ABS in 1971, the system was slowly introduced first in high-end models, soon in every model. The US only mandates ABS in cars since 2012, Europe since 2004 (for new cars). Read: all cars were already being sold with ABS in those dates, except for the cheaper and shittiest ones.
Case: Airbags. I skip the history there, because airbags are still not mandated anywhere. They are subject to some regulations, but you can technically build and sell a car without a single airbag in it.
My conclusion: we should not wait or even hope mandates do anything. In the car market we should do our own research and trust (to a point) car brand safety records and voluntary tests like NCAP, IIHS or NHTSA. If a brand doesn't give a shit about safety unless under a government mandate, don't buy that brand, because they are decades behind safety standards.
Mandates are not the bare minimum in safety, they are well below that. Take for example one of the lowest scores in the current NCAP: Lancia Ypsilon 2015, two stars. Still, they have (not mandated): two front airbags, two side head airbag, belt pretensioner, belt load limiter, belt reminder and ESC. Fear no more, even if we find today that kids in the back raises the death rate in a collision by 20%, we won't see it mandated until 2080 if ever, way after car makers figure out a solution by themselves.
Which country are you talking about? Airbags are mandatory because of the UN. https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/197...
and Euro NCAP chooses the cars indepently: https://www.euroncap.com/en/about-euro-ncap/the-car-selectio...
Or is it possible that you mix up the US regulation on a thread about EURO NCAP?
Your first link doesn't prove nothing, it has nothing to do with airbags being mandatory. According to this: https://autoily.com/when-did-airbags-become-mandatory/ , they are only mandatory in the US (my fault, sorry). Some countries, like India, are requiring ONE front airbag since 2019. The core of my message stands: car makers go way ahead the mandates. I don't recall any safety technology that ever banned or delayed a car model from the market, unlike for example emission regulations, that are announced with a deadline in a "by 2030 no car can emit more than X CO2 g/km, so you better comply or be banned" fashion. In Europe that kind of regulation is causing diesel cars to vanish from the market. Safety regulations are always after the fact: "it seems than 100% of the new cars already have seat belts. Lets make it mandatory", and are usually announced with "the UE would like all cars to have anti-collision alert mechanisms before 2025", signaling that maybe in 2030 they make it mandatory for the remaining 20% that still don't have it today.
About the NCAP, I don't understand your message. Maybe you understood that brands send their cars to NCAP voluntarely? What I meant was that NCAP is a voluntary non-profit organization, and they can't do much even if your car is a cofin with wheels other than giving it zero stars. It's not like they can ban your car from the market under safety motives, like a government could do if they want.
What happens with these non-mandatory programmes is that a manufacturer can give the programme money to buy their standard equipment vehicle and then the programme will buy the appropriate car from a dealer. The vast majority of vehicles are purchased this way.
This way they can't manipulate the vehicles being tested. The easiest way for your new 4954 model to get excellent NCAP scores is to make the actual 4954's people can buy from a dealer all good enough for excellent NCAP scores, the NCAP will just buy one and test it and it should score well because it's a 4954.
They were all physical buttons before touchscreens became the norm, so the slippery slope argument you’re making doesn’t really carry much weight.
You're being intentionally obtuse. Like everything else, this is a question of what options we have to make things safer. "Not allowing children in cars" isn't reasonable, because there isn't a simple alternative. Using controls that require less attention focus is reasonable.
You're looking at this from the wrong angle. We don't really want to mandate physical volume controls, because they're necessary. We want to ban touchscreen volume controls, because they're unsafe. If Tesla want to deal with this by having no volume control, that's fine! Good luck to them.
Touchscreens are not exactly the only way to construct a control in a way that's problematic to use when driving. You can just as well place a physical control in a hideous spot in the car, which you can't reach easily, hence making you as the driver bend over and search for the control. Also, physical controls don't necessarily mean that you can recognize them safely without looking at them - buttons can be physical, but still blend into their surroundings in a way that provides no real tactile feedback to your fingers when they find the button. I've seen crazy physical controls in cars that aren't much different from touchscreens with regard to their usability when driving, but still they were technically physical controls and would thus pass your "touchscreen ban".
If you want physical controls that actually are significantly safer to use than touchscreens, you need to lay down some ground rules for them as well (reachability, size of buttons, tactile difference from surroundings,...). And that rules out a "blacklist" approach (banning some particular undesired solution) and instead requires a "whitelist" approach (requiring a solution within a defined set of guidelines that constitute what's considered an acceptable solution).
Just make it like 90-second rule for aircraft escape chutes. The manufacturer has to prove the stock interface is reasonably safe.
It'll be exploited a lot, so the standards must be high enough, and implementations also must be continually scrutinized by independent neutral bodies.
And we know what comes of it; the industry consortium implementations pass the test with flying colors and it'll look like hugely unpalatable dinosaurs, while new entrants like Tesla struggle to even interpret the spec to follow. The consortium may also explicitly or implicitly ban Chromium based everything.
But at least it'll be safe.
Being able to use your phone to talk to people is not safety critical either. And yet, we make laws to lower the amount of physical interactions required with the phone while driving. Because people _do_ use them in ways that negatively impacts safety, both for themselves and other people on the road.
The question isn't whether or not the interface needs to be interacted with at times when it would be a safety issue. The question is whether or not the interface _will_ be interacted with in a way that would be a safety issue. And how much of a safety issue that is to _other_ people. And what better options there are to prevent those issues.
"People can use it responsibly" is not a viable strategy here, when the (many) bad actors injure and kill 3rd parties.
Is there a car without a physical volume control? Teslas have it on the steering wheel.
What really kills me is my wife's Civic has no pause button at all, physical or otherwise. And it autoplays media on your phone when you get in. Don't want your phone to play whatever random YouTube video you happened to click on hours ago? Gotta pick up your phone to pause it there. And this doesn't happen right away, oh no, it takes at least a minute into your drive for the Bluetooth to wake up.
We have a newer Mazda, and I thought it had the same issue, but the mute button causes Carplay to pause the audio.
Most MEB cars with the VW ID style center screen have a touch strip under the center screen to adjust volume. On earlier models this isn't even illuminated at night.
A Mercedes C-Class, 2023 model, also has no way to pause the music with physical buttons. It has a volume switch, and that clicks in, but doing the Airpod double click doesn't do anything. It just mutes the music.
Instead you have to either use a weird capacitive DPad to navigate the Android Auto interface, or click the screen. It's terrible for UX.
Fan controls are important to remove fog on the windows. I should be able to enable it without looking away the road.
If you live in a place where this is frequently required, in a Tesla you can put the defrost button on the shortcut bar at the bottom of the screen, where it only requires a quick glance to align your thumb to activate it. Which is actually easier than many cars with physical controls that may require multiple button presses and/or knob turns to configure all of the correct climate settings for defrosting in the current conditions.
Much easier to have a single physical button.
Overstated. It's at best marginally easier to hit a random physical button on the center console than to hit a single button on the bottom bar of a Tesla screen, where it is very easy to grab by design. I generally don't hit those physical buttons without at least a glance, and that's all it takes for the Tesla bottom bar buttons too.
This doesn't save the wiper situation, though, because that requires navigating menus. Clearly far worse than a physical control in that case.
You presumably typed this out on a keyboard of some sort.
Which one can you do more confidently and reliably without looking:
— hitting the "u" key on a physical keyboard without looking — hitting the "u" key on a touchscreen keyboard on your most used mobile device?
I can touch type and hit 'u' without looking, sure. But only if my hands start on the home row. This has no relevance for the situation under discussion. I cannot hit the 'u' key on a physical keyboard confidently and reliably without looking if it is mounted on the center console of a car and I am driving with my hands starting on the steering wheel. I always look to position my hand to hit those buttons. Meanwhile, the Tesla bottom bar buttons are far easier to hit than any key on my phone keyboard because they are much larger and mounted in a fixed position relative to me with a built in place to rest and align my hand. These situations are completely incomparable.
But but... in a car your hands always start on the wheel...
...which is nowhere near the center console, very much unlike the 'u' key's convenient position millimeters from the home row...
Be honest: when you reach for a physical button you might glance for 0.5 seconds or even less. Usually you'll try to reach it without looking, and only glance if for some reason you can't do it. You glance, reposition your hand, and operate the knob without looking.
When you try to use a touch screen, you look at it all the time. I've just tested: to unlock my phone I have to push a physical button on the right side, swipe up and then make an easy pattern. I can grab the mobile, orient it correctly and push the side button without looking or even thinking. But just to make the up swipe I look at the screen (I can force my self to not do it, with effort). But I'm unable to make the pattern without looking all the time I trace it. It's like the brain don't want or can create muscle memory for touch screens.
The keys have bumps to let you know when your hands are in the right place.
Similar affordances exist in many cars. Even where they don't; the much smaller amount of them makes remembering things like "the third button from the left mutes the audio" and finding it by touch entirely possible.
Look, I'm not trying to argue that touchscreens are useless or whatever — if you like your touchscreen, fine, whatever, your problem.
But claiming that they're _as easy_ to use without looking as button is just not believable.
There are knobs on the f and j key so you can find the home row without looking. Similarly, physical buttons in a car can be shaped in such a way that they allow for feeling your position.
Why touch screens should be an absolute no-go for anything safety adjacent: gloves. The overwhelming majority of touch screens just do _not_ work with the user wearing gloves.
If I get into a car and it's -20F out, last thing I want to be doing is removing my gloves to operate a fucking touch screen to turn on heater/defroster/defogger/wipers, etc. And I absolutely, definitely, without a doubt, do not want to have to be removing/putting gloves back on while actually driving to adjust anything.
Well, I'm the customer and I want physical buttons!
Edit: I had a car that used a touch screen feature to activate the heated windscreen - it was perfectly responsive, easy to find but I still hated it. Current car has a single physical button to turn on all relevant features with one press and I love it.
My electric car, a Zoé, have real buttons to toggle the defrost. I know what the buttons are like, so I can jut move my hand until I feel I'm on the right button. I don't need a "quick glance".
Properly defrosting/defogging the windows would be more than just a fan control. Ideally you want to ensure the AC compressor and heat are both running and you need to change the vent settings.
Far better to have a dedicated defrost button next to the driver's normal controls that does it all as a single toggle rather than have the driver make multiple adjustments. Which is what I have on both of my cars, one of which people complain about how it's just a giant touchscreen.
Tesla wiper? Just push the wiper button on the left stalk and you can cycle through the speed settings with the left funky switch (multi function button) in addition to the on screen display options that then pop up. Very easy to do.
Also this: https://youtube.com/shorts/3eKcDOHVZWc?si=-jL4o4Bhu-2y0ibj
Doesn't cover the left multi function button feature after short pressing the wiper button.
(Model 3, 2022, Australia).
Yes, they added this relatively recently. For the first few years I owned the car this was not possible. Also, guess what, it still sucks! More steps than a physical control, fiddly because of the short timeout, and still requires an extra step of looking at the touchscreen because you can't know which way to push the wheel without finding out the current setting. Is it on "Auto" or "Off"? They're at opposite ends of the menu. Acceptable for something less important like setting the A/C temperature; definitively not acceptable for something safety critical like wipers.
I had cars in which for the life of me I could not ever remember which part of which stalk controlled the wipers and which part controlled the lights. Ah, and then there are Volkswagen and Opel which had the light control as a wheel outside the wheel-drive, on the bottom left, and you had to take a hand off to modify it.
My point: just having physical controls doesn't mean it is easy or safe to use, if the layout sucks.
I haven't driven that many different cars in my life, but isn't it usually the stick on the same side as the driver's seat? Aka if the driver's seat is on the right, then the blinkers are on the right, and the other way around in left-seated cars?
I switch between Indonesia and EU fairly often and most cars I've driven followed that pattern as far as I can remember (maybe I just never noticed though)
My wife's car has a stalk that you can turn the end, turn the inside. It has a slide that moves up and down inside of the inside rotating part. The stalk can go up, or down, or double up. You can also pull the stalk towards you. It's bonkers.
Yeah but there might be 2 stalks on that side. Also in some car you need to pull the stalk down X positions, in others you have to rotate a crown, so it really depends.
The safest solution is to have properly working automatic wipers (UNLIKE current Tesla, where wipers are complete dogshit) so you just don't care. The same for lights.
I have a 2018 model x with a traditional wiper dial stalk and it almost never works. It has markings for 5 settings and most of the time it just ignores the setting you have it on. The auto setting doesn't seem to change the behaviour at all. My model 3 was annoying with the wipers on the touchscreen (mostly) but at least they worked consistently.
Controls should be standardized across cars.
Imagine that someone rents a car and is tired + every manufacturer has their own konami code, or secret button to start the wipers. That's how accidents happen.
That's just lame, sorry to say it. I'll start with the end by saying that most probably voice command won't work in a downpour, for the simple reason that downpours are usually associated with lots of noise that will cancel out your voice commands. And all the other "options" involve taking your eyes off the road and looking at a big screen in order to adjust wiper speed, all this while there's a potential downpour happening. That is a very big no from me. And, no, "automatic" wipers never do their job perfectly when it comes do downpours, you always have to adjust them in one way or another.
Granted, that guy that posted it was from Australia so that they probably don't have that sort of downpour problem over there (the same goes for places in the US like California or Texas).
The fog lights are much worse
How about the voice commands for these? ("Wipers 1-slash-4"). I just got my first Tesla, MYLR, and even though it's annoying not having the stalks given the rain sensor is absolute junk the voice command seems to work 98% of the time. The voice command is activated from a button on the steering wheel - it may require a network connection though. I haven't tried the fog lights, it may not have a command, but there's apparently a shortcut with the left stalk where you pull or push and a quick light menu comes up - 2 clicks instead of 1 but seems reasonable - I could never find my fog lights quickly enough on most of my previous cars anyway.
My only concern with the wipers would be for an emergency, ie the street washers drive by and suddenly I have no visibility, but for those situations I have the button on the left stalk that fires the wipers on demand.
why are so many people in the tech world obsessed with voice controls? Seriously, this is imperfect at best and definitely a downgrade from a physical button.
What is with this obsession?
Voice commands are absolutely crap and are never ever a substitute for actual controls. The device can't either hear you, mishears you, doesn't speak your language, doesn't understand your accent, doesn't understand your dialect, doesn't like the tone of your voice or just doesn't like your particular combination of words.
Highly doubt it considering that fog lights have very limited use compared to the windshield wiper.
Depends very much on where you live. Some people need them every other day, some may never use them at all. Certainly not "limited use" when you're in a mountainous region with regular fog.
To be fair, the new EVs have pretty good adaptive wipers. I have not found the bed to actually overwrite this yet.
Cars for 15-20 years have had good automatic wipers, they're just becoming more widely available now (and evs are generally in the price range where it's expected). Well... except for Tesla. They decided that a person can tell when wipers are needed just by using their eyes, so certainly they could save a buck or so and do it using just a camera.
Cars had it, because an ICE drive train is so cheap that in the price range you are talking about it's almost negligible. All the cost is in nice to have things like extra sensors for every tiny niche use case. Fast forward to BEV and suddenly the drive train eats such a large part of your cost budget that you are hard pressed to cut much of the fat of the ICE era.
Carmakers haven't stopped doing electric variants of ICE models because it's oh so difficult to put batteries where an engine, tank and gearbox used to be (it's not), they switched to dedicated BEV designs to have an opportunity to do a "cost reset" about their approach to all those little nice to have things they introduced in the late ICE era to maximise the price buyers were willing to pay for a given vehicle class. The BEV-specific base architecture certainly helps, but it's as much about the expectations reset. This certainly does not mean that they switch their rain sensor to the Tesla approach, they might actually end up cheaper cost-optimizing what they have and know, but BEV does mean looking at costs in a very different way than in the ICE era.
Not Teslas, unfortunately. The auto wipers are trash and always will be because Tesla refuses to add a dedicated sensor. It's a double whammy: handicapped auto mode and awful manual controls.
My Jeep Wrangler has a physical volume knob that may or may not elicit a change in volume when turned within the first 30 seconds of starting the car. Which can be literally deafening if you had on e.g. a podcast at 75% volume when you turned the car off and it turned back on to the radio. Some of these things need a dedicated circuit.
The 2022 Acura MDX has that too, but it's not a "may or may not", it just doesn't. Thankfully they fixed it in the 2023 model, but I still don't understand why it's not fixed in the 2022 model since it's obviously software and both get OTA updates.
I can’t believe that Tesla still ships cars without a center-press horn button.
I own a Model S Plaid, and the horn button’s location on the yoke can generally only be reached by the driver’s right hand. Even more dangerous, its position in space changes dramatically any time you are in the middle of a turn. The horn button is not easy to press in an emergency.
Same story with the turn signals.
If you are in the middle of a turn and you have rotated the yoke 180-degrees, your turn signal buttons are now upside-down, and on the other side of the yoke. I have owned my car for a year and a half, and there are still times when I have to look at the yoke mid-turn to figure out which turn signal button is which.
So stupid.
It was -27f/-33c this morning when I started my car. At those temperatures ALL touchscreens generally become slow and unresponsive, especially when wearing mittens. I want the defrost/fan/temperature controls on a physical switch. I also don't want a screen that isn't happy unless it is getting a full 12v/14v. Not all car batteries will give that when cold. Frankly, I'd be happy with a series of valves ... anything other than a touchscreen.
Fyi, automatic wipers are a nightmare in winter. It is very easy for them to break if caked in snow. Standard procedure being to start the car first and let it warm up as you remove the snow and ice. So you need them to be on a physical switch to ensure they are off prior to turning the car on.
I want at the least a physical recirculate/bring air from outside button.
The use case is coming up behind a vintage truck that was made before they even thought of pollution standards on a winding mountain road where you can't overtake and you need to pay attention to the road. And you also need to set the a/c to recirculate before you suffocate.
For audio... with radio dying or dead I guess you can just run Spotify the whole trip. I'd still like volume and mute buttons.
Let's check all those items with the Tesla Model 3 2024 manual
To engage a turn signal, press the corresponding arrow button on the left side of the steering wheel. (The buttons move on the Highland steering wheel)
Turn signals: To turn on the hazard warning flashers, press the button on the drive mode selector located on the overhead center. All turn signals flash. Press again to turn off.
Hazard lights: Overhead console drive mode selector with arrow pointing to hazard warning light button in the middle.
If a severe crash is detected by your vehicle, the hazard warning flashers will automatically turn on and flash quickly to increase visibility. Pressing the hazard warning flashers once will return the lights to their normal cadence. Pressing a second time turns all hazard warning flashers off.
To sound the horn, press and hold the center pad on the steering wheel.
You can access wiper settings by touching the wiper button on the steering wheel
Press the wiper button on the steering wheel to wipe the windshield.
Press and hold the wiper button to spray washer fluid onto the windshield. After releasing the button, the wipers perform two additional wipes then, depending on vehicle and environmental conditions, a third wipe a few seconds later. You can also press and hold the wiper button for a continuous spray of washer fluid—the wipers perform the wipes after you release.
Whenever you press the wiper button on the steering wheel, the touchscreen displays the wiper menu, allowing you to adjust wiper settings. Press the left scroll button on the steering wheel left or right to choose your desired setting.
Off/Auto/Intermittent slow/fast/Continuous slow/fast
My 2015 Model S has a stalk with a rotary switch for wiper control that includes several automatic and manual modes and speeds.
But I was loaned a Model 3 when my Model S was being repaired and I hated it because most of the stalks had been removed making things like cruise control and the radio much more awkward to use.
Even if I wouldn't be hating Musk for his position re actual freedom and his apparent respect for murderous dictators, these moves would solidly cement Tesla as a company I wouldn't buy a car from.
Stupid, arrogant moves nobody asked for pushed down the throats of unsuspecting users. A colleague's model 3 died during rain (apparently its such a solidly built car that a bit more than normal amount of rain can kill it for good, got replaced without questions which indicates this is a well known issue). Newer version didn't have physical turn signals. He was almost crying, an early adopter with a lot of love for the company that evaporated in an instance. Its not every day that car manufacturer actively tries to increase chances of people getting killed and acts like all is fine.
What's the difference between "physical turn signal controls" and "physical buttons with haptic feedback"?
I'm going one step further and arguing that if a function has no physical control, it's not essential but just a distraction and should be done away with.
Why? What's the difference? You fiddle with these as well while you're driving, and they're also dangerous and distracting.
No just make buttons. Screens can hickup, scroll weird, etc. also you don't get any tactile feedback.
I don't wan't a touchscreen keyboard on my laptop, and the travel is already small enough - i say bring back tactility! The dead cold glass orb has destroyed so much.