I’m kind of surprised that car technology is so awful. How the fuck am I paying $35k for a car and they’re still like “lets run the UI off a potato via the least responsive touch screen possible”? At some point I’d rather they just gave up on providing a UX themselves and just ran everything through Android Auto.
I don’t mind having a UI for things like navigation or android auto. What gets me is why do things like climate control need to be buried in a UI? If my windscreen starts to steam up mid-jourmey, the last thing I need is to take my attention off the road to change the climate settings in the UI where dials and buttons will do the job much faster without needing to take my attention off the road.
Yes! I hate having everything in the UI. I’d much prefer a physical control set for A/C and even basic volume control at least.
You can’t sense a flat touch screen, but we are really good at sensing knobs and switches. It’s much safer for the driver to feel for a control rather than look at it.
My 09 VW CC has knobs for bass, treble, and mid, in addition to volume. Seat heaters, AC, everything is tactile and I can operate anything without looking.
I know it’s manufacturers wanting to save money, but it’s so annoying that we’re going backwards. Touchscreen is a form of input. Just because it’s higher tech doesn’t mean it should replace tactile inputs in all applications ffs.
If my windscreen starts to steam up mid-jourmey, the last thing I need is to take my attention off the road to change the climate settings in the UI where dials and buttons will do the job much faster without needing to take my attention off the road.
This is why ill never get rid of my 2009 Tacoma. Three knob AC controls are the pinnacle of UI engineering. One knob for fan speed, one for temp and the third for vent/airflow selection. The backlight on one of my knobs has burned out at this point, but i dont need it…Can adjust the AC without taking my eyes off the road.
When it was ubiquitous, this meant i could do this in any car. Borrowed my inlaws FORD F-150 once, had to pull over to figure out how to turn off the goddam heat. It had BOTH a touchscreen and series of dash buttons but there were so many it was hard to figure out what did each thing while driving. I also had to update their dang infotainment, it wouldnt work on some random USB device, i had to go get a USB-A 3.0 device to get it to work at all and even then it was idling in my driveway for an hour and a half. Even tried just doing it via WiFi…nope
Just FYI, it might be pretty easy to replace the back lights. You can even get LED ones. Word of warning though, if the bulbs are built such that the polarity can be reversed, they’ll only work in one orientation. This is due to the nature of how LEDs work. I had to redo mine because I didn’t win all 3 coin flips when I installed them
Yeah it’s not too bad. Just the dash kit is fairly old and held together by those plastic clip. I always break those things. It’s a juice isn’t worth the squeeze honestly. I actually upgraded my radio a while back to a wireless CarPlay/android auto and mean to ask them to swap em. But forgot.
Yeah, my 2017 KIA has a touch screen for controlling navigation, radio, android auto etc. but climate control is controlled with buttons and dials like you described. It’s modern enough to the point it feels safer than an older vehicle might, but I don’t think I want a vehicle more modern than this.
I’m kind of surprised that car technology is so awful. How the fuck am I paying $35k for a car and they’re still like “lets run the UI off a potato via the least responsive touch screen possible”? At some point I’d rather they just gave up on providing a UX themselves and just ran everything through Android Auto.
I don’t mind having a UI for things like navigation or android auto. What gets me is why do things like climate control need to be buried in a UI? If my windscreen starts to steam up mid-jourmey, the last thing I need is to take my attention off the road to change the climate settings in the UI where dials and buttons will do the job much faster without needing to take my attention off the road.
Yes! I hate having everything in the UI. I’d much prefer a physical control set for A/C and even basic volume control at least.
You can’t sense a flat touch screen, but we are really good at sensing knobs and switches. It’s much safer for the driver to feel for a control rather than look at it.
My 09 VW CC has knobs for bass, treble, and mid, in addition to volume. Seat heaters, AC, everything is tactile and I can operate anything without looking.
I know it’s manufacturers wanting to save money, but it’s so annoying that we’re going backwards. Touchscreen is a form of input. Just because it’s higher tech doesn’t mean it should replace tactile inputs in all applications ffs.
This is why ill never get rid of my 2009 Tacoma. Three knob AC controls are the pinnacle of UI engineering. One knob for fan speed, one for temp and the third for vent/airflow selection. The backlight on one of my knobs has burned out at this point, but i dont need it…Can adjust the AC without taking my eyes off the road.
When it was ubiquitous, this meant i could do this in any car. Borrowed my inlaws FORD F-150 once, had to pull over to figure out how to turn off the goddam heat. It had BOTH a touchscreen and series of dash buttons but there were so many it was hard to figure out what did each thing while driving. I also had to update their dang infotainment, it wouldnt work on some random USB device, i had to go get a USB-A 3.0 device to get it to work at all and even then it was idling in my driveway for an hour and a half. Even tried just doing it via WiFi…nope
Just FYI, it might be pretty easy to replace the back lights. You can even get LED ones. Word of warning though, if the bulbs are built such that the polarity can be reversed, they’ll only work in one orientation. This is due to the nature of how LEDs work. I had to redo mine because I didn’t win all 3 coin flips when I installed them
Yeah it’s not too bad. Just the dash kit is fairly old and held together by those plastic clip. I always break those things. It’s a juice isn’t worth the squeeze honestly. I actually upgraded my radio a while back to a wireless CarPlay/android auto and mean to ask them to swap em. But forgot.
Yeah, my 2017 KIA has a touch screen for controlling navigation, radio, android auto etc. but climate control is controlled with buttons and dials like you described. It’s modern enough to the point it feels safer than an older vehicle might, but I don’t think I want a vehicle more modern than this.
This is the way
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