For the first time in 28 years of JD Power’s car owner survey, there is a consecutive year-over-year decline in satisfaction, with most of the ire directed toward in-car infotainment.
I absolutely refuse to buy a car where the only thing in the dash is a single big touchscreen. This is a really cheap and lazy way to design a car. It’s not fancy or futuristic. It’s turning an engineering problem into a cheap software problem. Any feature that controls some aspect of the physical car such as AC, headlights, turn signal, seat placement, side mirrors, etc… should all be physical buttons with some tactile feedback. The only thing that is acceptable as a screen is information display and controlling entertainment.
If electric vehicles 10 years from now don’t re-engineer buttons, dials and knobs into their cars I am just going to walk 30 miles every day.
The touchscreens are cheaper, that's the main reason they are becoming common. Honda has already realized they are an issue, and has been going back to physical buttons.
The horrifying part is that often physical buttons are mere affectations now anyway, and instead everything is still controlled by the central computer system. Like I was comparing Hondas to Subarus and while the latter had physical buttons where the former had touchscreens, whenever the computer is busy then e.g. the volume knob still gets entirely ignored. I still like it better, but it is not really better, instead it just "looks different".
As far as I'm concerned the man point is tactile feedback. I don't want to have to take my eyes off the road to switch between screens and find the right menu item to turn on the AC while I'm driving.
Not only do I not want to sort through menus, I don’t like the thought of every other driver in the other lane having to sort through menus if they get too hot or cold.
In that case then, yes Subaru has you covered. They do seem extremely well-designed to me. Like my mother was saying do not get a car with a light-colored interior b/c it can distract you as the sun shines on it while driving, and my brother was saying do not get a car with a dark-colored one b/c dropped items can get lost extremely easily, but Subarus have the best of both worlds, with light coloration down below and dark coloration up above. There are SO many aspects like that, which I very much appreciate! It is all plastic, so like not a Tesla or anything like that (which I consider very much a good thing imho), but the overall look & feel & design aspects to it are very well-made. Like the tactile knobs.
I can just use the volume knob on the steering wheel with my thumb to control volume or mute music, but if I’m parked and want to listen to a specific song it’s fine that I go poking around on the touchscreen to do that.
I can use the ‘mode’ button to switch to the radio or Spotify, but if I want to set up Spotify with my account details I need to use the touchscreen.
The touchscreen lets you easily expose rarely used, complicated functions. Things you need to do while driving need to be buttons.
Mazda has had it figured out in my opinion for years with their dial setup. Most of the important stuff is on the wheel itself, but you can control the entire center console with an easy scroll dial and like 4 buttons surrounding it, and all the traditional stuff has physical buttons right near it. Their cars have other drawbacks, but the interior design just makes sense to me.
The Mazda system was a complete deal breaker for me. You have to locate the hotspot on the screen, then fiddle with the knob to get it over the right spot, then select. Way more aggravating than a touch screen.
If you use Carplay or Android Auto, it reverts to a touch screen anyway. The whole system was a muddle.
Lexus and Audi have both dropped their puck controllers due to customer feedback.
Driven a few Mazda 3's and the wheel / button placement is great. Lots of things within fingers reach. One thing I'm not keen on is the sports mode button, that should totally be on the steering wheel, where right now it's on the middle dashboard.
I guess the idea is you want people to think about switching this mode on/off so it disincentives them doing it all the time maybe?
Another bump for Mazda. Their recent engines are phenomenal as well. Really well made naturally aspirated 4 cylinder with a normal 6 speed automatic. They drive fantastic and feel very well engineered. No more cheap ford parts. Best bang for your buck right now in my opinion.
My biggest gripe is that they are incredibly distracting to use while driving. The safety implications are huge. I hate on-screen buttons. On top of that most are poorly coded and run slowly.
For that reason alone, I'm surprised they're even as normal as they are. Yes, absolutely, what I want to be doing when I'm driving is removing my eyes from the road so I can poke ineffectually at a flat screen way over to the side. Buttons I can't even feel for. Fantastic development. But I can watch Shrek in my car now.
I don't understand distracted driving laws, yet somehow those screens become a thing. If I have a tablet near me while driving, I can get pulled over and fined.
Now put the temperature controls, fan, and all the essentials into a screen with menus to navigate, and with terrible scroll-bars and finger response, and that's supposed to be okay?
The big problem is this custom dash crap. If they kept the screen to a normal double-din slot people could customize with what they want from the after market head units. But instead manufactures seem to be focused on designing the main unit in such a way that it cannot be replaced or upgraded, rendering the entire dash useless.
No, because there is already a standard that worked for decades until it suddenly didn't. The old standard is fine and doesn't need a new one, just a return to actually being used.
A couple years ago I had a salesman try to use the "bigger screen" as the big selling point for going up in trim. I asked him why the hell would I want to take my eyes off the road to look at the screen while I'm driving. He said it was safer because I could see more, then I asked if that mean the cheaper trim didn't have the same safety standards as the more expensive one.
So anyway, the wife "convinces" me to buy the more expensive trim...
I enjoy using Apple CarPlay with the exception that they won't allow their native weather app. For years I wondered why, and I found out Apple didn't want a driver to use the app because they determined weather maps too distracting.
Mazda is number one for control system, by a wide margin.
Everything about the dial system is easier to use, faster, and more intuitive than any touchscreen in a car will ever be. Besides inputting addresses into navigation, I don’t have to look down for extended periods to do anything in the car. Volume, play/pause, navigation, audio input sources, and favorites are all right there.
And HVAC controls being real buttons are absolutely necessary and fantastic in my car. Those touchscreen controls for volume and HVAC are so dangerously difficult to use.
I'm with the "Touchscreen for GPS or Phone mirroring", physical knobs for EVERYTHING else. My Jetta has a physical button for changing the song on the wheel. It's got physical knobs for temperature control and lights. I mirror the phone for GPS and music and never use the touchscreen otherwise.
I really like the all screen infotainment idea, but the implementation is always shitty. Part is because they still won't fully commit to the strengths of the interface, and part is cost. Well, screens are much cheaper now. No need to settle for a 5 inch shit tier TN panel. I want a big, honkin, high contrast, ambient light modulated brightness screen with a minimal set of buttons to switch the interface between tasks.
Personally, I HATE every dial system I've ever used and miss my old Prius's touch screen. It had nice, big on-screen buttons and almost all functionality duplicated through the steering wheel. Instead of hitting a button 20 times or spinning a dial 2.24123 rotations to select the option I wanted, it was 2 taps. No rubberbanding around my intended selection or trying to compensate for whatever acceleration algorithm they used.
Right now, I have a trackpad on the center console and I hate it. The acceleration is bizarre. It snaps the some elements, but seems to not like others. It miss clicks because I bump it or something partially rests on it. Every time I use it, I have to get a feel for where I'm touching it - am I off in a corner, on the edge, in the middle.
Simply adding some dynamic buttons like a Streamdeck (little screens on each button) would solve many of the problems. Have the function and image change with the domain you're customizing (Audio, AC, etc.). After that, allow more customization of the elements within each domain. Maybe some of them need to step up their steering wheel buttons game.
There's also the subtle muscle memory advantage to screens. Screen of buttons, you have to still look at the target, reach to the target, and activate the switch. In the case of dials, you have to performs a different action to undo an error. You never get to repeat the proper initial action - turning to the right selection based on feedback of success. With touch controls, most errors either resolve by repeating the motion you intended correctly, or moving back a screen/reverting an element and repeating the intended motion.
I think many people assume that the tactile feedback of running your fingers over the buttons matters. In reality, I don't see many people do that. The feedback of a selection or click is nice, but by now everyone's had gummy keyboards, cheap electronics, and a bunch of different button-covered devices. That click confirmation isn't anywhere near as reliable as audio cues. Hell, there can be 10 different types of buttons in the car with varying resistances and actuation distances.
Oh, and I'd like to se a study testing if the presence of constant, slow animations are less distracting that static images for consoles. I think a large part of the distraction is how sudden things can change on a screen. Like loading the next music track changes the time marker, the album art, etc. It you become accustomed to perceiving motion in that location, it may reduce the urge to orient to sudden changes.
I could give two shits about the infotainment dash. What I hate is the idea of a car having 8 computers that require a $3000 device to talk to them for troubleshooting. It's bad enough having an ECM, PCM, TCM, and BCM. Most of which I can barely access with my OBD2 reader.
Not keen on cars with an over reliance on central displays for everything. Having a single unit controlling so many things that could easily be switches, dials or other things feels pretty dangerous.
Everything you need should be within hands reach, or easily adjustable without having to fiddle through displays
Not keen on cars with an over reliance on central displays for everything. Having a single unit controlling so many things that could easily be switches, dials or other things feels pretty dangerous.
I guess a lot of cars are putting most of their controls behind infotainment systems. I know a lot of the EVs do this (Tesla, and Chevy for certain), so I think it's more a backlash against that.
I don't have any of that in my car, except for Apple CarPlay, and I'm fairly satisfied with it. My previous car had OnStar, and that included built in navigation, satellite radio, and wifi. Quite frankly, with the exception of the emergency services OnStar has, I don't miss the rest of it, and I'm sure as hell glad I don't have to access climate control and other options thorugh a touchscreen. Fuck that.
Amen. Give me knobs! I can adjust volume, station, temperature, fan speed, wiper speed, and my headlights without looking away from the road.
Really tempted to swap for a system with phone integration for the maps, but not if I sacrifice safety. I’ll just keep using my dash mount for my phone!
I had a 2019 Jetta GLI. I set the temperature the day I got it and never bothered fiddling with it in the 4 years I had it. The fan speed and airflow looked after itself just fine. Temperatures here swing between -35 to +35, so it's not like we don't have variability.
It had rain sensing wipers and automatic headlights which worked perfectly. It did have physical controls for those, but I only used the wash and high-beam switches.
It had built in navigation, but I tended to use Apple Carplay and Google maps and Spotify for music.
Now that version of the Jetta had physical controls for heated/cooled seats, HVAC and audio functions. I just never used them aside from the seat heat/cool.
It also had a pile of redundant controls on the steering wheel. That's where I controlled volume or selection.
I have the 35th Anniversary Edition. Absolutely one of the best cars I've ever owned. It's almost perfect, and I love driving it. It's exactly how you explained.
Some manufacturers are rolling back on this shit. Hyundai for a lot of hate and pushback for putting everything in the touchscreen on some cars and I assume they sold worse. They’re moving back to physical controls.
I like touchscreen controls for touchscreen functions. I have an Audi from 2019 when they were (I assume) trying for a best of both worlds approach using a touchless screen with console mounted controls including a weird touchpad and a control wheel. I might not want to drill through multiple menus to turn the ac up, but I do want to control my audio by tapping a screen rather than fiddling with console controls that require me to scroll through every available on screen widget with a scroll wheel.
My 2019 GLI has some of that; the radio controls are on the touchscreen, as well as some other functions for safety, drive mode, etc. but climate controls, cruise, lights, etc. are all manual. Thank God. Most of the touchscreen options related to the car are not available when driving…thank god again.
I test drove a Volt, and almost everything was on the touchscreen. Did not like. There is a comfortable medium. You’re right, no one wants to navigate through a bunch of menus when a knob does it so much easier, AND it’s so much safer.
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