Is there life after knobs, buttons and switches are all gone?

i think not. at least for us oldsters. next gens will have no problem.

on the plus side, self driving cars will be here before martha hits the fan.

 

I have no problem using a touchscreen for all controls. it is fairly easy to build muscle memory of where things are, the difference is you need to know the context of the screen which is also pretty easy.

 

The buttons especially on the left side of the steering wheel can be used to invoke voice commands in addition to other functions; they obviate the need to linger on the touch screen, which I agree is a PITA, probably concocted by some Apple derelict who is bent on venting his rage on us oldsters!! We prefer actual controls, which tend to be more direct, and less prone to confusing the Alzheimerish minds of folks like me! I think that voice commands, however, could be mastered by the chronologicaly challenged!!

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Plus trim has buttons.

Bob Wilson

 

and now it's time to update your profile

 

Two words: surface haptics.

-Chap

 

Yeah this is one of my pet peaves. Using a cell phone while driving is illegal, but there's a Jesus-great one front and centre in the dash, sucking in more and more of the essential controls. All the eggs in one basket..

Bring back detented knobs and sliders, drop kick the MFD off the end of the driveway.

 

I worry about pure touchscreen controls after my experience with the failure of the center display in my 2004 Prius. It serverely limited our ability to control the A/C, radio, etc. (we had to rely on the steering wheel controls), and prevented us from seeing info about the hybrid system and mpg.

One of the big reasons that we preferred it.

 

IMO the only real improvement Toyota could have made with the 11.6 screen setup would have been to add a fan switch similar to the temperature switch, allowing the driver to bypass the screen entirely. That, and relocating the awful placement of the seat heater buttons.....

 

Life doesn’t begin until you reduce the thousand of buttons, switches and levers in most cars to the half dozen or so in the Model 3.
Every time I buy a car I have to adjust to the controls.
It took me less time to get used to the Tesla vehicles I have owned, than any other.

 

A fan knob and a volume control knob would be nice. Just so I could go zero to 10 instantly. Press press press is just tedious.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Being in Minnesota, I find that the touch screen doesn't work when you're wearing gloves. Not a good design for the Winter Wonderland states!

 

Why would manufacturers being going to touch-screens? Consumer demand, or it's cheaper/easier for them?

 

Good question!
There are a number of advantages. One, more and more cars are using some sort of display, either for navigation or information display. There is a limited amount of space available for displaying this, so moving hardwired switches, sliders and dials allows for a larger display.
A larger display makes for a more useful navigation screen.

Two, what does a manufacturer do if they want to move a button, or change a switch to a slider? With traditional controls they redesign and come out with a new layout/functionality every 4-6 years. With a screen, it can be done with a visit to the dealer or even OTA.

Three, it is easier for the manufacturer to make improvements.

Four, it is easier on some drivers.

Five, it is easier to automate software than hardware.

There are drawbacks as well. If the UI isn't good, the results can be awful. Implementation is king.

 

Mr. Leisk, I think that the "Dazzle", "Wow" effect from consumers when they first see a large screen in the car is probably another big factor. Manufacturers have found that clients initially think the "Big Screen" is great! People who have "first-looked" inside my Advanced ALWAYS comment favorably about the Big Screen. Wow, Dazzle!
Living with the thing is an entirely different story. I bought my Advanced in spite of the Big Screen, and have learned to "Navigate" around it using voice commands which I greatly prefer. I love the Rear Alerts, the Side Alerts, my owner-installed Peasant Alert Beeper, the cruise control is great (although I almost never use it!), the headlights are WONDERFUL, voice commands for phone/radio/climate control are very good, I don't know what seat or steering wheel heaters are, but I miss my knobs and buttons! I think that it's much easier and cheaper for the manufacturers to use this technology, as stated by another poster, however, the design and implementation of these screens has a long way to go to becoming a real replacement for buttons and knobs. Keep It Simple Stupid, the KISS approach, yields the best engineering!

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Voice recognition systems aren't good enough yet to truly eliminate the need for controls like buttons, dials and switches. Not everything needs to be on touchscreens, and not everyone needs a mobile phone.

User interfaces are hard. I have to deal with people who can't figure out how to turn on the awful flip phones company makes. Some people should just keep their landlines...



Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Duh, what's a landline?! Is that something spoken by a shifty real estate broker? You can't mean a terrestrial cable physically attached to a stationary telephonic device; I haven't seen one of those things since my last visit to the L.A. County Museum of Natural History, eons ago!

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I know people that have them. I haven't had a landline or VoIP for at least 15 years, it's been cell/WiFi calling or VoLTE for me. Thanks, T-Mobile!

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One of the advantages of cell phones, is also the reduced number of unsolicited PITA calls received vs landlines; some friends with landlines complain that they receive daily nuisance calls on their home phones. Of course, crooks are working very hard to bring parity to cell phones!

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