The case for knobs over touch screens.

Our other car, Pathfinder Hybrid which my wife is the primary driver also have the key-less entry and push button start, but I often forget to put the gear in PARK before shutting off the car. With Prius, I made a habit of just pushing START button to shut off the car without bothering to hit the PARK button.

 

We have gotten very used to the SKS system working flawlessly on our 2012 hatchback, and I particularly enjoy keeping the key fob in a zipped-shut pants pocket, so no more losing the key! BUT, last week I came out of a building after a doctor’s appointment, walked over to the car, tried to get in, and the SKS system would NOT open the rear hatch no matter how hard I pushed the button and yanked on it. Frustrated, I told spouse we might need a new 12-volt battery. Then I noticed the license plate was yellow rather than white, and realized I had been trying to enter a stranger’s absolutely identical gray Gen3 Prius parked about 3 spaces nearer to the door of the building than our car! How embarrassing.

 

LOL. I've done the exactly the same thing myself in nearby Walmart parking lot. For my PRIME two years ago, when it just came out.

 

Would you buy one that had no knobs on the dash but steering wheel controls?

I find the absence on my Fit, makes little difference, since both on my Prius, and my Fit, I mostly used the steering wheel controls.

 

I've never been much of a fan of steering wheel controls beyond steering, horn & cruise.

I couldn't tell you what functions are on the wheel mounted buttons of our car because I never use them. Well, I know the trip meter button is there because I had to go looking for it last week as part of the maintenance-required reset procedure after changing the oil.

I like tactile controls that don't move around just because I'm trying to stay in my lane.

And just to make it clear- I don't mind a touchscreen as a duplicate of a real control, and I'd be fine with a touchscreen as an exclusive method of control in the extreme sense: no steering wheel or pedals allowed in that hypothetical car.

 

I'm a great fan of steering wheel controls - easy to find, no reaching necessary, eyes stay on the road. I miss the steering wheel climate controls that were on my 2009 Prius. Having to take my eyes off the road merely to get the fan to blow is ridiculous!

 

You know you can control essential AC functions using only the steering wheel switches and MID display on the dash? You can change the temperature, Recirc/Fresh air selection, fan speed, Normal/Eco mode selection, and S-FLOW mode selection. One essential function missing is the AC on/off. If you want to turn on or turn off the AC, the 11.6 inch display must be used. I use the steering wheel switches control for AC all the time keeping my screen turned off if I don't need to turn on and off the AC.

 

Yes, I know about the screen scrolling, but I find that distracting as well because I am not accustomed to them and was spoiled by the steering wheel functionality of my '09, which did not have the MID display. Also, I don't think you can turn the fan on or off from the MID, can you?

 

I don't know how Gen2 implemented the steering wheel switches, but I don't remember ever using steering switches to control AC on my previous Gen3. You are correct that MID display is still some distraction, but not as much as looking down on the touch screen. And yes, you are correct that you CAN NOT turn on or off the fan (or AC) only to adjust the fan from 1 to 7.

 

Couldn't turn fan on from steering wheel, but you could turn AC Auto on or off, and temperature could be adjusted. I have no problem with the temperature button on the Prime, which is easily accessible from the side of the screen. I suppose I could use voice commands, but that is even more frustrating than the display screen!




Life was simpler then...

 

Buttons and knobs beat touch screen EVERY time. I don't care if they are well designed touch screen as in Tesla. It is just human to operate things by tactile queues. This touch screen obsession is really bad, but there is nothing we can do about it. It's called PROGRESS. Our ancestors were probably protesting against electricity and auto locomotion in a similar way. I must be a dinosaur. I love knobs and buttons (they too need to be well designed and executed, BTW). The day s of those things are over and now they only appear in an upscale gear. Oh, you want a knob on your HVAC system in the car? That'll be $1000s extra (BMW, Mercedes, etc.)

 

Not all mechanical controls are that great either. My favourites are large/tactile knobs and slider, with detents you can detect by a feel, and a limitted number of positions, say five maximum.

A row of uniform buttons, with little pictograms, or an LCD display showing which is selected, is just about as bad as a touch-screen.

Our 2010 Canadian Touring doesn't have a touch-screen, but it's Heating/Ventilating system is bad none the less: lots of uniform buttons, small, hard-to-find* rocker switches for fan speed and temp, LCD displays you need to study for feedback, everything arm's length off to the right. I give my wife fits when I'm trying to adjust something on a windy road, at night.

It's just common sense: if a control requires your full attention for protracted number of seconds, it's bad.

* Regarding hard-to-find: sure, if you look down and to the right, for a second or two, you can find it. but it takes that time, and then you have to keep looking at it as you reach over, get your fingers on the tiny control. Then you have to push it and look at an LCD display for feedback, process that, then maybe another push, and another check of the LCD. All this takes time, with your eyes and attention off the road.

 

Well, I did something much more surprising with an actual key. I walked out of the store right up to my garnet red 1985 Dodge Omni Charger. Put the key in, unlocked the door (the knob popped up), climbed inside and put the key in the ignition. It wouldn't turn. I'm like what the heck? Maybe the steering wheel has the tranny locked? I turned the wheel a bit but no go. I start looking around and didn't see my sunglasses on the passenger seat, but there was a bunch of papers and stuff that weren't mine. IT WASN'T MY CAR! Mine was 3 down the same aisle. I got out of there in a hurry!

 

Gosh, I seem to have a very different approach borrowed from the aviation domain: when I am Pilot-In-Command, I focus totally on vehicle position and velocity control plus situational awareness of the traffic situation in front, both sides, and the rear (in aircraft that includes above and below). ALL other functions are executed by yelling instructions at the Second-In-Command who also functions as Navigator as we only have a 2-person cockpit. (Yes, it is a miracle that we are still married!)
Re our ancestors protesting “progress”: When Edison electric lightbulbs were replacing gas lighting in urban America in the late 1800s, the light the new bulbs produced was much brighter and harsher than the typical gas lamps, so our ancestors started covering them with lampshades. In particular , they favored stained-glass lampshades tinted yellow that would better mimic the light spectrum of the old gas lamps, and that gave Louis Tiffany and his cohorts a thriving consumer base to sell commercial stained-glass.lampshades!
Finally, thanks to those of you who fessed up to also trying to drive off with the wrong car. Don’t feel too badly, though—my Second-In-Command once came out of a gas station and jumped into the passenger side of a gray Prius-like sedan, the guy in the driver’s seat calmly looked at her and said, “Lady, I think you have the wrong car!” I was laughing so hard when she got back to our car that I had to sleep on the couch that night.

 

I have to agree with you on the voice commands. The gen2 wheel switches does look more sophisticated than current version on PRIME. I do like the dedicated buttons for AC.

 

My '07 Prius is my first car from 21st century. My previous newest car was made in 1998 by Volvo. I must say that with that video game screen controlling almost everything in the car I was afraid I would hate it, but in reality after having lived with it for over 2 years now, I only dislike it in some cases. My biggest gripe is the HVAC controls, of course. The design language of the car says: use the steering wheel controls, everything you need to do is there. I think Toyota meant the AC to be on all the time in the car and for the user to just control the temperature. My use case is a bit different. I want AC only occasionally. I want it when there is rain and it's warm enough to fog up my interior, I want it when it's hot outside and I am driving on a highway at highways speeds. The rest of the time I prefer the HVAC to stay on low speed fan, AC off and air selector pointing to feet. I can not do this from the steering wheel if I am say at highway speeds and get off highway and have a length of road at urban/suburban speeds. I want to switch from auto 74 degrees to AC off, fan lo, air to feet. In my previous century car I could do this by feel without taking my eyes off the road. The controls were laid out in such a way as to allow this and that was very obviously by design. Someone thought this through. In my Prius I have to go to the video game screen, switch it from driving video game to HVAC screen, and push some non-existing buttons that have neither shape nor feedback. I don't know about you, but I can't do that without looking and focusing on the screen. If the later generation Prius is any worse than this, then it's a non-starter for me as far as UI. Sure, I have learned work arounds for this such as just press AC Auto on/off on the steering wheel and that turns off the AC (as well as fan, which I do not want to turn off, I want it on LOW). Then when I am at a stop light or some other opportune moment I do the screen manipulations. For me that's a downgrade in UI over a 1998 oldie. I love my gen Prius, I really do. I think so many things were gotten "right" on it! But this obsession with video game consoles for everything really bugs me.

My other car right now is 2006 Toyota Matrix. With some small notable minor flaws it has an excellent HVAC UI. It is simple, can be read by touch, is super simple and does everything the "fancy" Prius HVAC can do. Here is the picture of it.

 

Hitting "AUTO" is the only way to turn the system on, if I'm not mistaken? That in itself is a bit frustrating: you're forced to set the system to AUTO, then reestablish any and all overrides.

As an alternative, an "ON" button, that switched things back on, as previously set, would be kinda nice.

 

That's exactly right. this is what I mean by design language. I feel like the engineers are speaking to me via design. Hit, auto, dial in your temperature and forget about it. That's the intent according to the language. And it works fine for most cases. As I said, I am only mildly annoyed sometimes as opposed to hating it. The rest of the car certainly makes up for these little follies. However, three knobs and two buttons on the Matrix replace the ENTIRE Prius HVAC UI and make it much more user friendly for someone like myself. There is no auto and I really don't miss it, though I like it well enough on the Prius. I am okay with most of the choices Auto makes, but when I want to switch to manual (as in driving with windows open, which I love to do), then things get a bit more complicated. Again, I think the Gen 2 HVAC system UI is not horrible, it's just every time I need to use the touch screen while driving it drives me crazy. Touch screen is the worst human interface ever created. The only reason for its existence is the smart phone/portable computer. Using it on mission critical applications is very poor choice and I hope humanity will revert back to better user interfaces in the future once this touch screen phase is over. Voice controls are also bad for any number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that sometimes it's important to make an adjustment silently without having to argue with the badly flawed voice recognition system.