The complexity of the touch screen car

The opening line:

Our tech columnist took a three-day test drive in the car that’s really a connected gadget. He says cars won’t ever be the same.

I cling to the hope that some manufacturer will buck the trend, return essential controls to tactile knobs and sliders, whatever it takes, to be easily usable without having take your eyes off the road.

 

The younger generation is growing up with touchscreens and they will have no problem with the new generation of cars.
I see videos of 3 year olds playing with touch screen toys and they play with cell phones.
I am a little old school too.

 

Maybe in part because that's all they knew? I guess this is a common refrain, every generation bemoans what's been lost in the rush to "improve". Ah well, bonfire of the vanities time.

 

Driving the Model 3, for the past 6 months, I would say I have removed my eyes from the road LESS than I have with cars full of buttons and knobs.
I can see why people may make the assumption that it would require more time with eyes not on the road, but in my experience the 3 actually requires slightly less time with eyes off the road.

 

A row or array of uniform/flush buttons is bad too. A slider or knob, with detents along the travel, is the bee's knees.

Speaking of bees, nursing a couple of stings: someone had chucked a derelict bike down a bit of a bank, against an uprooted windfall. I thought to do my good deed for the day, haul it out, and disturbed a nest.

 

It sounds like a yellow jacket nest. Do you use the term “bees” to describe wasps and yellowjackets as well? Just curious. Around here in Oregon they use the term for both wasps and honey bees. I grew up in New Mexico and the term was just used for honey bees.

 

I'm hoping they get rid of the fob and go back to where you get out of the car and crank it over a few times to get it started.

 

i would love to know what kind of special touchscreen tesla has that your fingers can feel the right spot to press, while your eyes are on the road.

if voice commands work, that's a different story.

 

That is very interesting. Can you elaborate, please? I am very curious to understand how this can be. I love Model 3 a lot, but this everything is controlled via touchscreen scares the daylights out of me.

For example:

1. You are driving along with A/C set to 75 and deice to drop it a few degrees. How do you do it?

2. You are driving along and remember that you need to get something from a glove box. How does that happen?

3. You are driving along and decide to change the station on the radio.

Maybe voice commands? Please enlighten me.

 

Yeah I don't think they were honey bees, using Google Search, I'd dub them wasps. Ugh, just two stings, one on a finger (puffing out), one on an ankle (3" or so dia red swath).

Off-topic an' hurtin', lol.

 

Some situations when touchscreen is not very welcome.

1. In a morning before I have had a cup of caffeine fix. (My finger shakes.)
2. My fingers are very dirty/greasy after in car lunch or working with grease or oil under hood. (I don't want smear the LED panel)
3. Have heavy winter gloves on. (impossible to operate touch screen)
4. I don't have my progressive glasses on. (I can't see what's on LED very well)
5. Sun glare makes LED screen invisible. (This may be Prime 11 inch LED specific.

In Prime, I use mostly on wheel control and never look at LED or use touch control if I don't have to.

 

First, for me, I often took my eyes off the road to identify most of the buttons. Briefly, but it happened.
Because the Model 3 display is high up, part is even above the dash, I find my eyes travel less distance.
The controls for the music and for changing cruise control speed and follow distance are on the steering wheel (dials and toggle).
Controls for Navigation are by voice, as are streaming music.

I almost never change the car temp while driving. This was true in my Prius as it is now. However, if you do, the temp has controls right at the bottom of the display and is always on top, so always available.
In the S and X, temp and fan speed are two things that can be controlled with the steering wheel buttons. I expect this to be a further option as Tesla continues to refine the UI, most likely along with voice control as well.

I never need to go into the glove box while driving, so you may have me there. To open the glove box you need to hit a button on the screen to bring up another page, then a second button to open the glove box.

 

It definately isn’t for everyone.

1. My finger always shakes (familial tremor). This has never been an issue for me. I believe this is because all the ‘buttons’ are very large, as the screen is very large. This makes the buttons easy to hit.
2. I would rather get a flat screen smeared, than get grease on a knob, which can work it’s way into the inner workings and cause issues.
3. Absolutely. I wear gloves that work with touch screens, but they aren’t great. Most of the time I just don’t wear gloves in the car in the winter.
4. See 1. With the size of the buttons on the screen, and text, I haven’t had an issue without my progressives. Your correction may be more severe though.
5. In 6 months I have had zero cases of sun glare on the screen. I have had sun glare off the center console as it curves upwards. I would recommend wrapping it in a matte wrap of some sort.

 

Thank you for your explanation. As I thought, no magic. To change climate control temp (I tend to do that a lot because it's super easy and I like to be comfortable) you need to take eyes off the road as I imagine the soft buttons on the screen are not tactile (or perhaps have haptic feedback?). Glove box is a rare thing, but still, two levels of menu rowing? I understand that the IU works well enough in general, but I still think hard buttons that are easy to recognize via tactile feedback like old school temperature control knobs on the dash. Big old knob with a radial handle in it. Handle all the way to the left = cold, all the way to the right = hot. That is simple, eyes stay on the road, mind too. I find my Gen 2 Prius to be on the verge of being "bad" in UI. Enough things are on the steering wheel, but there is that AC off thing where you have to go the "climate" screen and hit a touchscreen button. No way that is happening without eyes off the road.

Another good point was brought up with people unable to focus in close range (us old farts). We wear glasses for driving, but all the close range stuff is a blur. That amplifies the difficulty with the touchscreen controls.

Touchscreen will never be as good as real buttons and knobs (well designed, of course). All it will ever be is less expensive.

 

1. I have no experience with M3, but for Prime LED touch screen, there are numerous small buttons spaced very close to each other that makes very hard to see and hit precisely. For example audio selection controls are almost impossible to select with shaking fingers or on bumpy road.
2. Aha, this is definitely advantage of knobs and dials. With ergonomically located large knob found in older cars, I can operate it with palm of hand without using darty index fingers.
3. When temperature dips to subzero and have to clean ice and snow off the car in that condition, heavy duty gloves are must.
4. See 1 The software can change the font size and/or display resolution on LED, but no such feature exist in PRIME. Does it on M3?
5. Again, this maybe faulty design of PRIME, but definitely a big problem.

 

While the Model 3s interface isn’t perfect, it is very good. I would highly recommend trying it out.

When I need to scrape ice, I have gloves on. When I am inside the car, I don’t have ice to scrape, and the interior of the car is very comfy warm, so I remove the gloves. If you want to continue wearing gloves, you can get gloves that work with touchscreens.

The software doesn’t allow changes to fonts or button sizes. However, since the controls start out large, and not close to each other, I have had no issues. You can change the brightness, or let the car automatically change brightness.

 

No magic, but better than knobs and dials overall.
When you use a button in the prime do you need to read it?
Same goes for the touchscreen. You learn what each ‘button’ is, pretty quickly.
And again, all the buttons are large and very easy to read, with or without glasses. I would encourage you to try it before making conclusions.

 

Touch screens have their strengths, but it'll always be a second-class control system to me. I don't love the philosophy of sacrificing the very best so early in the design, but I understand Tesla had to cut corners somewhere.

 

Thanks for posting the link. I found a PriusChat discussion on a software update that appears to be related to the Entune app.

Does the Prime have any capability for software updates similar to what is described for the Tesla? There is certainly a lot of proven technology built in, but there is always room for improvement as the years go by.