Because it can be trivially duplicated, this is minimally capable engineering. Yet automakers everywhere lack even this level of competence. By reasonable measure, they are poor at their job.
Because it can be trivially duplicated
Why is this so expensive it can't even be put into a premium car today when it used to be ubiquitous in even the cheapest hardware a few decades ago?
Manufacturing car components already involves designing and custom molds, does it not? Compared to the final purchase price, the cost of adding knobs to that stack seems inconsequential.
Your average transmission will have an order of magnitude more parts that also needed to be designed and produced with much higher precision.
The interior knob controls are just a rounding error in the cost structure.
(another reason was because it still has a geared transmission instead of a CVT, but that's a separate discussion)
It’s a race to the bottom to be the least enshittified versus your market competitors. Usability takes a backseat to porcine beauty productization.
Basically, if you remove the knobs you can save, say, 10 dollars on every vehicle. In return, you have made your car less attractive and will lose a small number of sales. You will never, ever be able to quantify that loss in sales. So, on paper, you've saved money for "free".
Typically, opportunity cost is impossible or close to impossible to measure. What these companies think they are doing is minimizing cost. Often, they are just maximizing opportunity cost of various decisions. Everyone is trying to subtly cut quality over time.
Going from A quality to B quality is pretty safe, it's likely close to zero consumers will notice. But then you say "well we went from A to B and nobody noticed, so nobody will notice B to C!". So you do it again. Then over and over. And, eventually, you go from a brand known for quality to cheap bargain-bin garbage. And it happened so slowly that leadership is left scratching their heads. Sometimes the company then implodes spontaneously, other times it slowly rots and loses to competitors. It's so common it feels almost inevitable.
Really, most companies don't have to do much to stay successful. For a lot of markets, they just have to keep doing what they're doing. Ah, but the taste of cost-cutting is much too seductive. They do not understand what they are risking.
This implies it's a consequential cost. Building with tactile controls would take the (already considerable) purchase price and boost that high enough to impact sales.
If tactile controls were a meaningful cost difference, then budget cars with tactile controls shouldn't be common - in any market.
Most of the cost savings is in having a single bus to wire up through the car, then everything needs a little computer in it to send on that bus...so a screen wins out.
Compare this to the databus that is used in today's cars, it really isn't even a fair comparison on cost (you don't have to have 100 wires running through different places in your car, just one bus to 100 things and signal is separated from power).
Is there evidence that fancy looking screens don't show better in the showroom than legacy looking knobs and buttons? Where under use, they may be better, I am not sure all that sells better.
I don't really want to get into a big debate about this as I haven't worked on Jags, but I don't believe that replacing parts of the loom is would be that expensive. Remaking an entire loom, I will admit that would expensive as that would be a custom job with a lot of labour.
> Compare this to the databus that is used in today's cars, it really isn't even a fair comparison on cost (you don't have to have 100 wires running through different places in your car, just one bus to 100 things and signal is separated from power).
Ok fine. But the discussion was button vs touch screens and there is nothing preventing buttons being used with the newer databus design. I am pretty sure older BMWs, Mercs etc worked this way.
All I know is personal anecdotes from people I talk to. I know a couple people who have a Mercedes EQS - they've all said the same thing: the big screen is cool for a little bit, then it's just annoying.
I think it will take a generation or two of cars before some consumers start holding back on purchases because of this. For now, they don't know better. But I'm sure after owning a car and being pissed off at it, they'll think a little bit harder on their next purchase. I think consumers are highly impacted by these types of things - small cuts that aren't bad, per se, but are annoying. Consumers are emotional, they hold grudges, they get pissed off.
I sort of feel the same way about fix-a-flat kits. Once people actually have the experience of trying to use a fix-a-flat kit, they'll start asking car salesmen if the car comes with a spare...
I would gladly gladly keep my AC, heat, hazards, blinkers, wipers, maybe a few other buttons and that's it. I don't need back cameras, lane assist, etc.
I find it hard to believe it's cheaper to have all the cameras, chips, and other digital affordances rather than a small number of analog buttons and functions.
A friend got a tesla on lease and it was quite cheap, 250/month. Been driven in that car a few times and was able to study the driver using the controls and it’s hideusly badly designed, driver has to take eyes off the road and deep dive in menus. Plus that slapped tablet in the middle is busy to look at, tiring and distacting. The 3d view of other cars/ pedestrians is a gimmick, or at least it looks like one to me. Does anyone actually like that? Perhaps im outdated or something but I wouldn’t consider such a bad UX in a car.
It's not just cost, though. The reality is that consumers like the futuristic look, in theory (i.e., at the time of the purchase). Knobs look dated. It's the same reason why ridiculously glossy laptop screens were commonplace. They weren't cheaper to make, they just looked cool.
> Every control in the car is visible
No. And that would be horrible.
Every control _critically needed while driving_ is visible and accessible. Controls that matter less can be smaller and more convoluted, or straight hidden.
The levers to adjust seat high and positions are hidden while still accessible. The latch to open the car good can (should ?) be less accessible and can be harder to find.
There are a myriad of subtle and opinionated choices to make the interface efficient. There's nothing trivial or really "simple" about that design process, and IMHO brushing over that is part of what leads us to the current situation where car makers just ignore these considerations.
His perspective was that companies were "run" by engineers first, then a few decades later by managers, and then by marketing.
Who knows what's next, maybe nothing (as in all decisions are accidentally made by AI because everyone at all levels just asks AI). Could be better than our current marketing-driven universe.
In any event. I've never heard a good explanation of why I need all of this to turn the lights on or off in a car, when much simpler systems worked perfectly fine.
It is the job (and in my opinion, an exciting challenge) for the UI designers to come up with a modern looking tactile design based on the principles of skeuomorphism, possibly amalgamated with the results of newer HCI research.
I would pay more for decent physical switches and knobs, but I would give up AC before the backup camera. Getting this was life changing. I also wish all cars had some kind of blind spot monitoring.
Except, they don't do it.
Just like your Windows PC is capable of drawing a raised or sunked 3D button, or a scrollbar, but, they don't do it anymore.
With the land tanks we call SUVs today, I can imagine it wasn't hard for politicians to decide that mirrors are no longer enough to navigate a car backwards.
Still, you don't need touch screens. Lane assist can be a little indicator on a dashboard with a toggle somewhere if you want to turn it off, it doesn't need a menu. A backup camera can be a screen tucked away in the dash that's off unless you've put your car in reverse. We may need processing to happen somewhere, but it doesn't need to happen in a media console with a touch screen.
You should check how SW and HW are tested in the car.
A typical SW test is: Requirement: SW must drive a motor if voltage reaches 5 V. A typical SW test is: Increase the voltage to 5 V, see that the motor moves.
Now what happenes at 20 V is left as an exercise for the user.
In practice many drivers seem to be dealing fine with the touch screen because they've stopped paying attention to the road, trusting their car to keep distance and pay attention for them. Plus, most of the touch screen controls aren't strictly necessary while driving, they mostly control luxury features that you could set up after pulling over.
If you exclusively charged with completely free electricity and still managed to drive that 14K miles in a year, you’d save $187/mo.
If it moved you from 25mpg to 40mpge, it’d save you a little over $70/mo.
Our two cars are a BEV and a hybrid, so I’m no battery-hater, but neither is cheaper than a reasonable gas-only equivalent would be.
Reducing the copper content of cars and reducing the size of the wiring bundles that have to pass through grommets to doors, in body channels, etc. was the main driver. Offering greater interconnectedness and (eventually) reliability was a nice side effect.
It used to be a pain in the ass to get the parking lights to flash some kind of feedback for remote locking, remote start, etc. Now, it’s two signals on the CAN bus.
That sounds like an incredible bargain to me.
Why do you think you should pay near cost? What’s the incentive for all the people who had to make, test, box, pack, move, finance, unpack, inventory, pick, box, label, and send it to you? I can’t imagine the price between £10 and free that you’d think wasn’t a rip-off for a part that probably sells well under a 100 units per year worldwide.
> Offering greater interconnected news and (eventually) reliability was a nice side effect.
I am not sure about that. You still suffer from electronic problems due to corrosion around the plugs, duff sockets and dodgy earths as the vehicle ages.
My previous one lasted more than 20 years, from when my parents bought it for me when I went to study until some time in my 40s. It was still functional, but its dial had become loose and it didn't look that great anymore.
The one I bought after that follows the new pattern, it has buttons up the wazoo and who even knows what they do? To be honest I just need one power setting with a time and maybe a defrost option?
As for it being a bit of a rip off yes it was a little bit. I found the same part for cheaper literally the next day.
In any-event. It isn't the important part of what I was trying to communicate.
Right, because it's fucking ridiculous to expect a driver to fumble through menus while driving.
Power, time, start, stop.
It turns out that luckily there is one like that made. The Y4ZM25MMK. Also as bonus no clock.
That said, I realized only very late that the function dial actually has a marker to show which function it selects. An extremely shallow colorless groove.
Technically, you never see "all" actions - you only see the actions that make sense for the selected units. However, because there is a predictable place where the actions will show up, and because you know those are all the actions that are there, it never feels confusing.
On the contrary, it lets you quickly learn what the different skills are for each unit.
There is also a "default" action that will happen when you right-click somewhere on the map. What this default action will do is highly context specific and irregular: e.g. right-clicking on an enemy unit will trigger an attack order, but only if your selected unit actually has a matching weapon, otherwise it will trigger a move order. Right-clicking a resource item will issue a "mine" order, but only if you have selected a worker, etc etc.
Instead of trying to teach you all those rules, or to let you guess what the action is doing, the UI has two simple rules:
- How the default action is chosen may be complicated, but it will always be one of the actions from the grid.
- If a unit is following an action, that action will be highlighted in the grid.
This means the grid doubles as a status display to show you not just what the unit could do but also what it is currently doing. It also lets you learn the specifics of the default action by yourself, because if you right-click somewhere, the grid will highlight the action that was issued.
The irony is that in the actual game, you almost always use the default action and very rarely actually click the buttons in the grid. But I think the grid is still essential for those reasons: As a status display and to let you give an order explicitly if the default isn't doing what you want it to do.
The counterexample would be the C&C games: The UI there only has the right-click mechanic, without any buttons, with CTRL and ALT as modifier keys if you want to give different orders. But you're much more on your own to memorize what combination of CTRL, ALT, selected unit, target unit and click will issue which order.
The 1967 Amana Radarange (https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/08/28/microwave_custom...) had two dials: short duration under 5 minutes and a long duration out to something like 30 minutes.
My parents still have theirs. It needs some resto love, but it’s still fully functional. I’ve already put my foot down in terms of who’s inheriting it.
At first it was a bit annoying because frozen meals sometimes want you to run it at lower power and this microwave has no power setting. If that's a problem, I imagine there's some other similar model that does. But in practice, just running it at full power for shorter seems to work just as well.
It would look much nicer if it didn't have a cooking guide printed on it.
In Europe, I saw some consumer-grade microwaves with similarly minimalist designs, like these Gorenje microwaves[2] with two dials. I'd have gotten one of those, but I couldn't easily find them in the US. But I also did not look especially hard.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZTVIPZ2?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_...
[2]: https://international.gorenje.com/products/cooking-and-bakin...
So guess what Mr.Auto Manufacturer, you can keep your hifi $30K-70K touchscreen surveillance machine on your lot. I'll keep driving my 20+ year old Corolla until you learn to do better.
Toyota 4Runner, Toyota Tacoma, Jeep Wrangler, Nissan Frontier, Ford Maverick, Ford Bronco, Jeep Gladiator, Mazda MX-5 Miata
I wonder what kind of cars do you guys drive.
Stranger still, if someone comes up with an idea of how to improve that thing that sucks, frequently the reaction is very negative. Sadly, the whole thing more and more gets into “old man yelling at the cloud” territory.
Still cars don't last forever - my pervious minivan needed a transmission rebuild so we can cut the cost of the replacement by 10000 since either way that money is spent and now the newer van is break even on payments and it should still work after it is paid off for a few years.
I don't think you can make this assertion without knowing what they were tasked with doing. I very much doubt they were tasked with making the most user friendly cockpit possible. I suspect they were required to minimize moving parts (like switches and buttons) and to enable things like Sirius, iPhone and Android integration, etc.
If I had to guess, it’s because it’s so closely associated with the awful to use touch controlled center console. That and “new features” in general tend to take away from the ease of use and durability of the vehicle.
It may also have to do with now having an additional place to look during a stressful activity, which I’ve now fully adapted to.
I’m 100% on board with it now, if I had a vehicle without one I’d retrofit one. I also want side and front cameras.
I’ve got a big stupid truck (work provided) with a 140” wheelbase that I use for my agriculture job to transport my ATV (my real work vehicle) around. I absolutely hate the bloated, boxy, dangerous designs of modern pickups. Frankly they should be banned and forced to look stupid via visibility and child collision safety requirements.
I stab a potato and cover it in butter and salt, put it on a plate, press "potato" and it's cooked just perfect every time. Doesn't matter if it's big or small, it's just right.
When I have a plate of leftovers I just press reheat and it's perfect pretty much every time. Could be pork chops and Mac and cheese, could be a spaghetti with marinara sauce, could be whatever. Toss it in, lightly cover, press reheat, and it's good.
When I want to quickly thaw out some ground beef or ground sausage, I just toss it in, press defrost, put in a weight to a tenth of a pound, and it's defrosted without really being cooked yet.
Back when I microwaved popcorn, just pressing the popcorn button was spot on. Didn't matter what the bag size was, didn't matter the brand, the bag was always pretty much fully popped and not burned.
Despite being the same age it's still in excellent working order while yours with the dials fell apart.
Most microwaves only have the magnetron (the part actually producing the microwaves) on one side. The rotation is needed to cook your food evenly.
This is why food in the middle of the tray often ends up undercooked. No matter how the tray rotates, that part is never particularly close to it.
(OK, just for fairness: StarCraft also has hidden features that are only reachable through modifier keys, like the entire grouping and command chaining systems - and C&C does have some feedback: They do indicate the action by changing the cursor icon. So there are flaws, but I still find Blizzard's system more consistent and information-rich.)
For a visual aid, these are pictures of the replacements parts: https://www.partstown.com/panasonic/PANA010T8K10AP https://www.partstown.com/panasonic/PANF202K3700BP
They want to go to war with a simple design? Sure, they get a Lee-Enfield bolt action rifle. They fight against people with EF88 Austeyr.
They will die and lose the war.
Longer range, higher rate of fire, lighter, grenade launcher mount, scopes, more accurate, higher lethality, etc, etc.
Simple design so it doesnt't jam doesn't mean you've maximised all the other areas that are important for winning a war.
While it's technically hidden, it can consistently be called within a single swipe, whatever app you're using, whatever the circumstances. The icon positions is also consistent, to the point muscle memory can be built.
It's to me more reliable than the home screen or any other mechanism on the phone (android's double click to open the camera would be on par), I wouldn't mind if more stuff acted that way.
A bolt action is simple compared to any semi-automatic gun. Particularly if it is a single shot bolt action thus dispensing with the complexity of a magazine feed.
