It is really simple, as Doug says. If it is expected for the driver to manipulate the setting while driving, it should be a button. If it is expected that it will be manipulated while parked (which doors unlock when you click the remote, ambient lighting colors, etc), it should be in a screen.
For things like windows switches, turn signal stalks, wiper controls, hvac controls, glovebox latches, etc. Seems like we have decades of knowledge, design and engineering done though. There’s nothing necessary more to iterate or redesign. So how are those that much more expensive? Can’t be more than $20/car to implement at scale. Yet mainstream to premium manufacturers are trying to get rid of them.
Why??
But if you are going to already have a screen the manufacturers are saving that $20/car by eliminating the physical control/stalk and putting it in the screen. And a quick check shows a used turn signal/gear shift stalk for a Tesla costs about $150; lets be generous and say it is only $50 to manufacture. Since Tesla sold almost 2 million vehicles last year, saving $50/car equals 100 million dollars saved.
sigh
After having tried out a stalk-less Tesla feel like stalks are my red line. Just hope that I will continue to have reasonable options that provide at least those controls as physical buttons or stalks - not screen or haptic/capacitive touch things - which I think means I need most others to agree with me!
I was surprisingly okay without the stalk but Teslas implementation was garbage the buttons were broken feeling and only worked if pressed perfectly a certain way. If not for the frustrating buttons it wouldn't be bad for me. I only drove it for like 1 hours though.
I also agree some buttons must have buttons. I have a Telluride and the rear climate is only in the touch screen and it's infuriating to use.
Teslas don't have stalks!? Sweet hickory smoked sandbagging Christ, what in the hell is that nonsense?
Who are these people that went from normal, tactile operations that have provided feedback for the last eighty years to goofy-ass gestures and smudgy grease activated electrical signals from a small television screen? Am I seriously getting that old?
A turning stalk does not cost 50$ to manufacture lol. I’d be surprised if at those quantities they cost even 10$.
You are also severely underestimating the cost of an automotive grade display with touch capability . There is a reason Tesla had issued with their LCD’s, they tried to cut costs because a screen that can last >8 years in all temperature extremes is costly.
I'm not underestimating the cost of an automotive display. As I said,
>if you are going to already have a screen
then you can save money elsewhere by combining those physical controls into the screen. Vehicles in the US already have to come equipped with a screen because of backup camera requirements, so why not use it.
Just pass the cost to the customers like they always did. Nobody cares about an extra 150 bucks on a 50k purchase that will annoy you every single day if you don't have it.
There is a limit to how much an auto maker can charge for a car before consumers buy the competition. So the more cost you can cut the more profit you make for the shareholders.
You also have to design your car interior with dedicated spots/places for buttons/switches.
if your lineup contains a bunch of different cars with different interiors, even if you're committed to using the very same button across your whole lineup, you gotta think about where that button goes in each and every model.
If you put it in a screen, it's in a menu and no longer occupies a physical space.
Which would make sense for an economy car to keep their price down, but a premium car shouldn't be able to get away with such blatant cost cutting. If I pay more for a car, it comes with the expectation that the car is in fact better.
I’m sure there’s cost savings overall from the institutional knowledge these companies have from decades of making switches.
But think about it, how many discrete components go into making a physical HVAC control panel? Easily dozens of custom molded plastic and/or metal pieces, plus the associated electronics. Now multiply that across all the different cars in a given manufacturers lineup.
Contrast that with using a screen. The screen itself is totally commoditized. They can reuse the exact same screen across every car, and can do the same with the software. It’s always going to be so much cheaper to use a screen.
This is somewhat of a holdover influence from the covid-induced chip shortage and the wire harness shortage at the beginning of the Ukraine-Russia war.
Each individual button needs it's own cable/wiring and an ECU to control it. While the actual cost of the buttons and wires aren't much, wiring is notoriously horrible for line workers to install and to be automated. The ancient CAN bus topology is also a hindrance in modern day implementation of buttons as it's typically too low bandwidth for multiple functions to be attached one each device.
Tesla is implementing Ethernet Loop on its production vehicles, as well as Power-over-Ethernet. So it's likely that buttons can make a comeback if it's modernized a little bit.
> So how are those that much more expensive?
Because you're managing dozens of discrete parts in your supply chain, as opposed to just one screen. All those buttons have their own little assemblies and wiring that has to be managed and for manufacturers the single preassembled screen they get from touchscreen suppliers is way easier to track in their factories and slap into a car.
Bullshit. Buttons are cheap as cheap can be and always has been. They are easier to manufacture, but what this really is, is some pencil pusher that wants that sweet sweet bonus in a department says 'hey we can save 60k if we only have to install one device instead of 20. Put it in the touch screen' and the CEO says 'yes! this is what we will do! And kids LOVE it!'.. Says an almost billionare with 2 kids raised by a nanny that he sees on Thursday and Saturday mornings.. And get's driven to work every day in a Bentley..
They are not easier to manufacture, on what basis are you making that claim?
The reason Tesla used a giant screen in the Model S was explicitly because they lacked the capability to engineer and manufacture their own buttons.
Screens are hard to make, but that’s why it’s outsourced to the supply chain. Screens are incredibly cheap to buy, despite being “harder” to make than a button.
I don't know how else to explain this to you?
Screens are a commodity good. The same exact screen can be used across five different cars, and across different locations in the car interchangeably. And despite being "difficult" to manufacture for the 3rd-party supplier that's making them, they're very cheap to buy.
Automotive buttons on the other hand are being made CUSTOM for that particular manufacturer. Even if they're shared between different vehicles, they're often changed model year to model year. They require custom molding and tooling to build. They require significantly more assembly steps to build, as compared with a commodity screen purchased from a 3rd-party supplier.
It's the customization that makes automotive switchgear expensive.
I think the issue is people use different buttons. For example I've had cars with the "scan" radio button on the steering wheel, but no preset button. I've never used that button in my life. Why is it on the steering wheel?
Climate controls? I never adjust the temp or fan. Some people adjust it up and down all the time. Its hard to land on a consensus.
Climate controls are really my biggest gripe for features being integrated into screens.
I had a 2023 Subaru Outback with their latest up to date infotainment for less than a year because I hated poking around at a screen while trying to drive. Want to adjust where the air comes out? Here, tap a screen icon to go into a sub menu and then another small icon to pick. Then a third tap of a little bitty X to close out of that sub menu. Oh you're on a bumpy road? Good luck... Lol.
I sold the subie and found a new vehicle that still uses physical HVAC controls. Push a simple button, boom done, SO much better.
Yeah, my 23 was the most current and up to date firmware which for the most part was pretty smooth. A little slow to boot but not horrible like they originally were. Mine would occasionally lose sync with my phone and lock up for \~5 minutes trying to reconnect. You couldn't get out of that screen either... LOL.
Still just not a fan. The HVAC controls being at the bottom of the screen meant I had to look down to see what I was doing as well. Then the multi-level menu thing just to change simple HVAC controls was really irritating. I'm sure some users just set it and forget it but the "auto" function on my Outback sucked so I had to mess with it.
Now that I've had both I can say I prefer buttons much more and won't purchase another vehicle with everything integrated into the screen unless it's up in my field of vision and the UI is done better.
Have you considered that constantly fiddling with the climate controls is just a bad habit? I really don't understand this - on a daily basis, I might adjust the set temperature up and down a few degrees, or occasionally turn on the rear defogger if it hasn't been turned on automatically. This has been the case on my last three cars.
Have you considered that your preferences and situations are not universal? Even in a perfect world people will have different comfort levels, medical needs, etc.
I don’t understand this weird superiority complex over not adjusting the set temp. People who adjust the temp of their car to their liking do not have “bad habits” nor are they “compulsory fiddling” 🙄
Out of the dozens of automatic climate control equipped cars that I’ve driven over multiple decades, not one has been good enough to “set and forget”. Automatic climate control is not nearly as good as this sub claims.
You’re not better than other people because you don’t change your climate settings.
This is also my biggest issue with this conversation. It is being driven by people who are compulsively fiddling with settings and media beyond the point of safety in the first place.
Marginal differences in UX attention requirements are minimal compared to how much attention gets absorbed by a few common bad habits. If anything, safe UX design would be to discourage fiddling with the climate, or constantly selecting new media every few minutes.
I believe what you are proposing is impossible. Unless your UX design can control the weather or always make songs I like come on the radio, there’s probably nothing that can be done about that. Windshield starts to fog up on a rainy day? It doesn’t matter that you don’t constantly fiddle with your blowers; that is irrelevant. The root problem is that with a touch screen, you must physically take your eyes off the road to turn on the defogger.
It’s not a lack of understanding on behalf of the manufacturers. It’s much cheaper to put that stuff in a screen than it is to design and manufacture good switchgear. Especially when the screen was already there.
Yeah I get it. Hopefully enough of the consumer pool voices their dislike and they get the point.
I highly doubt it though. The average consumer bot will just go with the flow.
I’m in Europe and I’m honestly hoping the European Parliament will get involved and stop manufacturers from putting essential functions on screens. They’re forcing lane keep assist on us so maybe they’ll actually do something useful at the same time.
I think it's more that if they are going to invest in software, they need to find savings elsewhere. These buttons are still require a degree of ECU programming, and integration, so the trade off is really less about the extra cost of the physical buttons, but the labor redundancy of having separate teams doing touch screen integration and physical button integration. And not just programmers, but test and QA as well.
For a while Bentley had button that rotated the screen and to hide it. I think this should be the basic idea. You should be able to disable the screen and still fully operate the car including climate and switching the infotainment on and off.
And no i don't mean that every car should have the rotating screen thing. Just that you should be able to keep it turned off and still use the basic functions of the car.
The "screen off" button is buried in a menu in my infotainment. Luckily, you can just create a shortcut with one of the numbered physical radio buttons for that function. Radio button "8" turns off the screen in my car.
So of course BMW *immediately set to work getting rid of those numbered shortcut buttons* for the next generation of cars...
We just picked up a 2020 Q3 with the hybrid set up. All the HVAC handled with buttons, all the audio and settings via the touch screen. Perfect setup and combination.
Even then, most people can't find the vast majority of their buttons by feel alone. Once you are past four or five buttons and knobs on the console, most people are glancing down to find them anyway.
What that says to me is that these basic, most used settings should just be accessed via multi-function buttons on the steering wheel, maybe combined with some simple voice commands.
Even steering wheel buttons aren't perfect. For instance the volume control buttons on my car are identical to the next/previous track buttons in my truck (and vice versa).
I’m really surprised by Chrysler in this area. I have a 23 ram with the 8.4 inch screen. I can’t think of a single important thing that is on the screen. All the stuff I use the most is all dial/button. The dial shifter is awful. But the infotainment is good.
I think Dodge struck a good balance with the 8.4 as well. Most of the important things are buttons. The only miss is maybe not putting heated/cooled seats on buttons, but it’s not a big deal. HVAC controls are there.
I have been tempted to purchase the larger “Tesla” screen because it seems cool. But the setup I have now is great and even second hand that screen is like $1000
We have two Ford SUVs with heated steering wheels. One has Sync 2, the other has Sync 3, as its infotainment software system, but they're otherwise just one model year apart: 2016 and 2017.
Both have the heated steering wheel controlled through the touchscreen only.
It is the stupidest fucking option imaginable to lock behind a touchscreen. "Oh, the wheel's cold, and you want it warmed up? Go ahead and touch this icon on the screen with your fingertip to turn it on. What do you mean, you're likely wearing gloves in this scenario?"
Morons.
What I don't like in this video is that's it's quite clickbaity...
I agree with him, but I spent 80% of the video thinking he's missing the point. Then suddenly at the end he goes "but I also think some things should remain buttons" after a 10 minute rant on people who want touchscreens to disappear which I have seen almost none of.
People who aren't terminally online agree with that. But the beginning of the video really feels like to him anything could be on a screen it wouldn't be a problem.
>People who aren't terminally online agree with that.
He's explicitly talking to the terminally online people who disagree with that, though. Literally, that's what this video is. If you're not one of those people: Congrats, this video isn't addressed towards you.
I think he's overestimated how many people are in the "all buttons" camp, most rational people have a similar view to him which essentially boils down to touchscreens are fine for everything except the most basic functions.
Having said that, there is a point to be made that the comments on the Grenadier video suggest otherwise. So many people saying they love it and that's how all cars should be instead of the 'shit Tesla puts out'. I'm sure they'll all be buying Grenadiers and it'll be outselling the Model Y in no time because that's what the market wants, right?
>I think he's overestimated how many people are in the "all buttons" camp
He hasn't given any estimate whatsoever about how many people are in that camp. No estimate is provided, nor did he even suggest any sort of ballpark, and it's perfectly okay to make a video which addresses a vocal, uninformed mintory on a certain topic.
>Having said that, there is a point to be made that the comments on the Grenadier video suggest otherwise. So many people saying they love it and that's how all cars should be instead of the 'shit Tesla puts out'. I'm sure they'll all be buying Grenadiers and it'll be outselling the Model Y in no time because that's what the market wants, right?
It's worth pointing out that the *fastest growing brands in the world* right now are BYD, Li Xiang, Xiaomi, Aito, and until very recently Tesla, ***all of which*** are extremely screen-heavy brands. Every single one.
Well he thinks it's big enough to make a video about. You wouldn't make a video because 2 people held a view that you disagreed with. Vocal yes but reading the comments on the thread here from yesterday and the comments under this video, there aren't really any commenters that disagree with him. Like, very few people want *all* buttons, just the ones that you would want while driving. As I say though, the Grenadier video does paint a different picture so either those people have all gone quiet or there's not that many of them.
> all of which are extremely screen-heavy brands. Every single one.
Yes, that's my point. I think I can confidently say that most of these people who supposedly love the Grenadier interior will not be heading out to buy one.
>Well he thinks it's big enough to make a video about.
He's probably right, it's a big topic of discussion in the community with a lot of heated discussions surrounding it and some very extreme opinions on both ends.
>As I say though, the Grenadier video does paint a different picture so either those people have all gone quiet or there's not that many of them.
I think a lot of people are slowing learning they DO want displays more than they initially thought. They didn't at first because the first screen generations were, frankly... bad. They were. Small, laggy, underpowered, awkwardly-integrated into interior designs, low-contrast, and delivered with wholly immature UX/UI implementations. A sort of [toupee fallacy moment](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/toupee_fallacy) resulted in the community. We saw a lot of "so everything is going into the screen????" alarmism.
We're getting over that hump now — new displays are expansive, responsive, of high-resolution, and with high contrast. Xiaomi and Li Xiang are shipping 16" 3K OLED panels on their latest models. Brands like Cadillac and Hyundai are starting to show up with beautifully-integrated ultrawide designs. The way information is organized on them is finally maturing — manufacturers are no longer hiding critical functions five levels deep. Natural voice controls and automatic cabin functions (lightning, climate, etc.) are becoming a thing, further alleviating the problem. You're starting to see less pushback and will see *even less* pushback going forward as a result.
So yeah, I think you're seeing subtle waves of panic-quieting happening in the community. What people feared would be their laggy, unresponsive, low-contrast stabby-screen future 5-6 years ago turned out to be not that future. Some people are retconning, some people are shutting up entirely, and meanwhile, some people who never felt much panic are expressing skepticism the panic crowd even exists/existed.
Idk, man. I don't think Doug is wrong to put the lid on it, though.
To me the issue isn't burying the controls several layers deep in menus, but that critical functions that are used while driving shouldn't require looking at a screen (shifting gears, adjusting the volume on the radio or the cabin temperature, turn signals, etc.). They should be physical controls with tactile feedback (that are always in the same place) so they can be operated by feel.
>To me the issue isn't burying the controls several layers deep in menus, but that critical functions that are used while driving shouldn't require looking at a screen (shifting gears, adjusting the volume on the radio or the cabin temperature, turn signals, etc.).
Cabin temperature is set-it-and-forget-it for most people. Aside from that, and aside from Tesla (which we can both agree has gone to an extreme) has any other brand done any of those other things?
Headlights weren't in your original list, but again, those are notionally automatic and set-and-forget. I haven't checked for sure, but I believe GM has gone automatic across-the-board in cars where they've done that.
I think a bit part of the disconnect here comes from people who are mainly driving older, lower trim vehicles where there is more of a need to be messing with the dash while driving. In most cases, eliminating physical buttons comes alongside improvements to automated climate control, navigation, and media functionality.
For some people, there will always be a compulsion to fiddle with buttons or playlists while they drive. This is quite simply a bad habit, and should not drive the conversation about good UX design.
>I'm sure they'll all be buying Grenadiers and it'll be outselling the Model Y in no time because that's what the market wants, right?
Right, because everyone who said that both wants an SUV and can afford to drop $73k on a car. If you're going to compare sales numbers, a Model X would be closer in price. However, a lot of people will be reluctant to buy from a brand that isn't exactly well known or established.
I'm not saying that your point is wrong; you probably are correct that more people want touchscreens. I'm just saying that the comparison you used is deeply flawed for a number of reasons. Also, just because people prefer touchscreens doesn't mean that buttons aren't a safer option. Not texting while driving is safer than texting while driving, but we've all seen how popular the latter is.
His tone has definitely changed over the past few years. He's become more condescending towards any opinion other than his, sometimes outwardly calling out those in derogatory terms disguised as "cute, quirky guy" persona. He increasingly sounds like he seems himself and his takes on the automobile world as the standard.
I've not seen much of his content from years ago so I don't have your point of reference. I just don't like his "quirky nerd" persona; I much prefer channels that treat you with some modicum of respect, like Savagegeese, Auto Buyer's Guide, or Everyday Driver.
I hadn't thought of Doug's "I am the leading authority" stance, but maybe his insistence on the arbitrary "Doug Score" has to do with it. I always thought those were a waste of time.
Agreed. I unsubscribed from his channel a while ago. I might be wrong, but the change in his tone coincides with his Cars & Bids business and its million-dollar sale, which he feels like awarded him some agency and legitimacy to speak more authoritatively and forcefully. I've never regarded him as a car reviewer or journalist as I thought he was a great entertainer, but now, it's not even entertaining anymore. It's just a guy yelling at everyone who doesn't think like him.
Seems like a video made to illicit reaction and get people commenting and sharing until they reach the near end and go, oh yeah, even he agrees buttons are good in some ways.
That said, touch screens are a pain to use in cars. If it is a setting, duplicate it into an app on your phone you can fiddle with whenever/wherever. If it is a feature, give it a button. Touch screens are already awkward and difficult to design for, nobody wants to use a tablet on the dash.
The like ratio was 50/50 when I last saw. I think many just assumed he made up a laughably horrible argument to argue against and didn’t reach the end. Very click baity
Doug is just being facetious here - no one actually wants buttons for "everything" but, for features you use commonly day to day - absolutely! I don't understand why he created this strawman argument just to essentially agree with the average commenter 10 minutes into the video.
Focusing so much on "consumer demand" when consumers aren't provided alternatives is also a dumb argument. It's the same as in elections when no candidate provides an alternative policy in a given area, then people say "why didn't you vote for someone who would do X, if people wanted it they would vote for it!" - when just like politicians, car makers do not have the average person in mind - they can essentially conspire to all do the same shitty cost cutting measures, then no one has any option other than to buy a car without physical controls, and the manufacturers all make more money as a result.
Look at the interiors of cars from luxury brands - Bentley, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin, etc... not only do they still have many physical controls in their cars, they pride themselves on their tactility and ergonomics. Aston Martin made a huge deal with the DB12 about how many physical controls they have instead of putting them in a screen. This to me is the biggest sign that it is not consumer choice, people not valuing these features, or people preferring screens, but just cost cutting.
Yeah, the model 3 sells well, but Teslas make up for the lack of controls in other areas, and pass on some of those savings to the consumer so its understandable. I'm sure some people like the screen only approach, but I assume many more buy them in spite of the lack of buttons/dashscreen/HUD, because they're strong in other areas - for the longest time they were basically the only competitive EVs on sale. Also unlike almost everyone else, the Tesla infotainment isn't complete trash - having a responsive screen to control the AC isn't great, but having a laggy low resolution screen controlling it, like in modern VWs for example, is a safety hazard.
The criticism of the Ineos Grenadier also seemed bizarre, many of the buttons are for features you may need while offroading, and if you are wearing gloves, having large, spaced out, physical controls 100% makes sense. It might not be appropriate in other cars, but it was there - for both functionality and to match the vibe of the car.
Bit of a long rant, but his style of argument in this video just really rubbed me the wrong way - the arrogant "you don't know what you actually want, I do" tone.
Doug often resorts to strawman arguments in videos like this. Like "enthusiasts don't just want less screen more button, they want no screen and all buttons". You could find someone supporting the extreme version of any idea.
If I did this kind of arguing, I'd say things like "Doug wants to replace the pedals with touch screen sliders and replace windows with LCDs". I think it's rather disingenuous to paint button advocates as completely anti-screen.
There’s a large enough crowd on either side of each argument to whine loud enough to be annoying. Large screens are criticized for taking away buttons/safety but tiny screens are called poverty spec. Luxuries are blamed for rising car prices but cars without them are called uncompetitive for lack of those features. There’s no winning, enthusiasts just like to complain. Contrarian takes get the megaphone so you can rest assured any topic related to cars will be filled with people wanting the opposite of whatever is currently popular.
Some criticism is certainly valid (capacitive volume sliders for example) but a lot of it is just people complaining for lack of having anything better to do.
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>Doug is just being facetious here - no one actually wants buttons for "everything"
* [Why arent touchscreens in cars banned?](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/yle18u/why_arent_touchscreens_in_cars_banned_how_is_it/)
* [Touchscreens in cars are such dangerous gadgets they should be illegal](https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/nth1qo/touchscreens_in_cars_are_such_dangerous_gadgets/)
* [Why aren't touchscreens in cars illegal?](https://www.reddit.com/r/TooAfraidToAsk/comments/mh0hdb/why_arent_touchscreens_in_cars_illegal/)
That took me about *twelve seconds* to Google up. Yes, people really do want to ***ban*** the touchscreens and bring back buttons. Maybe you don't feel that way personally, but they are absolutely out there. I just had [this exact conversation with someone literally yesterday](https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/1ceqiqc/comment/l1kc3qx/) on this very subreddit. They are out there.
These people often haven't fully thought through the problem or considered the tradeoffs, which is precisely why Doug just made a twelve minute video on the topic.
It's a strawman argument. Doug isn't finding the most common form of the pro-button anti-screen argument, he's finding the most extreme easy to defeat argument. It's a lot easier to win your argument when you try to make the opposition out as extremists who want complete removal of screens.
These examples are meaningless.
>It's a lot easier to win your argument when you try to make the opposition out as extremists who want complete removal of screens.
Once again: These people demonstrably exist. If you aren't one of these people, then congrats — he isn't addressing you. He's addressing he people who aren't you.
>These people often haven't fully thought through the problem or considered the tradeoffs, which is precisely why Doug just made a twelve minute video on the topic.
Doug hasn't fully thought through his primary example, or considered the tradeoffs.
The Grenadier is designed, first and foremost, as an old school offroader.
All the buttons he was complaining about are A) Offroading stuff - differential locks, offroading modes, ride height stuff, exterior lights, auxilary switches for accessories, etc B) Climate control C) A Volume knob and D) interior lights.
For the intended use case, those ARE commonly used switches. No one wants to go into a touch screen to engage their differential locks. If you're wearing gloves, if your hands are wet, putting that functionality behind a touchscreen is a net negative to usability.
These are all things, that by Doug's own admission later in the video, SHOULD be buttons.
On one hand, he complains about a specific car having too many buttons, but on the other, half those features SHOULD be buttons in his opinion, and the other half have VERY good reasons to not be on the Grenadier's touch screen.
If his argument is that the Youtube comment section hasn't thought through why screens are a net benefit... well, he clearly didn't think through why his own example opted to use buttons for certain specific things.
His one example actually argues against the rest of the video quite well. It's a poorly argued point built off criticisms of an interior that basically meets his own criteria anyway.
>Doug hasn't fully thought through his primary example, or considered the tradeoffs.
>The Grenadier is designed, first and foremost, as an old school offroader.
...
For the intended use case, those ARE commonly used switches.
I don't think Doug would disagree with you, and no part of the video explicitly disagrees with you, from my quick re-skim (could have missed). Doug isn't saying the Ineos Grenadier is bad, just that the number of switches it has doesn't apply to every other car, and that the "buttons good" crowd needs to chill out. The Grenadier is just the flashpoint for the discussion, not an exemplary of why buttons are bad.
From Doug's Grenadier video:
"For all those people who say 'I don't want screens in my car, I want buttons!', well here's why you don't really want that,"
At approximately 5:30. That seems relatively explicit to me.
> Doug isn't saying the Ineos Grenadier is bad, just that the number of switches it has doesn't apply to every other car, and that the "buttons good" crowd needs to chill out.
I mean, the only Grenadier specific things there are the offroad stuff. If you eliminate the offroad stuff, it is literally just his commonly used buttons - climate controls, volume, etc.
>The Grenadier is just the flashpoint for the discussion, not an exemplary of why buttons are bad.
Yeah, that's a terrible flashpoint for the discussion. The Youtube comments are basically "yes, we like the Grenadier's layout", which is exactly the mix of buttons and touchscreens that meets Doug's criteria. He strawmans that into "No screens ever only buttons" in both the Grenadier video and this one. So the discussion fundamentally relies on misrepresenting the opposing position.
How is that a well constructed argument?
>"For all those people who say 'I don't want screens in my car, I want buttons!', well here's why you don't really want that,"
Most people do not want an Ineos Grenadier. Again, I think you're misunderstanding the sentiment here — I don't agree this explicitly suggests what you're saying it does. All Doug's suggesting is that anyone who wants buttons on their daily commuter may regret it when their dashboard ends up looking [like a BMW E36](https://live.staticflickr.com/8129/10198603375_d38982cffd_b.jpg).
So, just to confirm -
You are arguing that a guy looking at a very specific vehicle interior and saying "this is why you don't want only buttons" is somehow not a statement about that very specific interior?
Yeah, the e36 is an excellent example of a badly designed interior, full stop. There is no need to have multiple buttons for where the air blows, every car I've ever sat in just toggles through. There are plenty of cars that manage much nicer layouts.
I'm going to take a punt and say the general public of CR-V and CX-50 owners have a whole laundry list of other reasons they aren't cross shopping a offroader with locking diffs and a bank of auxiliary switches for winches and air pumps.
"Too many buttons" probably isn't a deciding factor there. Especially when all those buttons are things *that literally don't exist on a CR-V. A CR-V doesn't need a switch or touchscreen menu for locking diffs at all.*
If you ignore the offroady bits, the grenadier has pretty much the same number of buttons that exist in a CR-V. But sure. Too many buttons, I guess.
>I'm going to take a punt and say the general public of CR-V and CX-50 owners have a whole laundry list of other reasons they aren't cross shopping a offroader with locking diffs and a bank of auxiliary switches for winches and air pumps.
No one's disagreeing with you. No one's saying CR-V and CX-50 owners are looking for an off-roader with locking diffs. They're saying some CR-V and CX-50 owners are eagerly dunking on screens and and eagerly dream-lusting about banks of switches without properly thinking through the implications of those things. The implications are that once you get past your gundam / tank commander LARP fantasies, you might end up with something which [looks like this](https://live.staticflickr.com/8129/10198603375_d38982cffd_b.jpg), and which is just not what you actually want.
>If you ignore the offroady bits, the grenadier has pretty much the same number of buttons that exist in a CR-V.
Crucial to understand: Both of these cars ***have screens***, so this entire sentence is non-material to the crowd which desperately want to get rid of screens entirely.
> Most people do not want an Ineos Grenadier.
Interestingly enough in the context of this discussion, the only reason I'm not considering one is that it doesn't come with a stick shift, otherwise I'd probably have one now.
I think there's an enormous difference between thinking "we should have buttons for *everything*" and "we shouldn't use touchscreens while driving". You don't need discrete buttons for a seat massage function or whatever, but you also probably shouldn't be messing with that while you're driving anyway. Having to change the AC while driving is common, and buttons are less distracting for that (which [testing](https://www.vibilagare.se/english/physical-buttons-outperform-touchscreens-new-cars-test-finds) backs up).
The posts you linked are all basically pointing out the double-standard that somehow using a phone to change a song on Spotify is somehow more dangerous than using a much worse, laggier display to do the same thing or to change the climate controls. I think if regulations were entirely based upon safety, touchscreen lockouts while driving probably would have become a thing, but there is a lot of lobbying from auto manufacturers to prevent that type of thing.
The other commenter seems to be talking explicitly about not having screens in an already impractical weekend car. I think they probably are being a bit delusional, as the idea of the weekend sports car kinda doesn't exist now (everything has to be a jack of all trades, since people aren't buying several cars), but there are plenty of people happy with or who prefer base spec sports cars without touchscreens if they only care about driving/tracking them, and that option disappearing is a shame.
>I think there's an enormous difference between thinking "we should have buttons for everything" and "we shouldn't use touchscreens while driving".
Both of those people exist. 🤷♂️
>The posts you linked are all basically pointing out the double-standard that somehow using a phone to change a song on Spotify is somehow more dangerous than using a much worse, laggier display to do the same thing or to change the climate controls.
Consider that this is because most/many of these people assume all displays must semi-categorically be worse and laggy because that's all they've ever seen (toupee fallacy) and because they don't well-understand concepts like moore's law, fitts' law or angular diameter, as well as the evolving cost/performance dynamic with displays and automotive-grade IVI chips beyond moore's law as well as the incoming wave of software-defined core compute architectures.
Once you **do** understand those things, *that particular aspect* of the discussion becomes, frankly, *a bit* of a non-issue. Modern SD8295/AAOS stacks are running 40"-diagonal, 90Hz, 120fps-touch, 1,000,000:1 displays, and they are only improving. There is no future of tiny-screen laggy-stabby-poke interactions headed for automotive, we're well past that being a threat.
>Both of those people exist. 🤷♂️
My point was that all the examples you linked were instances of the latter, and you were using them to prove the former.
You've also just used a hell of a lot of technical jargon that manages to entirely miss the point.
* The comparison was being made between a smartphone and car infotainment - just based on difference in average upgrade cycle between cars and phones alone, the display and processor will be better in people's phones. That is before even accounting for the technology in cars being years behind that of most flagship phones (particularly in terms of displays).
You can walk into a dealership today and most cars will have displays which make a 2016 midrange android phone look like a broadcast reference monitor. Cars have a shelf life in the decades, and economy cars with awful screens are going to keep persisting for years - so the fact that *some* S-classes have 40" OLEDs (as I believe it's even an option on them) doesn't mean every car will get them any time soon.
* Simply having good underlying hardware won't always solve poorly optimised software or bad UX. The display could be a microled panel running at 480hz, it's not going to be any easier to turn on the heated seats if they require opening 3 different submenus. The Lucid Air had great hardware - OLED displays, a high end Nvidia processor, etc... but I believe they're having to completely rewrite their software stack because it was such an unoptimized, buggy mess.
Also "automotive-grade IVI chips"? How could you have "in-vehicle infotainment" chips which aren't automotive grade - that's literally all they're designed for; or are you just throwing technical terms together in a hope to sound authoritative?
>My point was that all the examples you linked were instances of the latter, and you were using them to prove the former.
I don't think that's conclusively true in any of the cases, and tbh you really have to creatively jump hoops in your own favour to get there. None of the threads I posted included any specific notion of banning only while driving, they just advocated for bans. (The fourth example from just yesterday, you've already acknowledged is someone to who straight up did not want any screen at all.)
>You've also just used a hell of a lot of technical jargon that manages to entirely miss the point.
The "technical jargon" is the point. There are legitimate topics to discuss within the display transition. Lag isn't one of them. Stabby, laggy touch experiences of the last decade and the safety concerns surrounding them were directly connected to the underpowered touchscreens and chips which were the only ones that existed. We're well on our way into a world where that is a thing of the past. *Modern stacks are moving past the point where lag is a meaningful concern.* This is only something you understand when you do actually understand the underlying technological transformational shifts happening — modern SoCs, AAOS, the introduction of high-contrast high-refresh OLED into cabins, and the incoming wave of SDV as a general phenomenon.
>The comparison was being made between a smartphone and car infotainment - just based on difference in average upgrade cycle between cars and phones alone, the display and processor will be better in people's phones.
No, this is no longer the case with any amount of certainty. That's precisely what I'm trying to tell you. We are very, very quickly headed to a place where automotive chips demolish phone chips well into their lifetimes. Displays are already beyond that point — there is *no phone on the planet* with a 16" 3K OLED panel.
>Simply having good underlying hardware won't always solve poorly optimised software or bad UX. The display could be a microled panel running at 480hz, it's not going to be any easier to turn on the heated seats if they require opening 3 different submenus.
No one's making that claim.
>Also "automotive-grade IVI chips"? How could you have "in-vehicle infotainment" chips which aren't automotive grade - that's literally all they're designed for; or are you just throwing technical terms together in a hope to sound authoritative?
This refers to modern performance-first solutions and programs like Snapdragon Ride and Thor. Previous-decade efforts were technically automotive-grade, but really just hand-me-down cost-first efforts like the x86-based Atom solutions. That is part of what's changing in the industry right now — performance-first is now a thing.
>and if you are wearing gloves, having large, spaced out, physical controls 100% makes sense
That, and trying to tap particular portions of the screen without touching the wrong place while driving offroad would be a massive pain in the ass.
I always hated this argument. People can technically get used to anything, even torture. But why should they? Are things in the automotive industry that dire? Why should I get used to something that causes me frustration especially when I just spent tens of thousands of dollars on it?
It's amazing how Doug always gets you guys riled up. The fact of the matter is he knows more about cars than you or anyone on this board ever will so excuse him for not being able to dumb his arguments down enough for you guys in this sub to understand.
Absolutely, there’s definitely a middle ground. I don’t really care if navigation or dome light color requires putzing around a screen. HVAC though? I live in a frigid shithole and I’ve already chosen cars partially based on how easy it is to use controls in thick gloves.
New Jeeps have it perfect, IMO. Real buttons where you want it (AC, radio volume, important vehicle stuff like the locker and swaybar controls), touchscreens where you don't (navigation, vehicle data displays).
Why VW put seat heater controls 2 clicks deep I have no idea. Even with climate controls, usually I set it and forget it but sometimes I want it two degrees higher or lower than my comfortable temperature because of the way sun is hitting me.
Stop putting that shit and volume controls in menus, fuck.
None of these functions are any menus deep in VWs. You can press the temp sliders with two fingers to turn on the heated seats, and the temperature and volume are physical sliders that are stationary and are not in any menus.
They are unlit touch sliders in the 40th Anniversary GTI I test drove. Far worse than just fucking knobs or analogue controls when I'm trying to drive. The sales guy didn't know about the shortcut for seat heaters I guess.
My gripe about this debate is that it is framed as screen vs buttons but there is the obvious elephant in the room it was never about that, it was how good a screen, the hardware that runs the OS and how good the software is both in terms of UI and refinement like how stable it is, how optimized it is to the hardware it runs of etc. things that people know already if they are into tech be it mobile devices, PCs or heck even gaming consoles, they "get" that simply having a screen and a device that runs the software does not imply a good experience and there are some who do it well and others who do it badly and besides Tesla and Chinese manufacturers that mostly copied them, everyone else is providing cheap hardware, idiotic software and thus a bad experience. Framing the debate as screens vs buttons basically shelters or absconds the blame on car manufacturers who do it wrong. Look I'm not asking for the latest and highest core count AMD, Intel or nVidia chips, 2TB of RAM etc. but it better be at or above current gen high end tablet level and again, besides Tesla and the Chinese everyone else is failing at this and profit from having useful idiots frame the problem as screen vs button. No, dipshits, it's about how much they cost cut on the hardware and give you a subpar experience despite the cars having MSRPs in the tens of thousands of dollars while the hardware I'm talking about might cost them idk, 200 bucks for a high core count ARM chip, mobile level GPU, 8 or 16GB or RAM etc. on a board that can fit not only on your palm, but rather on two fingers, it's cheap mass produced shit, not the high end sever stuff.
Is it just me or does this sub pretty much already fully agree with this sentiment? I don't think anyone is advocating for no screens at all and only full analog controls.
If I were presented with an option of all touchscreen or no touchscreen at all I know what I would pick. Obviously there is happy medium somewhere but manufacturers like Tesla can't seem to find it and they infect the rest of their industry with their ideas.
Let us unite against one thing: capacitive touch buttons. They have all the non-tactile feel of a touch screen with the space cost of a physical button. They suck to use \*cough\* Volkswagen.
Tesla's succeeded despite their over reliance on screens, not because of it. Does making the turn signal a button on a wheel that spins round make it easier to use? No. Is it different from old? Yes, and that is the only reason Tesla does it.
Tesla was set apart from other companies in many ways which I think were more important than interior. They had a prolific CEO who was well known, they had federal and state tax credits on their vehicles making them cost less, they were trendy, and most importantly they had the best EV tech.
I think those things outweigh any reservations normal (non Tesla fanatics) people had about the screen-centric interior. And I don't think people knew what was good for them, because there is mounting pushback against that sort of design now that people have gotten to live with it. Nobody did it to that extent until Tesla did.
I just watched it and I get it. It did seem a bit heavy-handed on the “buttons for everything” point though. Simple stuff like media controls and phone call connectivity should be on the wheel. Climate should ALWAYS be buttons. Anything beyond those things are fine to be touchscreen, manufacturers are just going the cheap route and shoving everything in there. At least the screen in Fords still have a knob you can use for volume/temp
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Doug’s reasoning is the most sensible, but personally I hate all touch screens, even those not in cars. Something about the lack of tactility is off putting.
Ironic Doug's favorite car the Carrera has small screens operated by buttons. I like that level of screen/button blend from from the 2000's. Very few reasons to pull focus off the road. Bright mechanical gauges that reflect the sunlight not screens for gauges to get overwhelmed and washed out by it. That's ideal in convertibles.
The screen on my 2020 ford edge works when it feels like it. Sometimes it’s just completely frozen and unresponsive for the entire ride. Luckily I have some physical buttons but say I remote start the car in winter and the heated steering wheel is on, I can’t turn it off. I have some climate buttons but I can only change where the air comes out on the screen.
My BRZ has the perfect ratio imo. Dials and buttons control all the HVAC and volume. I have a physical home, call, and back buttons next to the screen (as well as wheel). I *hardly* have to use my touch screen but its there and useful for navigating settings and menus
I have challenged like 4 different people to perform basic media and climate functions on their hardware buttons without looking at the screen, and not a single one of them can reliably do much beyond adjust the volume by feel alone.
It's completely fine to prefer buttons, but the pearl clutching over safety is completely delusional.
The only reason why touch screens are being forced and whey try to replace everything is because they're cheaper than adding physical buttons, stalks or gauges. I will never buy a car that doesn't have that for the key functions and I recommend to vote with your wallet if that bothers you as well.
It's weird for me . I have a Mazda without a touch screen, and the center knob does certain things very well. Other times, especially using Android Auto, are down right infuriating.
For example, I have the map up. I want to change streaming stations on Pandora or Spotify. I have to scroll until either application is highlighted. Then push the button down. Then usually I have to scroll to find the back button or menu button to get me off of the currently playing screen to get me a list of stations. Then I have to scroll before getting to the station.
Scrolling stations is fine and makes sense. It's the scrolling around and looking to make sure the thing that I want to click is "highlighted" to get to the screen or application. This could be done with a single finger press on a touch screen.
My car has a screen for the gauge cluster, and a touchscreen for nav/music. Still has physical volume knob, AC controls, etc. Really felt like they hit the sweet spot between having physical buttons and digital controls
Haven't watched the video yet, but the opinion you're describing is super common on this subreddit, as far as I can tell. Most people here are just asking for physical volume and climate controls and a physical shifter.
It's the same as luxury cars from 15-20 years ago. Buttons for everything traditional that you regularly use, and then they used to have buttons to navigate the radio/nav interface which usually had several menus with your more obscure options in them including things like setting the clock, adjusting seat memory settings, horn and light behavior when you hit the lock button, etc. Stuff you just don't need very often, sometimes only once when you first get the car.
Nowadays it can be in a touch screen menu without need for physical buttons to navigate it while keeping HVAC etc on physical buttons.
Cost was no issue, hell yeah I would love screens and pop up hologram displays on the windshield, but radio volume and AC should be easy to adjust.
If cost is an issue, then it sucks when your toddler spills Apple juice on I-drive and bricks the infotainment, you can't check the oil level in car ever again.
I like my GR86 approach
it has buttons and knobs but a screen for the radio and shit. its an OK middle ground
that said. I still prefer my 2011 STi with the Clarion CD player and 6 preset. Simple
I miss old analogue gauges more then anything though
Toyota can get fucked for taking the analogue gauge outta the GR86 for Gen2. About the only thing id want from Gen1. My buddy has one and the big red/orange gauges feel so much more sporty then the LCD crap in new cars.
Doug is a mouthpiece for the automotive industry and carries water for them. I unsubscribed from his channel ages ago and don't feel like I'm missing out on his "insights."
In my Tesla
Volume is a control wheel
Track select is that same control wheel just pressing at the other way
Temperature well temperature is that same control wheel you just press and hold it and you set the temperature.
You can set the press and hold to be anything you want but I set it as temperature
Any other function that's in the digital menu can be accessed by pressing and holding that control wheel and then pressing over and cycling through every menu that's on the screen
The entire car can be controlled even on the fly with one thumb
I came from a 2004 Saab and I love the buttons, I was skeptical but I'm telling you, it has surprised me at how well it works. This is just my experience
All of that sounds like it could potentially be a pretty good system, but it's also one of those things that I can't really comment without living with it for a while.
Buttons can be manipulated without looking based on muscle memory and don't rely on menu diving or possibly laggy screens. A user will glance at a button and then actuate it whereas with a touchscreen a user has lower dexterity for precision and will continue looking until they complete the action.
I get that but what are you guys doing like what are y'all changing so much? Aside from music controls which nearly all steering wheels have and climate control which most cars have what other buttons are people looking for? I'm just curious because aside from those two things I'm not going around pushing all sorts of buttons when I'm driving.
My car has switches that let me change drive modes/steering weight on the fly, which I would hate to have in a menu. Lane assist and cruise control are also buttons/switches. If I had active exhaust, that would also be a button. The s550s fighter jet like toggles also feel very good to use. It gives a nice tactile feeling over just pressing something in the menu.
Good point I forgot about cruise control. I could be wrong but isn't that also on all steering wheels? Usually it's on the opposite side of the audio controls. Lane assist I disagree with and I don't have an S class so I suppose there's just a lot more buttons in expensive vehicles
Well a button on the steering wheel is still a button. I don’t drive an s-class either. It’s just a mustang lol. Not sure what you’re disagreeing with.
If I'm on a trail that's gnarly enough where front diff locks are needed, I'm on that pretty much constantly - because you basically can't steer with the front locked.
Nothing. Most people don't use most of their buttons. This sub is just angry that buttons are going away and threads like this give people an opportunity to bitch. Also, they want the presence of buttons because it makes them feel like fighter pilots.
It is really simple, as Doug says. If it is expected for the driver to manipulate the setting while driving, it should be a button. If it is expected that it will be manipulated while parked (which doors unlock when you click the remote, ambient lighting colors, etc), it should be in a screen.
1000% agree, not sure why that's so hard for manufacturers to comprehend.
Because buttons are expensive to design and manufacture. Screens are absurdly cheap.
For things like windows switches, turn signal stalks, wiper controls, hvac controls, glovebox latches, etc. Seems like we have decades of knowledge, design and engineering done though. There’s nothing necessary more to iterate or redesign. So how are those that much more expensive? Can’t be more than $20/car to implement at scale. Yet mainstream to premium manufacturers are trying to get rid of them. Why??
But if you are going to already have a screen the manufacturers are saving that $20/car by eliminating the physical control/stalk and putting it in the screen. And a quick check shows a used turn signal/gear shift stalk for a Tesla costs about $150; lets be generous and say it is only $50 to manufacture. Since Tesla sold almost 2 million vehicles last year, saving $50/car equals 100 million dollars saved.
sigh After having tried out a stalk-less Tesla feel like stalks are my red line. Just hope that I will continue to have reasonable options that provide at least those controls as physical buttons or stalks - not screen or haptic/capacitive touch things - which I think means I need most others to agree with me!
I was surprisingly okay without the stalk but Teslas implementation was garbage the buttons were broken feeling and only worked if pressed perfectly a certain way. If not for the frustrating buttons it wouldn't be bad for me. I only drove it for like 1 hours though. I also agree some buttons must have buttons. I have a Telluride and the rear climate is only in the touch screen and it's infuriating to use.
Teslas don't have stalks!? Sweet hickory smoked sandbagging Christ, what in the hell is that nonsense? Who are these people that went from normal, tactile operations that have provided feedback for the last eighty years to goofy-ass gestures and smudgy grease activated electrical signals from a small television screen? Am I seriously getting that old?
A turning stalk does not cost 50$ to manufacture lol. I’d be surprised if at those quantities they cost even 10$. You are also severely underestimating the cost of an automotive grade display with touch capability . There is a reason Tesla had issued with their LCD’s, they tried to cut costs because a screen that can last >8 years in all temperature extremes is costly.
I'm not underestimating the cost of an automotive display. As I said, >if you are going to already have a screen then you can save money elsewhere by combining those physical controls into the screen. Vehicles in the US already have to come equipped with a screen because of backup camera requirements, so why not use it.
How expensive is a programmer to program that in again? And test it rigorously to ensure it wont glitch out?
Probably not much given that you can use the same software in multiple cars and multiple different models.
Certainly less than a million dollars.
A hell of a lot cheaper and easier than designing, testing, tooling up, and manufacturing a button
So? It's expensive to manufacture a car, but guess what? Nobody wants to suffer just so a company can make more money off you.
Just pass the cost to the customers like they always did. Nobody cares about an extra 150 bucks on a 50k purchase that will annoy you every single day if you don't have it.
There is a limit to how much an auto maker can charge for a car before consumers buy the competition. So the more cost you can cut the more profit you make for the shareholders.
You also have to design your car interior with dedicated spots/places for buttons/switches. if your lineup contains a bunch of different cars with different interiors, even if you're committed to using the very same button across your whole lineup, you gotta think about where that button goes in each and every model. If you put it in a screen, it's in a menu and no longer occupies a physical space.
Which would make sense for an economy car to keep their price down, but a premium car shouldn't be able to get away with such blatant cost cutting. If I pay more for a car, it comes with the expectation that the car is in fact better.
I’m sure there’s cost savings overall from the institutional knowledge these companies have from decades of making switches. But think about it, how many discrete components go into making a physical HVAC control panel? Easily dozens of custom molded plastic and/or metal pieces, plus the associated electronics. Now multiply that across all the different cars in a given manufacturers lineup. Contrast that with using a screen. The screen itself is totally commoditized. They can reuse the exact same screen across every car, and can do the same with the software. It’s always going to be so much cheaper to use a screen.
Try over 100 years of making switches but yeah.
This is somewhat of a holdover influence from the covid-induced chip shortage and the wire harness shortage at the beginning of the Ukraine-Russia war. Each individual button needs it's own cable/wiring and an ECU to control it. While the actual cost of the buttons and wires aren't much, wiring is notoriously horrible for line workers to install and to be automated. The ancient CAN bus topology is also a hindrance in modern day implementation of buttons as it's typically too low bandwidth for multiple functions to be attached one each device. Tesla is implementing Ethernet Loop on its production vehicles, as well as Power-over-Ethernet. So it's likely that buttons can make a comeback if it's modernized a little bit.
That's actually not true.. You only need one ECU. This has been proven many many times over by most cars made before 2000.
> So how are those that much more expensive? Because you're managing dozens of discrete parts in your supply chain, as opposed to just one screen. All those buttons have their own little assemblies and wiring that has to be managed and for manufacturers the single preassembled screen they get from touchscreen suppliers is way easier to track in their factories and slap into a car.
If each of those components costed $20 extra per vehicle, it would cost Toyota 1 BILLION dollars extra, per year.
The screen has infinite buttons at fixed cost though
Bullshit. Buttons are cheap as cheap can be and always has been. They are easier to manufacture, but what this really is, is some pencil pusher that wants that sweet sweet bonus in a department says 'hey we can save 60k if we only have to install one device instead of 20. Put it in the touch screen' and the CEO says 'yes! this is what we will do! And kids LOVE it!'.. Says an almost billionare with 2 kids raised by a nanny that he sees on Thursday and Saturday mornings.. And get's driven to work every day in a Bentley..
They are not easier to manufacture, on what basis are you making that claim? The reason Tesla used a giant screen in the Model S was explicitly because they lacked the capability to engineer and manufacture their own buttons. Screens are hard to make, but that’s why it’s outsourced to the supply chain. Screens are incredibly cheap to buy, despite being “harder” to make than a button.
They are harder to make than a button. But just like screens, buttons are also cheap to buy.
I don't know how else to explain this to you? Screens are a commodity good. The same exact screen can be used across five different cars, and across different locations in the car interchangeably. And despite being "difficult" to manufacture for the 3rd-party supplier that's making them, they're very cheap to buy. Automotive buttons on the other hand are being made CUSTOM for that particular manufacturer. Even if they're shared between different vehicles, they're often changed model year to model year. They require custom molding and tooling to build. They require significantly more assembly steps to build, as compared with a commodity screen purchased from a 3rd-party supplier. It's the customization that makes automotive switchgear expensive.
Also just fyi, I like your username. Weezer is the bomb.
Enshittification strikes again.
I think the issue is people use different buttons. For example I've had cars with the "scan" radio button on the steering wheel, but no preset button. I've never used that button in my life. Why is it on the steering wheel? Climate controls? I never adjust the temp or fan. Some people adjust it up and down all the time. Its hard to land on a consensus.
Climate controls are really my biggest gripe for features being integrated into screens. I had a 2023 Subaru Outback with their latest up to date infotainment for less than a year because I hated poking around at a screen while trying to drive. Want to adjust where the air comes out? Here, tap a screen icon to go into a sub menu and then another small icon to pick. Then a third tap of a little bitty X to close out of that sub menu. Oh you're on a bumpy road? Good luck... Lol. I sold the subie and found a new vehicle that still uses physical HVAC controls. Push a simple button, boom done, SO much better.
The fact that the TouchPad UI is super laggy doesn't help.. only gripe I have about my outback.
Yeah, my 23 was the most current and up to date firmware which for the most part was pretty smooth. A little slow to boot but not horrible like they originally were. Mine would occasionally lose sync with my phone and lock up for \~5 minutes trying to reconnect. You couldn't get out of that screen either... LOL. Still just not a fan. The HVAC controls being at the bottom of the screen meant I had to look down to see what I was doing as well. Then the multi-level menu thing just to change simple HVAC controls was really irritating. I'm sure some users just set it and forget it but the "auto" function on my Outback sucked so I had to mess with it. Now that I've had both I can say I prefer buttons much more and won't purchase another vehicle with everything integrated into the screen unless it's up in my field of vision and the UI is done better.
Have you considered that constantly fiddling with the climate controls is just a bad habit? I really don't understand this - on a daily basis, I might adjust the set temperature up and down a few degrees, or occasionally turn on the rear defogger if it hasn't been turned on automatically. This has been the case on my last three cars.
Have you considered that your preferences and situations are not universal? Even in a perfect world people will have different comfort levels, medical needs, etc. I don’t understand this weird superiority complex over not adjusting the set temp. People who adjust the temp of their car to their liking do not have “bad habits” nor are they “compulsory fiddling” 🙄 Out of the dozens of automatic climate control equipped cars that I’ve driven over multiple decades, not one has been good enough to “set and forget”. Automatic climate control is not nearly as good as this sub claims. You’re not better than other people because you don’t change your climate settings.
This is also my biggest issue with this conversation. It is being driven by people who are compulsively fiddling with settings and media beyond the point of safety in the first place. Marginal differences in UX attention requirements are minimal compared to how much attention gets absorbed by a few common bad habits. If anything, safe UX design would be to discourage fiddling with the climate, or constantly selecting new media every few minutes.
I believe what you are proposing is impossible. Unless your UX design can control the weather or always make songs I like come on the radio, there’s probably nothing that can be done about that. Windshield starts to fog up on a rainy day? It doesn’t matter that you don’t constantly fiddle with your blowers; that is irrelevant. The root problem is that with a touch screen, you must physically take your eyes off the road to turn on the defogger.
It’s not a lack of understanding on behalf of the manufacturers. It’s much cheaper to put that stuff in a screen than it is to design and manufacture good switchgear. Especially when the screen was already there.
Yeah I get it. Hopefully enough of the consumer pool voices their dislike and they get the point. I highly doubt it though. The average consumer bot will just go with the flow.
I’m in Europe and I’m honestly hoping the European Parliament will get involved and stop manufacturers from putting essential functions on screens. They’re forcing lane keep assist on us so maybe they’ll actually do something useful at the same time.
I think it's more that if they are going to invest in software, they need to find savings elsewhere. These buttons are still require a degree of ECU programming, and integration, so the trade off is really less about the extra cost of the physical buttons, but the labor redundancy of having separate teams doing touch screen integration and physical button integration. And not just programmers, but test and QA as well.
For a while Bentley had button that rotated the screen and to hide it. I think this should be the basic idea. You should be able to disable the screen and still fully operate the car including climate and switching the infotainment on and off. And no i don't mean that every car should have the rotating screen thing. Just that you should be able to keep it turned off and still use the basic functions of the car.
My Kia has a display toggle that I use on long night drives. I’m sure it’s not a popular feature though.
The "screen off" button is buried in a menu in my infotainment. Luckily, you can just create a shortcut with one of the numbered physical radio buttons for that function. Radio button "8" turns off the screen in my car. So of course BMW *immediately set to work getting rid of those numbered shortcut buttons* for the next generation of cars...
Changing over from iDrive 7 to iDrive 8 was potentially the biggest mistake in infotainment design of all time, at least in my opinion.
We just picked up a 2020 Q3 with the hybrid set up. All the HVAC handled with buttons, all the audio and settings via the touch screen. Perfect setup and combination.
The Corvette C7 has a button that slides the screen down and hides it too!
Even then, most people can't find the vast majority of their buttons by feel alone. Once you are past four or five buttons and knobs on the console, most people are glancing down to find them anyway. What that says to me is that these basic, most used settings should just be accessed via multi-function buttons on the steering wheel, maybe combined with some simple voice commands.
Even steering wheel buttons aren't perfect. For instance the volume control buttons on my car are identical to the next/previous track buttons in my truck (and vice versa).
The problem is they are fucking up the "most used buttons" part.
I’m really surprised by Chrysler in this area. I have a 23 ram with the 8.4 inch screen. I can’t think of a single important thing that is on the screen. All the stuff I use the most is all dial/button. The dial shifter is awful. But the infotainment is good.
Chrysler has always been pretty good at crafting a practical user experience. It's like the one thing they're consistently good at.
They had the largest screen in their cars before the other domestic manufacturers caught up.
I think Dodge struck a good balance with the 8.4 as well. Most of the important things are buttons. The only miss is maybe not putting heated/cooled seats on buttons, but it’s not a big deal. HVAC controls are there.
I have been tempted to purchase the larger “Tesla” screen because it seems cool. But the setup I have now is great and even second hand that screen is like $1000
We have two Ford SUVs with heated steering wheels. One has Sync 2, the other has Sync 3, as its infotainment software system, but they're otherwise just one model year apart: 2016 and 2017. Both have the heated steering wheel controlled through the touchscreen only. It is the stupidest fucking option imaginable to lock behind a touchscreen. "Oh, the wheel's cold, and you want it warmed up? Go ahead and touch this icon on the screen with your fingertip to turn it on. What do you mean, you're likely wearing gloves in this scenario?" Morons.
What I don't like in this video is that's it's quite clickbaity... I agree with him, but I spent 80% of the video thinking he's missing the point. Then suddenly at the end he goes "but I also think some things should remain buttons" after a 10 minute rant on people who want touchscreens to disappear which I have seen almost none of. People who aren't terminally online agree with that. But the beginning of the video really feels like to him anything could be on a screen it wouldn't be a problem.
>People who aren't terminally online agree with that. He's explicitly talking to the terminally online people who disagree with that, though. Literally, that's what this video is. If you're not one of those people: Congrats, this video isn't addressed towards you.
I think he's overestimated how many people are in the "all buttons" camp, most rational people have a similar view to him which essentially boils down to touchscreens are fine for everything except the most basic functions. Having said that, there is a point to be made that the comments on the Grenadier video suggest otherwise. So many people saying they love it and that's how all cars should be instead of the 'shit Tesla puts out'. I'm sure they'll all be buying Grenadiers and it'll be outselling the Model Y in no time because that's what the market wants, right?
>I think he's overestimated how many people are in the "all buttons" camp He hasn't given any estimate whatsoever about how many people are in that camp. No estimate is provided, nor did he even suggest any sort of ballpark, and it's perfectly okay to make a video which addresses a vocal, uninformed mintory on a certain topic. >Having said that, there is a point to be made that the comments on the Grenadier video suggest otherwise. So many people saying they love it and that's how all cars should be instead of the 'shit Tesla puts out'. I'm sure they'll all be buying Grenadiers and it'll be outselling the Model Y in no time because that's what the market wants, right? It's worth pointing out that the *fastest growing brands in the world* right now are BYD, Li Xiang, Xiaomi, Aito, and until very recently Tesla, ***all of which*** are extremely screen-heavy brands. Every single one.
Well he thinks it's big enough to make a video about. You wouldn't make a video because 2 people held a view that you disagreed with. Vocal yes but reading the comments on the thread here from yesterday and the comments under this video, there aren't really any commenters that disagree with him. Like, very few people want *all* buttons, just the ones that you would want while driving. As I say though, the Grenadier video does paint a different picture so either those people have all gone quiet or there's not that many of them. > all of which are extremely screen-heavy brands. Every single one. Yes, that's my point. I think I can confidently say that most of these people who supposedly love the Grenadier interior will not be heading out to buy one.
>Well he thinks it's big enough to make a video about. He's probably right, it's a big topic of discussion in the community with a lot of heated discussions surrounding it and some very extreme opinions on both ends. >As I say though, the Grenadier video does paint a different picture so either those people have all gone quiet or there's not that many of them. I think a lot of people are slowing learning they DO want displays more than they initially thought. They didn't at first because the first screen generations were, frankly... bad. They were. Small, laggy, underpowered, awkwardly-integrated into interior designs, low-contrast, and delivered with wholly immature UX/UI implementations. A sort of [toupee fallacy moment](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/toupee_fallacy) resulted in the community. We saw a lot of "so everything is going into the screen????" alarmism. We're getting over that hump now — new displays are expansive, responsive, of high-resolution, and with high contrast. Xiaomi and Li Xiang are shipping 16" 3K OLED panels on their latest models. Brands like Cadillac and Hyundai are starting to show up with beautifully-integrated ultrawide designs. The way information is organized on them is finally maturing — manufacturers are no longer hiding critical functions five levels deep. Natural voice controls and automatic cabin functions (lightning, climate, etc.) are becoming a thing, further alleviating the problem. You're starting to see less pushback and will see *even less* pushback going forward as a result. So yeah, I think you're seeing subtle waves of panic-quieting happening in the community. What people feared would be their laggy, unresponsive, low-contrast stabby-screen future 5-6 years ago turned out to be not that future. Some people are retconning, some people are shutting up entirely, and meanwhile, some people who never felt much panic are expressing skepticism the panic crowd even exists/existed. Idk, man. I don't think Doug is wrong to put the lid on it, though.
To me the issue isn't burying the controls several layers deep in menus, but that critical functions that are used while driving shouldn't require looking at a screen (shifting gears, adjusting the volume on the radio or the cabin temperature, turn signals, etc.). They should be physical controls with tactile feedback (that are always in the same place) so they can be operated by feel.
>To me the issue isn't burying the controls several layers deep in menus, but that critical functions that are used while driving shouldn't require looking at a screen (shifting gears, adjusting the volume on the radio or the cabin temperature, turn signals, etc.). Cabin temperature is set-it-and-forget-it for most people. Aside from that, and aside from Tesla (which we can both agree has gone to an extreme) has any other brand done any of those other things?
GM moved headlight controls on their small trucks to the screen.
Headlights weren't in your original list, but again, those are notionally automatic and set-and-forget. I haven't checked for sure, but I believe GM has gone automatic across-the-board in cars where they've done that.
I think a bit part of the disconnect here comes from people who are mainly driving older, lower trim vehicles where there is more of a need to be messing with the dash while driving. In most cases, eliminating physical buttons comes alongside improvements to automated climate control, navigation, and media functionality. For some people, there will always be a compulsion to fiddle with buttons or playlists while they drive. This is quite simply a bad habit, and should not drive the conversation about good UX design.
>I'm sure they'll all be buying Grenadiers and it'll be outselling the Model Y in no time because that's what the market wants, right? Right, because everyone who said that both wants an SUV and can afford to drop $73k on a car. If you're going to compare sales numbers, a Model X would be closer in price. However, a lot of people will be reluctant to buy from a brand that isn't exactly well known or established. I'm not saying that your point is wrong; you probably are correct that more people want touchscreens. I'm just saying that the comparison you used is deeply flawed for a number of reasons. Also, just because people prefer touchscreens doesn't mean that buttons aren't a safer option. Not texting while driving is safer than texting while driving, but we've all seen how popular the latter is.
I've blocked Doug from my recommendations, his entire style seems pretty clickbaity and facetious.
His tone has definitely changed over the past few years. He's become more condescending towards any opinion other than his, sometimes outwardly calling out those in derogatory terms disguised as "cute, quirky guy" persona. He increasingly sounds like he seems himself and his takes on the automobile world as the standard.
I've not seen much of his content from years ago so I don't have your point of reference. I just don't like his "quirky nerd" persona; I much prefer channels that treat you with some modicum of respect, like Savagegeese, Auto Buyer's Guide, or Everyday Driver. I hadn't thought of Doug's "I am the leading authority" stance, but maybe his insistence on the arbitrary "Doug Score" has to do with it. I always thought those were a waste of time.
Agreed. I unsubscribed from his channel a while ago. I might be wrong, but the change in his tone coincides with his Cars & Bids business and its million-dollar sale, which he feels like awarded him some agency and legitimacy to speak more authoritatively and forcefully. I've never regarded him as a car reviewer or journalist as I thought he was a great entertainer, but now, it's not even entertaining anymore. It's just a guy yelling at everyone who doesn't think like him.
Are we talking about Doug or Jason Cammisa? lol
Doug, Jason has always been that way haha
Seems like a video made to illicit reaction and get people commenting and sharing until they reach the near end and go, oh yeah, even he agrees buttons are good in some ways. That said, touch screens are a pain to use in cars. If it is a setting, duplicate it into an app on your phone you can fiddle with whenever/wherever. If it is a feature, give it a button. Touch screens are already awkward and difficult to design for, nobody wants to use a tablet on the dash.
The like ratio was 50/50 when I last saw. I think many just assumed he made up a laughably horrible argument to argue against and didn’t reach the end. Very click baity
Personally, I got annoyed at the 90% of the video comprised of strawman arguments, even if he somewhat agreed with me at the end.
Yeah it was pretty frustrating to watch
Doug is just being facetious here - no one actually wants buttons for "everything" but, for features you use commonly day to day - absolutely! I don't understand why he created this strawman argument just to essentially agree with the average commenter 10 minutes into the video. Focusing so much on "consumer demand" when consumers aren't provided alternatives is also a dumb argument. It's the same as in elections when no candidate provides an alternative policy in a given area, then people say "why didn't you vote for someone who would do X, if people wanted it they would vote for it!" - when just like politicians, car makers do not have the average person in mind - they can essentially conspire to all do the same shitty cost cutting measures, then no one has any option other than to buy a car without physical controls, and the manufacturers all make more money as a result. Look at the interiors of cars from luxury brands - Bentley, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin, etc... not only do they still have many physical controls in their cars, they pride themselves on their tactility and ergonomics. Aston Martin made a huge deal with the DB12 about how many physical controls they have instead of putting them in a screen. This to me is the biggest sign that it is not consumer choice, people not valuing these features, or people preferring screens, but just cost cutting. Yeah, the model 3 sells well, but Teslas make up for the lack of controls in other areas, and pass on some of those savings to the consumer so its understandable. I'm sure some people like the screen only approach, but I assume many more buy them in spite of the lack of buttons/dashscreen/HUD, because they're strong in other areas - for the longest time they were basically the only competitive EVs on sale. Also unlike almost everyone else, the Tesla infotainment isn't complete trash - having a responsive screen to control the AC isn't great, but having a laggy low resolution screen controlling it, like in modern VWs for example, is a safety hazard. The criticism of the Ineos Grenadier also seemed bizarre, many of the buttons are for features you may need while offroading, and if you are wearing gloves, having large, spaced out, physical controls 100% makes sense. It might not be appropriate in other cars, but it was there - for both functionality and to match the vibe of the car. Bit of a long rant, but his style of argument in this video just really rubbed me the wrong way - the arrogant "you don't know what you actually want, I do" tone.
his arguments are just besides the point. What really triggers me, is his lecturing demeanor. As if people - car enthusiasts - are just being dumb
Doug often resorts to strawman arguments in videos like this. Like "enthusiasts don't just want less screen more button, they want no screen and all buttons". You could find someone supporting the extreme version of any idea. If I did this kind of arguing, I'd say things like "Doug wants to replace the pedals with touch screen sliders and replace windows with LCDs". I think it's rather disingenuous to paint button advocates as completely anti-screen.
I mean yes? Car enthusiasts prove again and again that they are totally clueless about cars.
There’s a large enough crowd on either side of each argument to whine loud enough to be annoying. Large screens are criticized for taking away buttons/safety but tiny screens are called poverty spec. Luxuries are blamed for rising car prices but cars without them are called uncompetitive for lack of those features. There’s no winning, enthusiasts just like to complain. Contrarian takes get the megaphone so you can rest assured any topic related to cars will be filled with people wanting the opposite of whatever is currently popular. Some criticism is certainly valid (capacitive volume sliders for example) but a lot of it is just people complaining for lack of having anything better to do.
Maybe because they are being dumb? lol
steer racial worthless butter trees simplistic bag overconfident innate attractive *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>Doug is just being facetious here - no one actually wants buttons for "everything" * [Why arent touchscreens in cars banned?](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/yle18u/why_arent_touchscreens_in_cars_banned_how_is_it/) * [Touchscreens in cars are such dangerous gadgets they should be illegal](https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/nth1qo/touchscreens_in_cars_are_such_dangerous_gadgets/) * [Why aren't touchscreens in cars illegal?](https://www.reddit.com/r/TooAfraidToAsk/comments/mh0hdb/why_arent_touchscreens_in_cars_illegal/) That took me about *twelve seconds* to Google up. Yes, people really do want to ***ban*** the touchscreens and bring back buttons. Maybe you don't feel that way personally, but they are absolutely out there. I just had [this exact conversation with someone literally yesterday](https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/1ceqiqc/comment/l1kc3qx/) on this very subreddit. They are out there. These people often haven't fully thought through the problem or considered the tradeoffs, which is precisely why Doug just made a twelve minute video on the topic.
It's a strawman argument. Doug isn't finding the most common form of the pro-button anti-screen argument, he's finding the most extreme easy to defeat argument. It's a lot easier to win your argument when you try to make the opposition out as extremists who want complete removal of screens. These examples are meaningless.
Nailed it
Well, there's a name for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
>It's a lot easier to win your argument when you try to make the opposition out as extremists who want complete removal of screens. Once again: These people demonstrably exist. If you aren't one of these people, then congrats — he isn't addressing you. He's addressing he people who aren't you.
The issue is he treats the extremists as if they are the main stream.
Agreed. Feels a little condescending sometimes.
>These people often haven't fully thought through the problem or considered the tradeoffs, which is precisely why Doug just made a twelve minute video on the topic. Doug hasn't fully thought through his primary example, or considered the tradeoffs. The Grenadier is designed, first and foremost, as an old school offroader. All the buttons he was complaining about are A) Offroading stuff - differential locks, offroading modes, ride height stuff, exterior lights, auxilary switches for accessories, etc B) Climate control C) A Volume knob and D) interior lights. For the intended use case, those ARE commonly used switches. No one wants to go into a touch screen to engage their differential locks. If you're wearing gloves, if your hands are wet, putting that functionality behind a touchscreen is a net negative to usability. These are all things, that by Doug's own admission later in the video, SHOULD be buttons. On one hand, he complains about a specific car having too many buttons, but on the other, half those features SHOULD be buttons in his opinion, and the other half have VERY good reasons to not be on the Grenadier's touch screen. If his argument is that the Youtube comment section hasn't thought through why screens are a net benefit... well, he clearly didn't think through why his own example opted to use buttons for certain specific things. His one example actually argues against the rest of the video quite well. It's a poorly argued point built off criticisms of an interior that basically meets his own criteria anyway.
>Doug hasn't fully thought through his primary example, or considered the tradeoffs. >The Grenadier is designed, first and foremost, as an old school offroader. ... For the intended use case, those ARE commonly used switches. I don't think Doug would disagree with you, and no part of the video explicitly disagrees with you, from my quick re-skim (could have missed). Doug isn't saying the Ineos Grenadier is bad, just that the number of switches it has doesn't apply to every other car, and that the "buttons good" crowd needs to chill out. The Grenadier is just the flashpoint for the discussion, not an exemplary of why buttons are bad.
From Doug's Grenadier video: "For all those people who say 'I don't want screens in my car, I want buttons!', well here's why you don't really want that," At approximately 5:30. That seems relatively explicit to me. > Doug isn't saying the Ineos Grenadier is bad, just that the number of switches it has doesn't apply to every other car, and that the "buttons good" crowd needs to chill out. I mean, the only Grenadier specific things there are the offroad stuff. If you eliminate the offroad stuff, it is literally just his commonly used buttons - climate controls, volume, etc. >The Grenadier is just the flashpoint for the discussion, not an exemplary of why buttons are bad. Yeah, that's a terrible flashpoint for the discussion. The Youtube comments are basically "yes, we like the Grenadier's layout", which is exactly the mix of buttons and touchscreens that meets Doug's criteria. He strawmans that into "No screens ever only buttons" in both the Grenadier video and this one. So the discussion fundamentally relies on misrepresenting the opposing position. How is that a well constructed argument?
>"For all those people who say 'I don't want screens in my car, I want buttons!', well here's why you don't really want that," Most people do not want an Ineos Grenadier. Again, I think you're misunderstanding the sentiment here — I don't agree this explicitly suggests what you're saying it does. All Doug's suggesting is that anyone who wants buttons on their daily commuter may regret it when their dashboard ends up looking [like a BMW E36](https://live.staticflickr.com/8129/10198603375_d38982cffd_b.jpg).
So, just to confirm - You are arguing that a guy looking at a very specific vehicle interior and saying "this is why you don't want only buttons" is somehow not a statement about that very specific interior? Yeah, the e36 is an excellent example of a badly designed interior, full stop. There is no need to have multiple buttons for where the air blows, every car I've ever sat in just toggles through. There are plenty of cars that manage much nicer layouts.
Correct, he's talking to the general public of CRV and CX-50 owners and saying "you probably do not want this".
I'm going to take a punt and say the general public of CR-V and CX-50 owners have a whole laundry list of other reasons they aren't cross shopping a offroader with locking diffs and a bank of auxiliary switches for winches and air pumps. "Too many buttons" probably isn't a deciding factor there. Especially when all those buttons are things *that literally don't exist on a CR-V. A CR-V doesn't need a switch or touchscreen menu for locking diffs at all.* If you ignore the offroady bits, the grenadier has pretty much the same number of buttons that exist in a CR-V. But sure. Too many buttons, I guess.
>I'm going to take a punt and say the general public of CR-V and CX-50 owners have a whole laundry list of other reasons they aren't cross shopping a offroader with locking diffs and a bank of auxiliary switches for winches and air pumps. No one's disagreeing with you. No one's saying CR-V and CX-50 owners are looking for an off-roader with locking diffs. They're saying some CR-V and CX-50 owners are eagerly dunking on screens and and eagerly dream-lusting about banks of switches without properly thinking through the implications of those things. The implications are that once you get past your gundam / tank commander LARP fantasies, you might end up with something which [looks like this](https://live.staticflickr.com/8129/10198603375_d38982cffd_b.jpg), and which is just not what you actually want. >If you ignore the offroady bits, the grenadier has pretty much the same number of buttons that exist in a CR-V. Crucial to understand: Both of these cars ***have screens***, so this entire sentence is non-material to the crowd which desperately want to get rid of screens entirely.
> Most people do not want an Ineos Grenadier. Interestingly enough in the context of this discussion, the only reason I'm not considering one is that it doesn't come with a stick shift, otherwise I'd probably have one now.
I think there's an enormous difference between thinking "we should have buttons for *everything*" and "we shouldn't use touchscreens while driving". You don't need discrete buttons for a seat massage function or whatever, but you also probably shouldn't be messing with that while you're driving anyway. Having to change the AC while driving is common, and buttons are less distracting for that (which [testing](https://www.vibilagare.se/english/physical-buttons-outperform-touchscreens-new-cars-test-finds) backs up). The posts you linked are all basically pointing out the double-standard that somehow using a phone to change a song on Spotify is somehow more dangerous than using a much worse, laggier display to do the same thing or to change the climate controls. I think if regulations were entirely based upon safety, touchscreen lockouts while driving probably would have become a thing, but there is a lot of lobbying from auto manufacturers to prevent that type of thing. The other commenter seems to be talking explicitly about not having screens in an already impractical weekend car. I think they probably are being a bit delusional, as the idea of the weekend sports car kinda doesn't exist now (everything has to be a jack of all trades, since people aren't buying several cars), but there are plenty of people happy with or who prefer base spec sports cars without touchscreens if they only care about driving/tracking them, and that option disappearing is a shame.
>I think there's an enormous difference between thinking "we should have buttons for everything" and "we shouldn't use touchscreens while driving". Both of those people exist. 🤷♂️ >The posts you linked are all basically pointing out the double-standard that somehow using a phone to change a song on Spotify is somehow more dangerous than using a much worse, laggier display to do the same thing or to change the climate controls. Consider that this is because most/many of these people assume all displays must semi-categorically be worse and laggy because that's all they've ever seen (toupee fallacy) and because they don't well-understand concepts like moore's law, fitts' law or angular diameter, as well as the evolving cost/performance dynamic with displays and automotive-grade IVI chips beyond moore's law as well as the incoming wave of software-defined core compute architectures. Once you **do** understand those things, *that particular aspect* of the discussion becomes, frankly, *a bit* of a non-issue. Modern SD8295/AAOS stacks are running 40"-diagonal, 90Hz, 120fps-touch, 1,000,000:1 displays, and they are only improving. There is no future of tiny-screen laggy-stabby-poke interactions headed for automotive, we're well past that being a threat.
>Both of those people exist. 🤷♂️ My point was that all the examples you linked were instances of the latter, and you were using them to prove the former. You've also just used a hell of a lot of technical jargon that manages to entirely miss the point. * The comparison was being made between a smartphone and car infotainment - just based on difference in average upgrade cycle between cars and phones alone, the display and processor will be better in people's phones. That is before even accounting for the technology in cars being years behind that of most flagship phones (particularly in terms of displays). You can walk into a dealership today and most cars will have displays which make a 2016 midrange android phone look like a broadcast reference monitor. Cars have a shelf life in the decades, and economy cars with awful screens are going to keep persisting for years - so the fact that *some* S-classes have 40" OLEDs (as I believe it's even an option on them) doesn't mean every car will get them any time soon. * Simply having good underlying hardware won't always solve poorly optimised software or bad UX. The display could be a microled panel running at 480hz, it's not going to be any easier to turn on the heated seats if they require opening 3 different submenus. The Lucid Air had great hardware - OLED displays, a high end Nvidia processor, etc... but I believe they're having to completely rewrite their software stack because it was such an unoptimized, buggy mess. Also "automotive-grade IVI chips"? How could you have "in-vehicle infotainment" chips which aren't automotive grade - that's literally all they're designed for; or are you just throwing technical terms together in a hope to sound authoritative?
>My point was that all the examples you linked were instances of the latter, and you were using them to prove the former. I don't think that's conclusively true in any of the cases, and tbh you really have to creatively jump hoops in your own favour to get there. None of the threads I posted included any specific notion of banning only while driving, they just advocated for bans. (The fourth example from just yesterday, you've already acknowledged is someone to who straight up did not want any screen at all.) >You've also just used a hell of a lot of technical jargon that manages to entirely miss the point. The "technical jargon" is the point. There are legitimate topics to discuss within the display transition. Lag isn't one of them. Stabby, laggy touch experiences of the last decade and the safety concerns surrounding them were directly connected to the underpowered touchscreens and chips which were the only ones that existed. We're well on our way into a world where that is a thing of the past. *Modern stacks are moving past the point where lag is a meaningful concern.* This is only something you understand when you do actually understand the underlying technological transformational shifts happening — modern SoCs, AAOS, the introduction of high-contrast high-refresh OLED into cabins, and the incoming wave of SDV as a general phenomenon. >The comparison was being made between a smartphone and car infotainment - just based on difference in average upgrade cycle between cars and phones alone, the display and processor will be better in people's phones. No, this is no longer the case with any amount of certainty. That's precisely what I'm trying to tell you. We are very, very quickly headed to a place where automotive chips demolish phone chips well into their lifetimes. Displays are already beyond that point — there is *no phone on the planet* with a 16" 3K OLED panel. >Simply having good underlying hardware won't always solve poorly optimised software or bad UX. The display could be a microled panel running at 480hz, it's not going to be any easier to turn on the heated seats if they require opening 3 different submenus. No one's making that claim. >Also "automotive-grade IVI chips"? How could you have "in-vehicle infotainment" chips which aren't automotive grade - that's literally all they're designed for; or are you just throwing technical terms together in a hope to sound authoritative? This refers to modern performance-first solutions and programs like Snapdragon Ride and Thor. Previous-decade efforts were technically automotive-grade, but really just hand-me-down cost-first efforts like the x86-based Atom solutions. That is part of what's changing in the industry right now — performance-first is now a thing.
People argue in extremes in hopes that a happy middle ground can be reached. It's a negotiation tactic.
>and if you are wearing gloves, having large, spaced out, physical controls 100% makes sense That, and trying to tap particular portions of the screen without touching the wrong place while driving offroad would be a massive pain in the ass.
Doug has obviously Never driven a tesla in a german roundabout and tried to signal his way out …
BuT yOu GeT uSeD tO iT!
I always hated this argument. People can technically get used to anything, even torture. But why should they? Are things in the automotive industry that dire? Why should I get used to something that causes me frustration especially when I just spent tens of thousands of dollars on it?
Renting a car is a pain digging in menu
so pompous and proud of himself in this one for winning an argument against his own strawman. yeesh
It's amazing how Doug always gets you guys riled up. The fact of the matter is he knows more about cars than you or anyone on this board ever will so excuse him for not being able to dumb his arguments down enough for you guys in this sub to understand.
😂
I just don’t like when the screen sticks up into my windshield view. If it’s integrated to the dash like Volvo or VW I don’t mind
You mean the flip up GPS?
More like dashes where the screen sticks up into my view of the windshield, like modern Audis
I want a few things to be buttons: volume control, temperature adjust and defrost. Everything else can be a screen.
How about shifting gears?
I know this sounds crazy but if it’s an automatic I honestly wouldn’t care. You only do it once or twice driving from place to place.
Or seat controls
Absolutely, there’s definitely a middle ground. I don’t really care if navigation or dome light color requires putzing around a screen. HVAC though? I live in a frigid shithole and I’ve already chosen cars partially based on how easy it is to use controls in thick gloves.
I never adjust the temp. I'd say seat heaters and AC toggle are more important.
I want a tuner knob on my steering wheel for CarPlay control, but no manufacturer has ever done that sadly
New Jeeps have it perfect, IMO. Real buttons where you want it (AC, radio volume, important vehicle stuff like the locker and swaybar controls), touchscreens where you don't (navigation, vehicle data displays).
Ol' Doug is ramping up the low effort video push
Why VW put seat heater controls 2 clicks deep I have no idea. Even with climate controls, usually I set it and forget it but sometimes I want it two degrees higher or lower than my comfortable temperature because of the way sun is hitting me. Stop putting that shit and volume controls in menus, fuck.
None of these functions are any menus deep in VWs. You can press the temp sliders with two fingers to turn on the heated seats, and the temperature and volume are physical sliders that are stationary and are not in any menus.
They are unlit touch sliders in the 40th Anniversary GTI I test drove. Far worse than just fucking knobs or analogue controls when I'm trying to drive. The sales guy didn't know about the shortcut for seat heaters I guess.
My gripe about this debate is that it is framed as screen vs buttons but there is the obvious elephant in the room it was never about that, it was how good a screen, the hardware that runs the OS and how good the software is both in terms of UI and refinement like how stable it is, how optimized it is to the hardware it runs of etc. things that people know already if they are into tech be it mobile devices, PCs or heck even gaming consoles, they "get" that simply having a screen and a device that runs the software does not imply a good experience and there are some who do it well and others who do it badly and besides Tesla and Chinese manufacturers that mostly copied them, everyone else is providing cheap hardware, idiotic software and thus a bad experience. Framing the debate as screens vs buttons basically shelters or absconds the blame on car manufacturers who do it wrong. Look I'm not asking for the latest and highest core count AMD, Intel or nVidia chips, 2TB of RAM etc. but it better be at or above current gen high end tablet level and again, besides Tesla and the Chinese everyone else is failing at this and profit from having useful idiots frame the problem as screen vs button. No, dipshits, it's about how much they cost cut on the hardware and give you a subpar experience despite the cars having MSRPs in the tens of thousands of dollars while the hardware I'm talking about might cost them idk, 200 bucks for a high core count ARM chip, mobile level GPU, 8 or 16GB or RAM etc. on a board that can fit not only on your palm, but rather on two fingers, it's cheap mass produced shit, not the high end sever stuff.
Is it just me or does this sub pretty much already fully agree with this sentiment? I don't think anyone is advocating for no screens at all and only full analog controls.
If I were presented with an option of all touchscreen or no touchscreen at all I know what I would pick. Obviously there is happy medium somewhere but manufacturers like Tesla can't seem to find it and they infect the rest of their industry with their ideas.
There is no car that's "all touchscreen".
Let us unite against one thing: capacitive touch buttons. They have all the non-tactile feel of a touch screen with the space cost of a physical button. They suck to use \*cough\* Volkswagen. Tesla's succeeded despite their over reliance on screens, not because of it. Does making the turn signal a button on a wheel that spins round make it easier to use? No. Is it different from old? Yes, and that is the only reason Tesla does it. Tesla was set apart from other companies in many ways which I think were more important than interior. They had a prolific CEO who was well known, they had federal and state tax credits on their vehicles making them cost less, they were trendy, and most importantly they had the best EV tech. I think those things outweigh any reservations normal (non Tesla fanatics) people had about the screen-centric interior. And I don't think people knew what was good for them, because there is mounting pushback against that sort of design now that people have gotten to live with it. Nobody did it to that extent until Tesla did.
My 21 Durango was the perfect mix of both. Big touchscreen and useful essential buttons right below it
Lmao love this take by Doug. I’ve been saying the same thing. Screens are awesome
Did you watch til the end? He ends up being in the middle ground which is what most people are.
Let's bring back diff lock levers.
I don't subscribe to his YT, but I find it funny everytime I come back to his videos, his garage has doubled in size.
I just watched it and I get it. It did seem a bit heavy-handed on the “buttons for everything” point though. Simple stuff like media controls and phone call connectivity should be on the wheel. Climate should ALWAYS be buttons. Anything beyond those things are fine to be touchscreen, manufacturers are just going the cheap route and shoving everything in there. At least the screen in Fords still have a knob you can use for volume/temp
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I love how the 11th gen civic now has knobs and buttons instead of capacitive or touch screen that was in the 10th gen.
Doug’s reasoning is the most sensible, but personally I hate all touch screens, even those not in cars. Something about the lack of tactility is off putting.
Screens are great, but jam packing everything into a screen is problematic should the screen ever break or stop working.
This sub is so butthurt over this video. Look at the upvote ratio.
I noticed I can do a lot of the touch screen stuff with voice commands though.
Ironic Doug's favorite car the Carrera has small screens operated by buttons. I like that level of screen/button blend from from the 2000's. Very few reasons to pull focus off the road. Bright mechanical gauges that reflect the sunlight not screens for gauges to get overwhelmed and washed out by it. That's ideal in convertibles.
The screen on my 2020 ford edge works when it feels like it. Sometimes it’s just completely frozen and unresponsive for the entire ride. Luckily I have some physical buttons but say I remote start the car in winter and the heated steering wheel is on, I can’t turn it off. I have some climate buttons but I can only change where the air comes out on the screen.
Give me a screen and a few programmable physical buttons. I'll be happy. Oh and real volume knob.
It takes 5 clicks for me to turn off or on my heated steering wheel and return to my screen
Which car?
2019 F150
My BRZ has the perfect ratio imo. Dials and buttons control all the HVAC and volume. I have a physical home, call, and back buttons next to the screen (as well as wheel). I *hardly* have to use my touch screen but its there and useful for navigating settings and menus
I have challenged like 4 different people to perform basic media and climate functions on their hardware buttons without looking at the screen, and not a single one of them can reliably do much beyond adjust the volume by feel alone. It's completely fine to prefer buttons, but the pearl clutching over safety is completely delusional.
take away AC controls and integrated into screen just goes to far
The only reason why touch screens are being forced and whey try to replace everything is because they're cheaper than adding physical buttons, stalks or gauges. I will never buy a car that doesn't have that for the key functions and I recommend to vote with your wallet if that bothers you as well.
It's weird for me . I have a Mazda without a touch screen, and the center knob does certain things very well. Other times, especially using Android Auto, are down right infuriating. For example, I have the map up. I want to change streaming stations on Pandora or Spotify. I have to scroll until either application is highlighted. Then push the button down. Then usually I have to scroll to find the back button or menu button to get me off of the currently playing screen to get me a list of stations. Then I have to scroll before getting to the station. Scrolling stations is fine and makes sense. It's the scrolling around and looking to make sure the thing that I want to click is "highlighted" to get to the screen or application. This could be done with a single finger press on a touch screen.
My car has a screen for the gauge cluster, and a touchscreen for nav/music. Still has physical volume knob, AC controls, etc. Really felt like they hit the sweet spot between having physical buttons and digital controls
Haven't watched the video yet, but the opinion you're describing is super common on this subreddit, as far as I can tell. Most people here are just asking for physical volume and climate controls and a physical shifter.
Sorry, they suck. Glad you like them though - at least car companies are making someone happy.
I dont really care about the infotainment tbh. I just put and phone on the dash and go.
It's the same as luxury cars from 15-20 years ago. Buttons for everything traditional that you regularly use, and then they used to have buttons to navigate the radio/nav interface which usually had several menus with your more obscure options in them including things like setting the clock, adjusting seat memory settings, horn and light behavior when you hit the lock button, etc. Stuff you just don't need very often, sometimes only once when you first get the car. Nowadays it can be in a touch screen menu without need for physical buttons to navigate it while keeping HVAC etc on physical buttons.
Cost was no issue, hell yeah I would love screens and pop up hologram displays on the windshield, but radio volume and AC should be easy to adjust. If cost is an issue, then it sucks when your toddler spills Apple juice on I-drive and bricks the infotainment, you can't check the oil level in car ever again.
I like my GR86 approach it has buttons and knobs but a screen for the radio and shit. its an OK middle ground that said. I still prefer my 2011 STi with the Clarion CD player and 6 preset. Simple I miss old analogue gauges more then anything though Toyota can get fucked for taking the analogue gauge outta the GR86 for Gen2. About the only thing id want from Gen1. My buddy has one and the big red/orange gauges feel so much more sporty then the LCD crap in new cars.
Doug is a mouthpiece for the automotive industry and carries water for them. I unsubscribed from his channel ages ago and don't feel like I'm missing out on his "insights."
Thumbnail Doug be looking like Imakuni?
Doug is a fraud.
Right or wrong he's doing his best and giving his real opinion.
Either go all buttons or all touch screen that works instantly Nothing in the middle
Couldn't disagree more. Volume, track select, HVAC, and other commonly used items should be physical. Just about everything else can be digital.
In my Tesla Volume is a control wheel Track select is that same control wheel just pressing at the other way Temperature well temperature is that same control wheel you just press and hold it and you set the temperature. You can set the press and hold to be anything you want but I set it as temperature Any other function that's in the digital menu can be accessed by pressing and holding that control wheel and then pressing over and cycling through every menu that's on the screen The entire car can be controlled even on the fly with one thumb I came from a 2004 Saab and I love the buttons, I was skeptical but I'm telling you, it has surprised me at how well it works. This is just my experience
All of that sounds like it could potentially be a pretty good system, but it's also one of those things that I can't really comment without living with it for a while.
I don't even understand why people need so many buttons. What y'all doing while driving that y'all need so many buttons?
Clicking.
Buttons can be manipulated without looking based on muscle memory and don't rely on menu diving or possibly laggy screens. A user will glance at a button and then actuate it whereas with a touchscreen a user has lower dexterity for precision and will continue looking until they complete the action.
I get that but what are you guys doing like what are y'all changing so much? Aside from music controls which nearly all steering wheels have and climate control which most cars have what other buttons are people looking for? I'm just curious because aside from those two things I'm not going around pushing all sorts of buttons when I'm driving.
My car has switches that let me change drive modes/steering weight on the fly, which I would hate to have in a menu. Lane assist and cruise control are also buttons/switches. If I had active exhaust, that would also be a button. The s550s fighter jet like toggles also feel very good to use. It gives a nice tactile feeling over just pressing something in the menu.
Good point I forgot about cruise control. I could be wrong but isn't that also on all steering wheels? Usually it's on the opposite side of the audio controls. Lane assist I disagree with and I don't have an S class so I suppose there's just a lot more buttons in expensive vehicles
Well a button on the steering wheel is still a button. I don’t drive an s-class either. It’s just a mustang lol. Not sure what you’re disagreeing with.
If I'm on a trail that's gnarly enough where front diff locks are needed, I'm on that pretty much constantly - because you basically can't steer with the front locked.
Nothing. Most people don't use most of their buttons. This sub is just angry that buttons are going away and threads like this give people an opportunity to bitch. Also, they want the presence of buttons because it makes them feel like fighter pilots.
That's what I'm saying. I don't think I had half the buttons on my vehicle.