European regulations are banning essential functions on touch screens. They are bringing in a requirement for physical buttons, knobs and switches, as screen cause drivers to take their eyes off the road for too long.
Imagine how enshitified everything would be if the EU wasn’t there as a consumer protection buffer. The US would be fucked especially under our current admin who couldn’t give two shits about consumers.
It's so silly because a lot of these changes just feel like out of touch executives going "we gotta put touch screens in there! That's how you know it's a new expensive car!" And not caring about the application at all. Just put the technology in it, figure out why later.
Touch screens are frequently confused as a luxury item by consumers, and double as a cheapout for manufacturers since real quality gauges and switchgear are more expensive.
Any time you see a car full of screens, it's because the manufacturer was trying to cut costs.
Similar story for me. A buddy of mine got a Tesla model Y and I drove him to the airport in it a couple times. Hated the thing and was very reminded of apple's captive design, basically where they design things intentionally different for the sake of being different so people get use to their way, making other things feel off as a result. Everything on the center screen and having to go through a touch screen menu for windshield wipers was an absolute deal breaker. Got a Kona EV and love it, meanwhile my buddy has trouble driving his wifes car now and she hates all the blindspots in the Tesla and refuses to drive it.
My car has a small touchscreen just for audio and navigation, and it's actually great. Built-in touchscreen displays are a great addition to cars, it's just corporate greed took things too far (shocker).
Yep, my 2017 has a large enough touchscreen to serve audio and run Android Auto. Having to use the touchscreen for Android Auto is bad enough.
I also have a PRNDL (didn't know it was called that but it is now). Later years on my model switched to the push-button transmission which is positively the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Even the junky Ford / Chrysler washing-machine paddle style shifter knobs are more intuitive than that.
I take care of it and hopefully I'll keep my current ride functional for a long time because everything less than about five years old is going to this ridiculous touchscreen control scheme and I won't buy a car that relies on that. OEMs need to do something useful and bring back the manuals.
We struggled when trying to buy a car last year. We wanted a fully-electric second car, since it's our second, mainly used for a short commute or around town. Our kid was going to learn to drive, and we really wanted a "real" car with minimal screens. Boy, that was hard. We test drove at least 12 different models, and did a lot of homework.
Settled on a Volvo XC40 Recharge. Great car! Ironically, it has two screens. It has a big screen, but is not needed at all while driving. And it puts a map in front of you, where your speedometer etc is, so you don't have to look to the side while driving. But all the actual controls you'd use while driving are physical buttons, etc, and no need to look at the big screen at all, and can be set to not be interacted with while moving. Close enough.
Interesting. I'm definitely open to EVs though I can't tolerate the apparent reflexive shift away from analog controls that goes along with it. XC40 is a nice car, enjoy that.
Leave it to Volvo to integrate screens in a manner that is consistent with the operation of a vehicle at speed, rather than just cheaping out by slapping some dorky glowing frisbee on the dash running a glorified phone app.
Yep. You don't need to know what features will exist in the car, you don't need to know what the buttons do. You just put in the touch screen and then to the software later.
Lol the circuitry and parts seem cheap but with labor and parts it will cost you way more as a consumer. It eliminates 3rd party options behind software locks.
The thought process is that and that it's safer to use hands fee voice controls (despite the shit system cannot recognize any accent beyond monotone English).
Touch screens are frequently confused as a luxury item by consumers,
It's because of who the consumer is. The average new car buyer is in their 50s, with an average price above $50k. They barely understand how their smartphone works, so they think anything with a screen stuck to it is fancy and advanced.
and double as a cheapout for manufacturers since real quality gauges and switchgear are more expensive.
This is actually a LIE. Source: I used to work in auto manufacturing, but also just take 5 mins to look at the cheapest new cars on sale. All of them have buttons and manual controls. The truth is it's cheaper to have just a big screen then a big screen AND manual controls, but a small screen and manual controls will always be cheaper.
The reality is industrial designers are ruining their products on purpose to appeal to boomers more, not to save money because it doesn't.
The touch screens are cheaper for manufacturing and have the added benefit of more expensive for the consumer to replace when they break. Plus when essential items are built into the touch screen if it breaks you can't just deal with it to save money, you have to spend all the money. The money that has to go to the OEM for the replacement. Oh also the touch screen has a shorter lifespan than a physical switch/know or gear shifter. It's anti-consumerism all the way down.
you're giving too much credit to random execs. This is 100% Elon being a cheap asshole during the post-pandemic supply chain crisis and going "Why do we need a shifter? It isn't connected to the drive train like in gas cars anyway, so we can just put it on the screen. Bam, $30 saved, I'm such a genius!"
It's cheaper to shove the functions into one muti-purpose single use unit than having multiple dedicated devices. With how advanced computers are, even the cheapest chips can generally handle every base function like heating. No extra equipment required. It also makes it harder for third parties to repair and instead of a $100 repair it's a $1000 repair.
I drive a 2012 Benz and i swear to god this was peak userinterface. Not a single Touchscreen, a decent but big enough screen and every Essential thing on a Button without it being overloaded like an airplane Cockpit. This, with android/car play would make the best thing ever fr
Yeah I've got a 2008 Lexus and it's like, if I had some Bluetooth phone connectivity I would never want to get rid of this car. For now I will settle for a Bluetooth dongle.
Wait until its all voice activated and gesture activated and something on the radio triggers it. Then again, sitting back and yelling random bullshit go would be fun for like, a day maybe.
Imagine how not shitty everything would be if the EU didn't fuck money out of its citizens on every step it takes.
Issue: Climate change. Solution: Tax your citizens. That's the thinking that goes in Brussels...
Realistically there is just a ton of pressure for OEMs to add features without adding cost. Despite the common narrative that cars are so expensive, most of them are barely going up faster than inflation... But customers demand they get driver assistance, better fuel economy, heated seats, you name it.
So they all want to find other places to get cost out of them. And they decided on buttons because they thought it wouldn't get noticed as much.
If new car buyers were willing to buy simple cars they would build it, but the amount of people that are willing to walk into a dealer and buy a basic car is vanishingly small... And those few buyers just go to Toyota anyway.
To add a bit of context, designing and manufacturing and fitting the buttons isn't even the most expensive part. It's designing and installing and testing all the wiring which costs more. Replacing that hardware and those processes with software is where the big savings are, apparently.
It's not a "European" regulation but more of a regulation from Euro NCAP, an independent crash tester. Cars will only get the full rating by providing physical buttons for the most needed functions.
Things that are large, heavy and move really fast and can be catastrophic if something goes wrong need to have physical levers and controls that the operator can always feel and control in an instant if necessary. Car companies need to stop catering to the lazy for the sake of “convenience”.
Apparently, Britain is brining in a taxed-by-the-mile scheme for electric cars and PHEVs. So for them, driving itself will kinda be a microtransaction.
Haha!
Taxes are collected where ever they can and as much as possible.
In Finland drivers were taxed €5 billion, and €1.3b was used to road infrastructure.
Makes sense and would be proportional. At least here, fuel taxes go directly to road maintenance, and EVs circumvent that entirely even though they cause marginally more wear and tear on the roads per mile driven than equivalent gas or diesel due to their weight.
There are annual registration surcharges where I live for hybrids and EVs to help compensate for that... But they're flat charges whether you drive it 250, 2500, or 25,000 miles a year, which doesn't make the most sense.
A lot of countries have specific taxes on gasoline & diesel to fund road maintenance. In the US it's 18.4c per gallon of gas, and 24.4c per gallon of diesel. It should be about double that, but it hasn't been raised since 1994.
Obviously electric cars don't pay those taxes, but they still wear down the roads by driving on them. Since EVs tend to be heavier than normal cars, they actually cause more road wear over time. EV drivers should be contributing to the cost of maintaining the roads they drive on, which is where the tax you mentioned would come in.
That's not uncommon. EVs don't pay into gas taxes which usually go toward road maintenance. Sure, I'd rather have less taxes, but there's a reason for them.
Tap your card here. Would you like a receipt? Would you like to round up to save kids in need? Would you like to make a cash withdrawal? Would you like a car wash? Paper or plastic? Have you taken the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart?
I don't know about shifting from P/R/D, but I could see L (or 4H and 4L) being "optional" for users that want to use them and locked off for users that don't. I don't agree with the practice, but I could see some manufacturers *cough* Ford *cough* using software to lock off extra "power" features from owners unless they cough up the cash, arguing that it puts extra strain on the car that could cause warranty claims.
Edit: For example, Ford already does this on the higher trim Mustang Mach E models. I have a '24 GT, and if I open the app and look around I find this "Performance Upgrade" software update for $995! Adds an extra 100lb-ft of torque, lowers 0-60 to 3.3 seconds. Shit you don't even really need. But it's there if you want to pay extra and risk breaking the car.
That would be absolutely insane because you would still need to service the additional transfer case and differential. If a company ever does that I hope we collectively put up a massive fight.
Manufacturers already started doing paid upgrades to unlock features that already exist in the car (seat heating, higher engine power come to mind), imagine if they hear about this idea?
“Your subscription to the Reverse.ai gear experience has lapsed. Please update your billing information from your authorized laptop in order to back up.”
It does, but you rarely use it as the car usually knows which way you want to go and correctly selects forwards or reverse. My gf's one correctly shifts gear when parking up. I've been critical a quite a few things tesla have done but that system works really well. When you do need up use the screen it's no harder than any other method I've encountered in 30 years of driving.
That's interesting. I understand it shifting to park/drive automatically, but how does it automatically shift into reverse? And is parallel parking a pain, or does it just do the whole process automatically?
If you get in and there's something in front of you then it knows you want reverse and selects it. When you come to park it uses the turning of the steering wheel to recognise that you're going to reverse into a space, or for us, onto the drive. I can't think if I've had to parallel park it. It can park itself as well as any other car. I can't imagine it'd be a pain to manually swipe your finger over the screen when parking. I learnt to drive in a proper manual and was driving them up until a few years ago. It's considerably less effort than that.
How the fuck is this not irresponsibly dangerous? What if you get into a minor accident and spin off into the freeway, and you're in a dangerous position where you need to reverse and pull over to the side to avoid oncoming traffic? What if you're driving in the mountains and you need to quickly reverse to avoid a landslide? Is the shitass AI going to know you want reverse then? Is it going to decide for you that there's no reason to reverse?
Yeah i own a new tesla without the stalk. Once you get used to it you realize how nice it is not having to deal with shifting. I drive every day and haven’t needed to manually shift the car by swiping in over a month. And this is coming from someone who enjoyed owning 3 stick shift cars in the past.
Theres also buttons near the rear visor up top if you want to pick a specific drive mode.
Car manufacturing peaked just over a decade ago. Modern cars are designed to make you go back into the dealership regularly and trade them in quickly. There’s no better time than now to buy a “modern classic”, a 10+ YO well made luxury vehicle or super sports car. It will appreciate, making the “expensive” maintenance a small fraction of the cost of a new, poorly built vehicle.
I was so lost the first time moving my buddy's tesla into my garage to charge. Took a youtube video and 15 minutes to figure out how to get in and start the car lol.
I did a test drive a while back and personally it’s not that bad, however I do see it alienating quite a big chunk of drivers, so it’s kinda stupid for them
My grandma's Mercedes has a ton of settings over the display, which at least uses a knob you can turn and press for selections instead of a touch screen. My brother and I still had to consult the manual because it is absolutely not apparent that you can also move the knob like a joystick for further options in the menus. took us a few minutes before we could set the GPS to fastest route instead of the backland routes grandma prefers.
I have a G series BMW with the curved display and it's dog shit. In my M2 when I wanted to change air recirculation I pressed the air recirculation button now I click
CLIMATE -> RECIRCULATION -> SELECT FROM THREE CHOICES -> NAVIGATE BACK TO WHERE I WAS
this also dismisses my camera so if I was in reverse I have to reactivate the camera again by pressing the camera button.
Combined with automatic shifting it actually works really well - I'm going to be spoiled for another car now - I will expect it to shift into reverse automatically when needed.
Works even better when you plug in an aftermarket device that allows you to use the scroll wheel on the steering wheel to change directions. I haven't shifted using the touchscreen at all since that option became available.
I also have a couple of the buttons, primarily so I can turn on the Offroad Assist mode in the winter since the car doesn't officially have it and therefore it can't be turned on using the touchscreen.
900
u/Kalopsia_82 11h ago
Atleast there is a "shifter", just wait until they remove it and make you swipe up and down on the screen to change direction, oh wait.... /s