Why not have both

love how looking at phone screens is (rightfully) considered bad while driving, but then they just put a big fucking tablet on cars.

I understand why people want minimalist design. I too like this. This is why my 2000 Audi TT has a door flap to cover up the radio when you don't want to see the buttons.

Is this what the new subscribe-to-drive cars look like inside? Just a straight up tablet where the music and heat controls are supposed to be?

If you're pulled over for using an iPad while you're driving you'll get a ticket. But if you build the iPad into the car it's somehow okay.

I've got a MK8 Golf and boy are the interior ergonomics of that thing annoying. Capacitive EVERYTHING. Steering wheel controls. Climate controls. Overhead lights!! It still has a normal blinker stalk though. But I knew what I was getting into when I bought it....I mainly wanted one of the last manual hatchbacks before they die out completely. Good thing it is super fun to drive so I don't really pay attention to the annoying lack of buttons.

The crazy thing for me is that apart from physical buttons, if car manufacturers actually just released models of 20-30 years ago as new launches, complete exterior and interior, they’d so well!

Edit - with just Bluetooth added but I’m cool with using a cassette adaptor of some sort. Also assuming the engines would be up to today’s emission standards. I mean just the shape and looks.

And my axe.

Leave me a phone sized screen for CarPlay and everything else can go back. I agree with the giant touch screen only stuff being nonsense, but CarPlay is life changing to my driving experience.

My AC doesn't need an OTA patch.

My major problems with this design trend, in my own (biased) experience:

• Center console entertainment UI is usually the slowest thing ever made, making it an even bigger distraction than needed. I could develop muscle memory for blindly pushing the right virtual buttons, but the slowness makes this impossible. It's usually wildly under-specced, but what's stranger is that there's never an upgrade option you can buy from the manufacturer.

• Can't use the panel blindly, creating a big honkin' distraction within reach of the driver. Speed (see above), iffy capacitive touch with no haptic feedback, as well as multiplexing the UI through deep menus, are the chief culprits here. If there were standard controls that were always on screen in the same place, with a suitably responsive UI, this wouldn't be as big a problem.

• For systems that are fully-integrated, it's all or nothing. If the panel/CPU dies, you lose your stereo, navigation, and climate controls all at the same time. My car, fortunately, has the A/C physical controls. This creates a distinct point of failure which is nice - I'm pretty sure I will still have A/C if the panel craps out.

• It's dirt cheap to manufacture and I think we all know it. We're already paying historically high prices for cars, and cheaping-out on the bits we touch the most is just an extra kick to the junk at this point. To the manufacturers: we have remarkably better experiences on our freaking phones every day, so nobody but your grandma is impressed with the weak-sauce, crippled, bogus UX you bolt into your expensive vehicles. You're not making cars cooler, you're just making car ownership worse. Do better.

Reject smart cars because they're collecting your data and it will be used to increase your insurance rates.

I just got a Corsa D from 2006 and am so happy the interior is still original. I think it looks great, actual buttons for anything I would need and a tiny 3.5mm jack to hook my bluetooth receiver up to for Spotify. It's perfect IMO.

I recently bought a new car and I'm so glad that even though it's very modern it doesn't have a screen.

Counterpoint:

Old man screams at clouds. 👴✊️☁️

..... I'M JUST SAYING.

You might die on a hill if you attempt to control a car using a touchscreen.

I'm really thankful that Audi rolled back whatever they were doing and gave me knobs and switched to deal with. Like in fucking planes and space shuttles !

And fingers crossed all this common sense gets enshrined in law soonish.

I barely like using my phonebat times, why the fuck would I want a tablet to control my car?

Having a touchscreen to operate your car with is a safety hazard compared to having buttons and knobs.

Being able to feel controls instead of having to look at them while driving is key, but some of you take this to Luddite levels.

I'd like to keep the Reverse Cam alongside the knobs personally.

This is my daily drive. I do wish it had Bluetooth tough. I did get an FM Bluetooth transmitter, but it didn't work that well.

What cooks my god damn goose isn't the stupid screen I'm going to break one day. It's that they run buses for other systems through the radio so you can't replace it with what you want.

Our family car radio ig? The screen looks like that due to how hot is it outside (I reside in a desert country)

My 2015 Mazda 3 has both and I love it.

I want 3 things in a car navmod:

1. Decent enough sized screen for Android auto to show me the map. My 2018 Nissan leaf is probably the smallest I'd go on this, but I wouldn't even double it

2. For the love of GOD could we let me upgrade the unit, or force android auto to use my powerful-enough-for-this-purpose phone handle rendering the video feed? My pixel can handle an external monitor at 1440p no problem, I'd love to give the shitty PC in my car a break from scrolling maps at 3fps

3. Physical buttons for everything HVAC, can honestly take or leave the volume and tuner knobs as long as they're put on the steering wheel

I can press any button I like on the console without looking, while knowing what button is.

I will never prefer anything else.

Can we add 'cars with spare tires' to the list?

Having to call a damned tow-truck just to get a flat tire fixed is not a winning move if you're trying to sell how much your car benefits the environment.

Maybe if we didn't put computers and cameras in our cars they wouldn't be so expensive

Embrace tradition

I prefer voice controls to either, but don't have a strong preference between physical or digital because I end up looking either way. Subscriptions on the other hand can fuck right off.

There's a middle ground. Give me a decent-sized [touch]screen for Android Auto with physical HVAC & media controls.

I don't want to drive a smart phone or have it drive me. Give me a car with a pre iPhone dash and Bluetooth and I am happy. I am hoping there will be a market for old people cars with real controls when the vehicles we drive now are no longer maintainable.

All I want or need is Bluetooth

I recently had the brief joy of driving a small car without power steering. I never realized how much nicer the feedback is. You'd think that it would be a nightmare to park but the size of the car meant that it was still easier on the whole.

Volkswagen in the 70s and 80s had three horizontal control levers for the heating on the center of the middle panel which you could push with one speedy gesture to the very right, and then the front window would get max heat and max air flow to defrost/to demoist very fast.

Was so intuitive and fast you didn't think about it and never had to take your eyes from the road for. That was peak design in my eyes.

Everyone insists to have HVAC controls as physical buttons. How often do you mess with them?

I set up my previous car to 20C when I bought it and it was at 20C when I sold it. Same with the current one, which has touch screen control. It heats the cabin in winter and cools it down in summer. If it's very cold or very hot, it automatically blasts on max.

What am I missing?

Several friends can barely drive without a GPS. They get anxious.

My car is a 2024, and thank fuck it has knobs, dials, and switches.

Is that huge touchscreen real?? looks it up

It is! Ugh, I hate it!

If only they were capable of offering phone stands. No, I don’t need your 4 foot, 500 gigalumen screen, just give me a place to put mine.

Agreed

Ah, the old "How hard do you want it, how hot do you want it and where do you want it?" climate controls.

There were and are the best.

Yup yup yup. I'll die before I buy a car with a touchscreen. I'll get my damn motorcycle license first.

Funny enough, when I purchased my car, I went with the last model that didn't have the computer screen in it. The last of the actual BMW car cars. No iDrive or screen. I fuckin love that car.

Infiniti has the best center stack of all cars, and that's a hill I am willing to die on. Screens for navigation, radio, and car settings, with physical buttons along the sides for common HVAC, etc controls.

Touch screens with a hundred options will become useful when we start traveling between star systems and need to react to things in minutes or even hours at time.

But when you're driving a vehicle that can run into things within milli seconds if you take your eyes off the road .... we're still going to need tactile buttons.

welcome to my world

Change is scary lmao

Dont lean into getting old too much, you cant go back.

Honda Accord...probably a 94-96. Best interface ever

Is that a cassette deck? Lucky.

I'll take it modern. Thanks.

It is funny how car lovers pretend that cars aren't just some blip in history that has existed for barely a human lifetime as a form of transportation for the masses.