[HN Gopher] Cars Are Caught in an Endless Cycle of Bigger Screen...
___________________________________________________________________
Cars Are Caught in an Endless Cycle of Bigger Screens Nobody Likes
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 21 points
Date : 2025-07-03 18:23 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
| tahoeskibum wrote:
| I love having the big 15 inch in my Tesla. Great for maps,
| watching Netflix or gaming while charging.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Personally as an amateur designer I love the idea of working on
| a huge canvas. Turning a car into a Gundam cockpit or a store
| into
|
| https://archive.ph/1k7Ui
|
| or lighting up the whole sky on a cloudy sky with a laser sound
| like a lot of fun to me, but subjecting other people to this is
| another thing.
| bitwize wrote:
| I had a dream in 2001 or so that I visited a smarthome with
| this kind of thing on every surface. Instantly reconfigurable
| decor. Then, as I was touring the home, it got hacked. And
| suddenly...
|
| Goatse.
|
| Goatse on every wall, every cabinet door, everywhere.
|
| I was soured on the idea of smarthomes, especially ones with
| display-monitor decor, ever after.
| westmeal wrote:
| For you it may be a con butt for others it's a wide open
| win.
| nottorp wrote:
| It's okay, even "professional" designers don't seem to know
| the "usability" term :)
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Tesla is the worst offender. I hate that my passenger has to
| close my map view to adjust climate or change music.
|
| Get rid of these things they are for the car makers not the car
| users.
| cchance wrote:
| I mean thats your view, i don't see why i need to see a map
| fully if the turn instructions are always visible, lol and
| especially if the passengers not gonna be sitting in the
| fuckin AC window for an hour lol
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| It's odd they don't give you a window manager and just pigeon
| hole you into a modal UI.
| henvic wrote:
| On Model 3/Y, when you pop up something else the next
| navigation direction starts showing on the top-left. I know
| it's not the same, but it's easy to miss it.
|
| And by far, it's not the worse offender. Some cars completely
| hide any instructions (looking at you, BYD)!
| thebruce87m wrote:
| I agree. I do all of my charging at home but I still love the
| screen. I'll go out for a coffee at lunch and catch up on my TV
| programs in comfort.
| m463 wrote:
| Older teslas were better (not perfect). You had nav and status
| on dashboard in front of you, dedicated physical controls for
| turn signals, shifting, wipers, autopilot, etc. Central display
| was for big nav map and configuration. There was also a "rim"
| around the display to rest your hand on when touching
| something.
|
| They still screwed it up with software updates. Touch targets
| got smaller and harder to hit in a moving car. Grey on white
| controls were harder to see, and frequently disappeared until
| until touched. Even dedicated controls like the passenger seat
| heater would disappear when the passenger got up. Controls
| rearranged themselves.
|
| They need to hire some masters of human factors like modern
| airplane cockpit designers. In a plane, a mistake is a lost
| plane + faa investigation.
|
| And listen to their customers, because most of the mistakes are
| blindingly obvious to everyone.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Ford Mustang Mach-E has a combination
|
| and a vertical screen like the older tesla models
| bitwize wrote:
| Reggie Watts's lines are going from parody to the absolute state
| of things: "I like to take a flat-panel display monitor, put one
| in the steering column, one inside of the glovebox, one on top of
| the dashboard, two in back of the headrests, one mounted in the
| ceiling, two still in the motherfucking packaging in the back
| seat, so when my motherfucking friends go and sit on the shit and
| break it, I can honestly say...
|
| I... just... don't... give... a... fuck!"
| meepmorp wrote:
| I miss having controls that you don't need to see to manipulate.
| korse wrote:
| I am certainly in this camp. The only vehicle in my household
| from post 2010 is a Ducati (and not the kind with forward looking
| radar ffs).
|
| Wife traded a 2018 car for a 2005 truck and I have a 2010 sedan
| with a 500 mile tank and nice engine for non-bike days. We
| considered a Tesla model X for her but after trying it out for a
| few months ultimately decided against. Part of it is that we like
| to own our own stuff and dropping 60k+ on an asset that loses
| significant value in the first 200+ yards of travel seems
| retarded. Could have gotten a certified pre-owned Tesla I
| guess... but nah. Also, I have no problems with Muskie. He can go
| make a new world with e-girls and ketamine if he wishes.
|
| My next vehicle is probably going to be electric but it will be
| home-built using a classic car chassis. I have no idea why people
| want to be shittily chauffeured around by a smartphone on wheels.
|
| ELECTRIC CARS SHOULD BASICALLY HAVE THE SAME TECH STACK AS AN
| ELECTRIC SKATEBOARD!
|
| Rant over. -_-
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| You must be living in USA, right? In my country (Poland) you
| can't build your own car, because it'll never get the road
| permit
| gambiting wrote:
| I'm Polish and of course it's possible, in fact it's very
| straightforward for one-off vehicles that you don't intend to
| sell, it just has to have brakes, all required lights and
| mirrors, there are many hobbyist groups in Poland which build
| and register their own cars that they then drive in public
| roads just fine.
|
| https://bip.gliwice.eu/pojazd-zbudowany-samodzielnie-sam
| silverquiet wrote:
| OP said "using a classic car chassis". I'm not particularly
| knowledgeable, but you can make a lot of modifications to an
| existing car, but building your own from the ground up would
| be mostly illegal. I think in some sense, the actual "car" is
| legally only the VIN plate or something like that. My state
| stop even doing safety inspections recently, and before that
| they were already pretty minimal; it was mostly a check that
| your lights and horn worked and that you had at least one
| mirror.
| cchance wrote:
| Nobody? I love my screen in my tesla, lol people really gotta
| stop fuckin generalizing, especially car companies lol
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| Post 2009 cars regressed in almost every way. It's weird my used
| Toyota costs less than a third of the latest model.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Which are mainly more and more dangerous
| pixelready wrote:
| I feel like people tend to get polarized on this issue but I
| think there's very much a hybrid sweet spot.
|
| Nice to have rich car data display and a big juicy CarPlay /
| android auto touch interface for quick glance tinkering with a
| map or audio app, or seeing camera feeds for blind spots. Some
| people like media streaming while parked / camping.
|
| But certain things should be completely no-glance fully tactile
| interaction, like volume adjustment, climate control, switching
| gears and driving modes, signaling, etc...
|
| What I object to is these high tech cars always go hand in hand
| with intrusive hard to opt-out of privacy invasions like
| archiving cabin audio, camera feeds, realtime GPS tracking,
| etc... and very much selling all that in bad faith knowing full
| well that average consumers are unaware of even a tiny sliver of
| what's going on there.
| m463 wrote:
| I think the sweet spot is touchscreen car configuration, screen
| in direction of travel for status, and dedicated motor-memory
| friendly controls for car control functions.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| More voice, less touch.
|
| Car --- volume up
|
| Car --- temperature down
|
| Car --- cruise control
|
| Car --- lights on
|
| Car --- navigate home
|
| Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel. Anything else is a sub-
| optimal UI that can be improved with some imagination and a
| little work.
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| I'd say just give me a volume knob but there's almost nothing
| worth listening to on the radio anyway. I actually yanked the
| fuse on mine to keep it from draining the battery.
|
| At least with climate controls give me tactile knobs. Of course
| someone I know got the new tachoma and they made the 4wd switch
| exactly the same as the AC/fan knobs which is just so fucking
| insane. It's like whatever process is used to design these
| interfaces seeks out the worst way to do it given the
| requirements.
|
| Idk maybe I just want a dune buggy at this point. At least
| there's no design by committee corporate brain damage I can't
| rip out of that.
| bdangubic wrote:
| we had voice-activation for a decade now, nobody uses it -
| hence bigger and bigger screens :)
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Voice controls for common tasks? No way. In my experience, that
| means I can't use the controls while somebody is talking or the
| voice recognition will pick up a mish-mash of words between us.
| It also means there's often a delay between when you say a
| command and when it happens. Saying "Navigate home" is fine. I
| would not want "Temperature down".
|
| Volume and cruise controls should be controls on the steering
| wheel. Climate controls can be in the console, but should be
| physical, as it's typically pretty easy to take a quick glance,
| then find it without continuing to stare at it, unlike a touch
| screen.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-03 23:01 UTC)