this post was submitted on 10 May 2024
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All of the "amazing" Chinese cars pictured in the article are full of touchscreen infotainment systems. China is cooked as well.
I am here to tell you that america communists are wildly out of touch with the consumption tastes of the average Chinese public.
Not that we aren't right to be cynical about our own engineers achieving the same results as Chinese manufacturing.
Touchscreens are ludicrously dangerous interfaces for cars that have basically only proliferated because of techbro dipshits mucking about with things they don't understand. Cars need fixed controls that provide physical feedback and which don't require reading or light to operate. Like that's not a matter of taste, that's a basic "this is usable and safe" thing.
I hate touchscreens too, but the reason they're so prevalent is they're cheaper than engineering and manufacturing a bunch of custom physical buttons and knobs
Don't accept the capitalist premise that it's normal to compromise safety for expediency and cheapness.
Also, you can reuse some of that engineering through a full line of cars.
huh? I'm not making a value judgement, I'm saying that as a matter of fact capitalists have compromised safety for expediency and cheapness. It's not because of techbros fucking around or something.
Reuse is possible, but only to a limited degree. Setting up tooling is very expensive. Not as bad as body panels which are custom per model, but still pretty rough. You'll see that when you look at the cost of buying replacement parts for even a parts bin GM car. Gauge cluster, button and dial assemblies, the interior trim that the buttons and dials go in, all surprisingly expensive when you think of how much tablet you could buy for the same money. There is a real profit motive behind the screens. Even in consumer/hobby electronics, my background, it's the same: cases and buttons often dominate BOM costs (and require manual assembly).
You are being idealistic and giving into American exceptionalism.
However much you or I hate it, it is a matter of taste. Interfaces can be made to work intuitively, touch screen phones prove you do not need to have fixed analog buttons, and screen brightness is easy to program to adjust automatically. Our shit doesn't work because tech bros are addicted to a million unneeded features and menus. If you are just looking for a style you can vastly simplify your interface and limit your options to what is strictly nessecery. Most Chinese people will not be driving these kinds of teched-out cars.
I think it's ugly as sin, and I hope it is a passing trend, but that doesn't mean this stuff is impossible to do well. It just means we can't do it well.
Touch screens aren't better or safe just because China is doing it. It may appeal to the Chinese market. Doesn't matter; still bad.
It's not a matter of taste. Physical feedback is qualitatively different than one that is purely visual. Driving is a visual intensive act, and even a brief look away can be dangerous, but a touch screen interface relies on visual feedback to navigate because you cannot feel the buttons. These senses work differently on a fundamental level
Touchscreen phones and tablets are all horrible and notorious for not working right whether that's in the form of presses not registering or registering in the wrong spot. Like think of all the design that goes into a decent keyboard, the way keys are differentiable without pressing them, how there are physical marks that tell you where your hand is touching it, and how all this combines into an input device that you don't have to look at to use quickly and accurately (hell, my keyboard no longer has letter markers on half the keys because they've worn off over the nearly 20 years I've been using it, and this doesn't matter because keystrokes are even more ingrained into my hands than literal written text is, but this relies on the tactile feedback of them).
Meanwhile a touchscreen is a flat, featureless surface where nothing has a fixed position, any input may or may not work, and you have to watch it to see where it wants to put a button and whether that button is reacting correctly or prompting another input. Operating traditional controls that require a hand to be removed from the wheel, like for a car radio or the AC, is already considered a dangerous hazard that's only tolerated because it has to be; making that at least an order of magnitude more distracting is a catastrophically bad idea.
I hate them so much, but every American I know likes them so it doesn't surprise me that Chinese people do too.
I want analogue switches!
Touchscreens are becoming very popular in the American car market as well. All the motorists are wrong.
I prefer physical controls too, but you have to understand that touchscreen car interfaces aren't meant to be used while driving- ie, you're supposed to set climate presets and use voice controls to replace the constant fiddling with buttons and dials. I hate speaking to gadgets and sure as hell don't want to talk to my car, but this is where everything is heading.
Naw dog, there's nothing saying you can't use both physical dials and voice controls. False dichotomy. There should be physical controls that you don't have to look at + voice commands, not touch screen that you have to look at + voice commands.
I don't particularly mind that everything is gonna be a touchscreen at some point but I feel like it's gonna break down more, especially the software.
They're terrible in a car (for at least some functions) because you have to look at them instead of relying on feel
edit: and screens tend to encourage nested menus so they just progressively worse.
The only thing that might save it is the size of the screens (mentioned in the article). The problem with most Western fully touchscreen "infotainment" systems is that they use tiny screens with laggy interfaces. Because the automakers don't know how to make this stuff and contract out to the lowest bidder like they always have with stereo equipment, only now that stereo is also integral to the car's operation.
If the car and the interface are designed from the ground up to be readable and responsive, I think there is a way to pull it off (again as mentioned in the article). Having physical interfaces for basic operations related to safety and things that are messed with frequently (volume, shifting, AC, lights, signals, wipers) is a must though because a 2d interface can't fully take advantage of our 3d spatial awareness.
Making the touch screen bigger doesn't change the fundamental problem that you have to look at it and away from the road to use it. If the road is in your peripheral vision for any length of time while you're moving at high speeds, you are at risk. It may be slightly better because you can look at it for a shorter amount of time, but you shouldn't have to look at all except in your peripheral vision and/or proprioception (physical sense of where your body is).
Agreed, I still think physical knobs and buttons should never be removed. I'm just saying that if there is going to be screen controls the screen needs to be big enough that all controls can be accessed on one screen and not through submenus.
Ever feel that frustrating moment where you try to click something on your phone and end up clicking one of the buttons near it, so you go back to try again and hit another wrong button, so you go back to try again and
Now imagine that while moving at 100 kmh trying to adjust the AC
Imagine trying to adjust the AC and the "wrong thing" you hit just made the music become deafeningly loud, and the only way to fix this is on the touch screen so you have to take your eyes completely off the road.
Imagine trying to turn on the blinker to make a turn and accidentally putting the car in reverse instead.
Imagine a car that literally does not have any way to control the door locks. It just doesn't exist.
Imagine needing to find and enter a settings menu in order to turn on the headlights, defroster, or windshield wipers.
Imagine needing to use a keyboard search function in the settings menu to find things like mirror adjustment (which is also done on the touchscreen.)
Imagine having updates that change where these frequently used features are located so any imagination of "muscle memory" is impossible.
All of these are real problems people frequently experience in multiple cars made by multiple manufacturers.
NGL this video makes me want one and I don’t even drive. The way he yelled “Geely I’m too hot!!” and the AC came on hahaha