My Mazda had a nice combination of touch screen which disabled itself when the vehicle was in motion and you could then use the rotary control instead. Was really nice and intuitive with entirely separate AC, heated seats etc controls.

Even just the bright light from it is a hazard.

I turned down my dash panel for the “plus lights” night mode (my car is a 2012 Honda civic, so night mode is literally whenever I turn on the headlights) because it was so blindingly bright I couldn’t stand it.

I was in car with a friend with a Prius.. not a super new one, but with the central touch center of shit and it never got very dim.. it was always just this distracting light in the middle of the car. I literally would not be able to drive that car, my attention would be drawn to the light because I like dark. But then it also reflects off the windshield and shit and just nope.

Techbro tries to demonstrate that he's not fundementally disconnected from society challenge: impossible

Yep, infotainment and HVAC should have different control systems entirely. If your radio dies it should not mean the death of your car completely. And I consider not having access to your government mandated cameras and defrosters a dead vehicle.

I had a 1988 Pontiac 6000. I took out the radio/tape unit and replaced it with a CD player. My goddam cruise control was disabled after that. They've been running other systems through the radio forever.

I take trips to Tallinn. Beautiful city. I use the car share apps there for convenience. Pick up a car and park wherever. I get to try out many different cars, if only for a while. I hate touch screens. One even was set with brightness to zero and I was unable to change it.

Dials and knobs for everything please.

Why are you going to break it one day?

That one we can accept modern ebikes.

Yep. Usually I'm bluffing when I say "I'll die before I buy [a smart TV/a phone with a selfie cam hole punch/a computer running Windows/a console without a disc tray]," but there are real alternatives to buying these death traps. I could stand to lose weight anyway.

That seems so GM

For our younger audience: this is from when the show Cheers was popular, that's why there's a "Norm" setting.

Admitely the better solution than the more modern featureless knob you have to look where it currently was.

That or a knob where you feel the position.

Pretty sure this was the exact control panel my mom's 80s Ford Econoline van had.

Yup. You can move the levers to one extreme and blindly gauge where it's supposed to be. Also: each of these things provide additional feedback (fan direction, speed, etc) so you don't even need to memorize detents or positions for stuff.

I will say that the temp lever, over time, gets very sticky and hard to move. Other than that: it's good design.

Wait, new cars don't have spare tires? Wtf has the world come to?

I feel like the saved weight could be a net benefit for the environment

I very much prefer the extra cargo space. I have never had a flat tire. I go on vacations/road trips every year, multiple times.

My Mitzu has hella steering wheel controls and I loooooove it

The climate control things are off-wheel but I just have the dial set to automatically make it 70°F all the time and never touch it.

Nah, see, when you turn on the car's iPad, it shows a pop-up telling you not to use it while driving, so it's totally different.

You mean if you drive hands free as opposed to having a tablet being held by your car so you can use your hands on the wheel? You can mount an iPad in your car. Lol.

This 100% I hope other brands will follow with Škoda's new smart dials (or even go further)

Honda is one automaker that has separate climate controls, and it is a great balance with things that are nice on a screen like navigation. Heck, even though the music is through the touchscreen it still has a volume knob to quickly adjust or turn off no matter what the screen is showing.

I have a small (4-5") screen that has my clock, media information, which displays my backup camera feed if I'm in reverse, which I think is a modest improvement over the all-analog option, and a huge step up from the deathtrap touchscreen configuration. In my mind, the touchscreen is the point where it starts to drop off quickly, as it stands I don't think I'd buy a car with a touchscreen that doesn't lock it out while moving.

Dear Lemmy and the fediverse as a whole.

Unless you have specifically read up about the labor rights of Luddites you really dont know what you are talking about when you throw the word Luddite around (I know I didn't)

“[T]he Luddites did indeed understand the advantages which mechanization would bring,” Raymond Boudon, a sociologist at Paris-Sorbonne University, wrote in his Analysis of Ideology, citing the work of influential historian Lewis Coser. But “their machine-wrecking was an attempt to show the owners of the new textile mills that they were a force to be reckoned with, that they had a ‘nuisance value’. By acting in this way, their main objective was to gain concessions from the employers.”

The Luddites weren’t technophobes, then. They were labor strategists.

“This strategic interpretation of the Luddite movement is confirmed by the fact that the workers often destroyed only those machines which were turning out faulty goods,” Boudon wrote. “It was still true, of course, that a worker who went on strike could easily be replaced by somebody from the army of unemployed people willing to be strike-breakers, at a time when nascent trade-unionism was harshly suppressed. Since machine-breaking brought the factory to a halt, it was not only a functional substitute for striking, it was also much more effective.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/luddites-definition-wrong-labor-technophobe/

Except the Luddites didn’t hate machines either—they were gifted artisans resisting a capitalist takeover of the production process that would irreparably harm their communities, weaken their collective bargaining power, and reduce skilled workers to replaceable drones as mechanized as the machines themselves. Their struggle has been tragically warped into a caricature when it is more relevant than ever.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/06/the-luddites-were-right

Welcome to lemmy. AI bad. Cloud bad. Screens bad. Tesla terrible. Ad-based monetization the literal devil. Paywalls, the devil's brother.

I hate how they don't give you a choice in the matter.. Just give me basic controls, then sell a bespoke android tablet that mounts in the car. I thought car companies love to push extras?

In these heady days of internet porn, this sounds like such an innuendo

same but that also just brings up another rant about modern cars. mine has surround view cameras -so you can see a birds eye view when parking. it's really nice. but then why do I have to suction cup a dash cam right next to the built in camera and run a USB cable around my car? please just let us plug in a USB storage device and use the built in cameras as a dash cam.

My 2019 Kia seems to give the best of both worlds. I've got a small I think 10" display for reversing camera and Android Auto/Apple Carplay/radio and physical buttons and knobs for climate controls, volume, etc. the display is just big enough to be useful for maps, and Kia's UI for the screen on the display is really nice with almost entirely white on black so it's not distracting nor too bright at night and it really blends in when you aren't looking at it while being there and ready for you when you are

Like your phone carrier, maps application developer, Facebook, and any other app with location data, isn't actively trying to sell that info to as many paying customers as possible...

1. Only if you drive in a way they can call unsafe
2. There is one brand that will let you opt out of tracking, storing data, etc: Tesla.

Companies just use black boxes anyway lol

I don't have first-hand experience, but from what I understand the way they make money off of those tablet screens they put in cars is by licensing proprietary software that other companies want you to have no choice but to use. That's why models with no screens are disappearing from the major car makers

I have a radio transmitter and it worked so much better than i ever expected. My friend had one like 15 years ago that was absolutely crap

Try again, I had an akai and it don't work that well either. Now I have an osio 4240 and I am happy with it.

Did you try adjusting the station it broadcast to? I thought the FM transmitter was crap until I messed around with the different stations.

I bought a Bluetooth adapter (not sure if that's what what you call it) for $45 at Best Buy. It plugs into your audiojack. The one I bought comes with a cigarette lighter jack to charge it. Works great

Yup, just give me fuel efficiency upgrades and I'm happy. I don't need anything fancy, I'm even happy to have roll windows.

1989 Honda acty pickup 🙏🙏

The old classic well-designed cars just had better taste. I agree with you, I've been saying the same thing for years! Design some of these hybrids or electric cars with the same good classic taste - they'd be great! Unfortunately the trend of today (not just with cars but with many objects) is poor taste.

When I was a kid I loved my dad's 1987 Chrysler 5th Avenue. It was silver and had a plush red leather interior with high pile carpet. It was a poor man's personal luxury car but it still felt like you were riding in style.

If you replaced the 318 V8 and three speed automatic with something more economical, I would absolutely drive something like that.

Still have them as paddles and buttons on my 2023 Honda. I don't even need to look down and they work with gloves.

Heating and ac controls on the flatscreen eliminated a bunch of other carmakers from my poasible choices.

Wish they'd have the option to just have an AUX input only.. Not everyone wants or needs a dumb radio

Look at Bruce Wayne over here, tired of using his batphone.

¿Por qué no dos dos?

I'm putting a tablet in my car because I want a giant screen for navigation and engine management software. Tweaking fuel maps, reading data from various sensors like oil and intake temp, calculating MPG, etc.

FWIW I'm not replacing my stereo and A/C controls; I need my physical buttons. I'm simply ripping out the outdated factory navigation to replace it with something modern, with more functionality that will get regular updates. Best of both worlds.

(And yes I'm aware that Android Auto is a thing but again I don't want to replace the stereo with a screen so I'm taking this route instead.)

Backup cameras are required by law since I think it was 2015? But the trend of gigantic screen with no physical controls seems to be in a "will they/won't they" kinda situation right now with some manufacturers flirting with the idea, some trying it then reverting, etc.

And if it breaks, good luck doing anything in your car such as changing temperature, fan speed, audio settings etc 🙃

I haven't driven an Infiniti in about 20 years, but I like the fact they stuck with physical controls. I rented a new Peugeot that was 100% touch screen for everything including changing from park to drive. I almost got in a wreck because I had to reverse out of the way of a distracted driver pulling out of a parking spot and the touch screen wouldn't let me go from drive to reverse, i had to click park first. Anyways, I have a whole laundry list of modern smart features that make me feel like I'm fighting my vehicle instead of driving it. I'm not a fan of lane assist and auto off at traffic lights.

It's fine when the car is moving, not so great at a stand-still.

My partners car has a touch screen, but knobs dials and buttons for all the climate features.

The touch screen is just the infotainment stuff.

That's about as far as I want it to go. I don't need a large format display in my vehicle. I don't want my speed, turn signal indicator, and climate controls on a massive display that takes up 1/3rd of the dash. Their car has a 8" or so, infotainment display.... Great for Android auto/Apple carplay, with navigation so I can get my directions without having to meddle with my phone, or a clunky phone mount wobbling around.

But that's where I draw the line. Just give me the fancy infotainment screen, leave everything else the way it is.

And my Bumper Jack!

The worst part about it it that these screens are most of the time worse than a 100 dollar ipad, and unresponsive and janky as hell. The cameras are so cheap that they are also used as fpv cameras. Some of the very cheap ones sometimes still had the green and red lined that you see on parking cameras. But since it's in a car, it makes it 10k more expensive. The worst fucking car entertainment system i have ever used was when a friend of my dad bought a Maserati and asked me how it works. I couldn't figure it out, for the first time ever, i had to look at the manual. And even then, i have no idea who was responsible for that shitty ass ui, it was absolutely disgusting and made by the only guy who knows how it works.

Maybe if we didn't put those devices where high end ones that do thousands of times more than these cost $3000-$5000 into our devices that start around $25000 the latter wouldn't be so expensive? This is entirely a choice by the manufacturer, not something forced onto you by the computing device.

backup cameras were made mandatory in 2018 in the US.

I don't know. Maybe you live in a place with low teperature variations. When I get into my car on a hot summer day, I like to turn the temperature down bellow regular comfort temperature to cool down quicker. When I'm stumbling into the car after shoveling snow and scraping ice from the windshield, I like to turn it a bit higher. On long drives, I sometimes get warm after spending several hours in the leather seat, so I turn the temperature down. My girlfriend likes the temperature a bit higher, so when she uses the car, it's turned up.

It's a comfort thing, and it's definitely something I change a lot with my mechanical dials.

When I realize the car or truck ahead of me is emitting something I don't want to breathe (either because I see it coming out the tailpipe, or because I start to smell it), I want to switch to recirculation RIGHT NOW, not after I navigate through a maze of menus that require me to take my attention away from driving.

Also, I want temperature regulation based on how hot or cold I feel, not what some thermometer says (and often have different opinions about where the air should be blowing depending on how I feel).

Directing hot or cold air around the cabin and on to the windows when you come in from the rain and everything fogs up.

Everything should have physical buttons because touchscreens don't have haptic feedback and therefore demand more attention, which should be focused on the road. Physical buttons can be controlled via muscle memory much more quickly.

For HVAC, not all automatic systems are created equal and some people just prefer to adjust temps and fans manually.

Dreading the day my car dies. I want more volume on my music? Turn a knob. Need to turn it off and focus? Slap that same knob. Weather got nice out and I want to let the air in? Spin another knob. Never have to take my eyes off the road.

Though my only experience with modern cars and their touchscreens has been 2-5 interactions to do any of the above. All on a touch screen so you have to look away from the road for it usually.

What am I missing?

Not everyone has that auto-climate feature, leaving us to manually fuss with the settings. Also, the windscreen defroster is not a "always running" kind of feature as it can fog the glass once it gets too cold; it is usually blended in with the rest of the A/C control scheme making life tough while moving.

Mine's mostly set on 22. When I feel cold I bump that up to 24, 26, maybe even 28. When I've done at the gym (multiple times per week) I want cooling down so I turn it down to 16 or 14.

All the time! My girlfriend is lizard and I'm made out of magma. So if it's just me the temperature is colder, if it's just her the temperature is warmer, and if it's both of us the temperature is somewhere in-between.