[robg]

Originally Posted by ZBB

I find Tesla's touch and voice controls superior to buttons and switches in other cars (and have never successfully been able to use other cars voice controls -- since they bury them in an annoying menu so that you have to navigate the menu by voice to do anything).

Volume and forward/back are all I needed from the steering wheel buttons in the S… I ualso sed voice controls all the time. Things like "Drive home", "drive to Starbucks", or "Play U2" -- and it would just work. If stating the name for someplace to go or play, it brings up a search list that you can select from… If using a saved location, exact address, or favorited station/playlist, it just started the nav or audio on that...

I've been driving various rental cars for the last few months -- 8 rentals in total; mostly GM products, but also a Ford, Hyundai and an Infiniti. I find the interfaces and controls maddening. The only ones that make any sense to me are the GM cars that had CarPlay (all the GM cars…) -- since I could just use Siri or the touchscreen. But the non-CarPlay interfaces are absolutely horrible (ugly, poorly designed, etc…)

The Ford had some sort of app-link for Waze and some audio apps, but I couldn't get it to work (it recognized the apps on my phone, but I couldn't figure out how to control them or make them work in the car even after finding the documentation online…). If I connected my phone to the car, about 20 minutes into a drive, it would error out since apparently my iTunes-in-the-cloud library is too big, and the Ford Sync system couldn't complete cataloguing it! So much for trying to charge the phone while driving. At least Bluetooth worked.

The Hyundai didn't even have Bluetooth, but at least I could play my podcasts via the USB connection. But phone calls had to use the phone (I had one call come in on my way home one day…). But the audio unit didn't even had a play/pause button -- just forward/back.

The Infiniti has a really weird 2-screen setup (and the screens don't even match -- both have touch controls, but the top one is old-school resistive touch with a plastic-feeling face; the bottom one is modern resistive touch with glass). Apparently the car uses an Android-based OS. When starting the car, 4 default apps show up, but then it says "loading apps" and what seems like 30 seconds later other loaded apps show up for things like "XM Info" and "Performance". No CarPlay. Each app seems to have its own settings screen, in addition to the default settings apps (yes -- more than one since car, audio, and phone all have separate settings!). When I went to pair my phone, all 5 of the bluetooth slots were filled (it is a rental car), and I couldn't figure out how to delete them so I could add my own (tapping on it tried to force a connect, and there was no menu to edit or delete paired phones -- had to find a youtube video where someone showed how to do it).

Anyway… I'll be very happy to get back into my Tesla (hopefully by Wednesday!)

Ha - yeah those systems are all garbage. I was referring more to recen bmw and Audi systems. Bmws voice control is excellent now- you can give natural language commands without concern for menu structure and it works accurately and quickly. Still, I only feel the need to use it for navigation. (You can say stuff like navigate to Starbucks and it will just do it like the Tesla). It’s even quicker to use the steering wheel or idrive controller to navigate media stuff. Of course, it doesn’t have the ability to handle voice integration with Pandora either natively or with Siri but...

The on demand slacker integration with voice in Teslas always struck me as a nice demo but something I’d rarely use. (You’re mostly going to want to select a particular station, album or playlist and let it play). The equivalent on Pandora is creating a new station by selecting a song - something I rarely do.

Also my idrive system never crashes or freezes and it’s super responsive. Really nice system - probably my favorite but I guess it’s spoiled me.

Sounds like I’d have to setup some slacker stations that mimic what I have in pandora and carefully setup some radio presets. I guess that would do for ~70% of my usage habits. I’d also have to setup a usb stick and transfer some music to it if I wanted to simulate some of what I’m able to do now by just connecting my phone via bt or usb. Probably wouldn’t bother doing that though.

In general, that seems to be the pattern with Tesla - it would be fine 70% of the time and annoying / clunky in certain scenarios (not just media integration but in general). It hits some higher highs but also some lower lows.

And of course for what I want to spend, I’m either getting a very outdated Audi system, a Hyundai or a 4 cyl bmw. So I guess I should get over it.