carmudgeons.com  

Go Back   carmudgeons.com > Automotive Forums > Car Talk

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 01-06-2020, 07:15 PM   #11
clyde
Chief title editor
 
clyde's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 26,599
Quote:
Originally Posted by FC View Post
My fears about no tactile feedback and having to get your eyes off the road to interact with it were fully realized.
Dude, take a chill pill. The cars totally pilot themselves automatically. Surely you can look at the screen all you want when you don't need to look at the road. You can even watch movies and stuff!

Quote:
"I like the word 'autopilot' more than I like the word 'self-driving.' 'Self-driving' sounds like it's going to do something you don't want it to do. 'Autopilot' is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars."
I mean, "it's basically crazy to buy any other car but a Tesla," right?
__________________
OH NOES!!!!!1 MY CAR HAS T3H UND3R5T33R5555!!!!!!1oneone!!!!11

Team WTF?!
What are you gonna do?
clyde is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-06-2020, 09:17 PM   #12
FC
Solving problems
 
FC's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Carmudgeonly Ride: M5 / 718 GTS / Cooper S / GTI / LR4
Location: Metro Boston
Posts: 25,215
Everything about it seemed weird. All I could hear was him tapping away at the screen and reading dialogue boxes and tapping to select/accept, etc. Looked cool as hell but unlike iDrive where you can get close to a selection, get your eyes back on the road, and glance once more for the final selection, the big screen doesn’t allow that. Your finger is floating in the middle of a huge screen and to look away essentially means starting over which clearly forced him to want to finish the selection. I feel that way about the touch screen on the M3 even though it’s about 1/8 the size. That’s why I almost exclusively use the iDrive knob.

Last edited by FC; 01-07-2020 at 07:53 AM. Reason: Auto-correct nonsense
FC is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 01-07-2020, 10:15 AM   #13
rumatt
Mugwump
 
rumatt's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Carmudgeonly Ride: E46 330i, Chevy Colorado, Tesla Model 3
Location: NY
Posts: 17,475
He sounds like a tool. You can drive the car without navigating menus. If he wants to dick around on the screen, or use a cell phone while driving, that's on him.

I guess people will see the big screen and claim the design encourages it. But is this really Tesla specific? My Colorado also has a fairly elaborate infotainment that allows navigating all sorts of menus and apps (weather apps, etc) while driving if I wanted to. The screen is smaller but this doesn't make it safer. If anything it might be the opposite.

Both vehicles (and even waze in Android auto) disable some functionality when the vehicle is not in park. How much policing do we want down this line, vs personal responsibility? I'm not sure how to best draw this line. Hell, we could make cell phones not work when they're moving more than 10 mph if we wanted to police this aggressively.

On waze on Android auto, you cannot access the keyboard to type a name of a place you want to go unless the vehicle is in park. If you're driving and your passenger wants to type "Lowes", you have to pull off the highway and put the car in park. Or alternatively you can unplug your phone, the music stops, you let it disconnect and shut down all the apps, then you start waze on the phone, search for Lowes, then reconnect the phone and fire up waze again on the car.

It is a miserable and maddening experience. I cannot see this being the type of solution we decide to go to solve distracted driving.
rumatt is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-07-2020, 10:48 AM   #14
FC
Solving problems
 
FC's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Carmudgeonly Ride: M5 / 718 GTS / Cooper S / GTI / LR4
Location: Metro Boston
Posts: 25,215
Quote:
Originally Posted by rumatt View Post
He sounds like a tool. You can drive the car without navigating menus. If he wants to dick around on the screen, or use a cell phone while driving, that's on him.

I guess people will see the big screen and claim the design encourages it. But is this really Tesla specific? My Colorado also has a fairly elaborate infotainment that allows navigating all sorts of menus and apps (weather apps, etc) while driving if I wanted to. The screen is smaller but this doesn't make it safer. If anything it might be the opposite.

Both vehicles (and even waze in Android auto) disable some functionality when the vehicle is not in park. How much policing do we want down this line, vs personal responsibility? I'm not sure how to best draw this line. Hell, we could make cell phones not work when they're moving more than 10 mph if we wanted to police this aggressively.

On waze on Android auto, you cannot access the keyboard to type a name of a place you want to go unless the vehicle is in park. If you're driving and your passenger wants to type "Lowes", you have to pull off the highway and put the car in park. Or alternatively you can unplug your phone, the music stops, you let it disconnect and shut down all the apps, then you start waze on the phone, search for Lowes, then reconnect the phone and fire up waze again on the car.

It is a miserable and maddening experience. I cannot see this being the type of solution we decide to go to solve distracted driving.
I agree with you about driver responsibility and I hate tech nannies, but Tesla's approach is a radical departure. This can be overcome with a rock-solid voice control, but it doesn't appear to be there.

Until then, if my butt is cold and I need seat warmers or any other function for which there has been a traditional button, I could probably hit it without looking or a short glance may be all I need to know where it is or to confirm I hit the right button.

A screen that dynamic and with no tactile feedback is a poor design if that is the only way to control functions given the inevitability of their use while driving. It is slick and very cheap to implement, but not better than real buttons for commonly used functions. Frankly, iDrive bothers me in that I don't have enough/more discrete buttons between functions, but at least they throw you a bone and give you several shortcut and programmable buttons.

I agree that manufacturers are all going there, but that doesn't make it good.
FC is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 01-07-2020, 01:27 PM   #15
Theo
Crazy Old Man
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Carmudgeonly Ride: M2C Stick
Posts: 6,021
Quote:
Originally Posted by FC View Post
Until then, if my butt is cold and I need seat warmers or any other function for which there has been a traditional button, I could probably hit it without looking or a short glance may be all I need to know where it is or to confirm I hit the right button.

A screen that dynamic and with no tactile feedback is a poor design if that is the only way to control functions given the inevitability of their use while driving. It is slick and very cheap to implement, but not better than real buttons for commonly used functions. Frankly, iDrive bothers me in that I don't have enough/more discrete buttons between functions, but at least they throw you a bone and give you several shortcut and programmable buttons.

I agree that manufacturers are all going there, but that doesn't make it good.
I totally agree. I am in the minority here but I prefer an actual button or knob for most features I use a lot. The less used items can be buried in a menu somewhere.
__________________
Searching
Theo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-07-2020, 07:45 PM   #16
Alan
Carmudgeon
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 4,646
Quote:
Originally Posted by FC View Post
Everything about it seemed weird. All I could hear was him tapping away at the screen and reading dialogue boxes and tapping to select/accept, etc. Looked cool as hell but unlike iDrive where you can get close to a selection, get your eyes back on the road, and glance once more for the final selection, the big screen doesn’t allow that. Your finger is floating in the middle of a huge screen and to look away essentially means starting over which clearly forced him to want to finish the selection.
This scares the shit out of me too ... distracted driving is a serious problem ... both of my kids that drive have been in big accidents because of it ... my sons A3 got rear ended incredibly hard in stop and go traffic and my daughters 2017 A4 had someone go through a redlight and crash into the rear drivers door sending her first A4 flying into another car ... at the time there were 4 17 yr old girls in the car ... thankfully all the kids were ok but it was scary ... the 2017 A4 was totaled

Both accidents paid for by the other insurance carriers being it was their fault and both drivers were on their phones.

I think phones should be inoperable while in a car unless controlled by car play/android play/blue tooth.

One problem is these systems work ‘ok’ but still have glitches...

Last edited by Alan; 01-08-2020 at 09:57 AM.
Alan is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-09-2020, 06:53 PM   #17
robg
Carmudgeon
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 3,224
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan View Post
This scares the shit out of me too ... distracted driving is a serious problem ... both of my kids that drive have been in big accidents because of it ... my sons A3 got rear ended incredibly hard in stop and go traffic and my daughters 2017 A4 had someone go through a redlight and crash into the rear drivers door sending her first A4 flying into another car ... at the time there were 4 17 yr old girls in the car ... thankfully all the kids were ok but it was scary ... the 2017 A4 was totaled

Both accidents paid for by the other insurance carriers being it was their fault and both drivers were on their phones.

I think phones should be inoperable while in a car unless controlled by car play/android play/blue tooth.

One problem is these systems work ‘ok’ but still have glitches...
That is horrible- and so scary. Even carplay and android auto can be too distracting in some cases.
robg is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 11:22 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.7.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Forums © 2003-2008, 'Mudgeon Enterprises - Site hosting by AYN & Associates, LLC