Tesla Model X Owner Has Had Enough Of Minimalism, Adds Physical Buttons::Tesla Model X owner from China has attached a panel of physical buttons to the vehicle’s main control unit for quicker access to some key functions.
This was my first thought. I’ve never even been in a Tesla, so I didn’t know they didn’t have the basic functions on buttons. In terms of safety, having a specific button in a known location that does a specific thing is extremely important.
How does it work on a Tesla, voice control? That might be good. If you have to scroll through menus on a tablet to turn the A/C up or down, that’s a severe safety issue (and likely illegal in many countries to do while the equivalent of the ignition is on).
“hey Tesla, turn on the defroster”
—“ok, indicating right”
“No! I need defrost!”
—“I didn’t get that, say again”
“Turn on the windshield defrost”
—“ok, wipers on high”
Lots of cars today have this touchscreen nonsense for controlling everything.
By 2016, even Honda/Acura started using it on higher end models. Which is funny, because my early 2000’s Honda has nice, big, obvious, easy-to-use-without-looking AC controls.
How does it work on a Tesla, voice control?
Think about moving your phone out of reach and then using an app to control your car. It’s about like that. Only it’s mounted to the car so you’re both bouncing around out of rhythm.
Voice control works for most things but you can’t even turn on the headlights, and it doesn’t work at all without cell reception. Like we haven’t had fantastic offline speech recognition for a dozen years?
They recently added some contextual controls to the steering wheel buttons but literally the only ones I wanted (headlights and wiper speed) were not included.
They only just recently added the function to automatically turn on the headlights when the wipers come on.
