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.
I still think it’s theoretically possible to do a touch interface right… but nobody has figured it out yet. Any interaction that requires you to navigate between multiple menus while driving is doing it wrong, but if you could get all the relevant buttons on screen, in predictable enough locations that people can click them while driving, it could work….
But at that point I’m not sure there’s much benefit to the screen vs physical buttons.
I read Tesla X owner and immedeately thought of Musk
This seems like a great idea to me. Touch screens are a terrible way to operate controls while driving. Some car companies have begun backing off from the trend and are moving back to buttons for some functions.
Touch screens are great for dynamic interfaces, but terrible for anything that involves feedback or a tactile experience.
My vehicle - though not a Tesla - still pisses me off that all the stereo controls except the power button are touch-based (even power appears to be a software-activated button as it failed once when the unit locked up). The saving point on my vehicle is that the steering controls (volume, prev/next) do still exist as physical buttons.
At the very least, they’re should be a physical on/off, and physical dials/controls for volume and heating adjustments so a driver can change those without taking eyes off the road.
Minimalism can be nice, but Tesla seems to do this just for cost savings. Didn’t they remove some “important” physical buttons from the steering wheel recently?
They removed all the stalks and the center horn button from the S/X and replaced them with capacitive touch buttons on the steering wheel and screen. It’s gone about as well as you might expect.
That seems just fucking dangerous. They are digital I am guessing? As a software engineer I really struggle to trust anything that another engineer can code 😅, at least for things that can kill me.
It absolutely is fucking dangerous, and annoying.
My Model 3 has both the best and the worst interfaces haha.
The column shifter I absolutely love because I don’t have to look at it to use it and it doesn’t take up space on my center console.
The scroll wheels similarly do not require eyes and can be used to control various operations based on context.
But I also have to take my eyes off the road to adjust the temp, seat/steering heaters, and have to go like 3 menus deep to get to the rear seat heaters (passengers can’t control them). Most notably, headlight and wiper controls only have virtual buttons and are hidden in a menu instead of being readily available on screen.
There’s the whole “mind of car view” that consumed 1/3 of your screen real estate, and is super cool for the first couple days of driving but after that it’s just a giant waste of space that could be used for these necessary controls.
I really have a love/hate relationship with this car.
One of the biggest non-problematic problems I have with newer cars is the lack of physical buttons. I also really dislike the trend of everything becoming minimalist, so I 100% support these types of modifications so long as they can be safely implemented.
