I drive a car built in 2018 and I’m really happy with the balance between buttons and screen.
I’ve got stalks for indicators, wipers and cruise control. Physical switches for lights, windows, mirrors, climate temp, fan, air source, defrost front and rear, odometer reset, driving mode, master door unlock and opening the boot/tailgate. Vents are manually operated and the glovebox and fuel tank flap are too. The steering wheel has physical buttons for media source, track skip/radio seek, phone calls, starting the voice control mic, and scroll wheels for volume and cycling through information displays on the small screen between the large analogue gauges on the dashboard. And a 10 inch touchscreen for everything else (reverse camera, media and maps, mostly, but includes all the car settings you don’t fiddle with often, like light delays, beep volumes, summer time offset etc.).
Basically anything I’m likely to want to use whilst driving I can find and operate with at most a quick glance, if not by touch alone, and have immediate feedback that I got it right because I felt the switch/stalk/button move under my fingertips as I expected.
I’ve wondered what functions I’d be happy with moving from a physical control to the touchscreen or capacitive button. I haven’t come up with a single one. Yet if I were to buy the latest version of this car just about anything that is currently a physical button is now a capacitive touch button. Yeah, no thanks.
I drive a car built in 2018 and I’m really happy with the balance between buttons and screen.
I’ve got stalks for indicators, wipers and cruise control. Physical switches for lights, windows, mirrors, climate temp, fan, air source, defrost front and rear, odometer reset, driving mode, master door unlock and opening the boot/tailgate. Vents are manually operated and the glovebox and fuel tank flap are too. The steering wheel has physical buttons for media source, track skip/radio seek, phone calls, starting the voice control mic, and scroll wheels for volume and cycling through information displays on the small screen between the large analogue gauges on the dashboard. And a 10 inch touchscreen for everything else (reverse camera, media and maps, mostly, but includes all the car settings you don’t fiddle with often, like light delays, beep volumes, summer time offset etc.).
Basically anything I’m likely to want to use whilst driving I can find and operate with at most a quick glance, if not by touch alone, and have immediate feedback that I got it right because I felt the switch/stalk/button move under my fingertips as I expected.
I’ve wondered what functions I’d be happy with moving from a physical control to the touchscreen or capacitive button. I haven’t come up with a single one. Yet if I were to buy the latest version of this car just about anything that is currently a physical button is now a capacitive touch button. Yeah, no thanks.