Capacitive buttons on anything are annoying, they’re unreliable as fuck. They might trigger with the slightest accidental touch, but then they’ll act like your finger doesn’t exist for a dozen pushes.
and why do they have to be everywhere? we have an induction stove and it has capacitive buttons for some idiotic reason. so many problems! when you boil water, little drops are always landing on the buttons. and to reduce power from max to min, you need to hold the - button for like a full minute. wiping the stove with a wet towel makes it go BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP and it won’t shut up! and finally, when my cats walk on the buttons, they always manage to turn it on. i miss knobs.
Yeah I’m remodeling and literally refuse to buy anything that doesn’t have physical controls in the kitchen.
Fuck touch controls on everything.
Yes, so much yes. I’ve got that on mine too, and it’s a pain. it has very small, close “buttons” too, setting the temperature is an exercise in accuracy, when it reacts at all.
And yes, the tiniest drop of water fucks everything up completely.
#bringbackbuttons
A well-designed button can be incredibly satisfying. Just ask anyone who owns a mechanical keyboard.
i’d pay extra for cherry blues for every button in my car.
I’d pay extra to have that removed…
I’ve got a few capacitive buttons in my car, none of them critical, but I’d gladly replace them with the physical buttons in the lower tier version of that car…
Like, how is this considered the nicer option? Hell, I think they’re actually cheaper for the manufacturer than proper buttons at this point…
But sure, I really want to have to try three times to turn the vented seats on because I don’t hit the exact right spot on the pad, only to accidentally switch it to the heated seats in triple digit weather while reaching for the AC knob (which actually is physical, thankfully)
Yeah, this stuff is always cheaper. Companies, like Tesla, have convinced a few stupid people that it’s “premium” but if you look at all the cheapest cars coming to market all they have is a touch screen, like Tesla. It’s the absolute cheapest option and it sucks.
Car companies won’t be happy until cars become yearly upgrade items like phone companies have convinced us to do with mobile phones
I think the Hummer EV is a dangerous and wasteful piece of junk. But one thing it does well is the interior controls. There’s a bunch of switches on the dash under near the infotainment screen, and there’s little symbols above them for what they do. Tapping a switch can change its context.
So you get the flexibility of infotainment controls, but the UX of actual buttons.
Too bad it’s in a Hummer EV.
Im of the opinion controls for cars should be designed more like controls for airplanes. Every gage and button in that cockpit is where it is and points where it points to be able to convey a lot of information with a quick glance and allow you to interact as quickly and easily as you can read them. Marketing gimicks that remove layers of tactile response to esential controls don’t belong in heavy machinery.
Todays cars cockpit layouts are straight out dangerous for the roads tbh. Forcing you to point your eyes to some shitty display somewhere to turn down your AC, then try to tap tiny buttons and hope you won’t tap on something else, instead of looking at a road in front of you? How is that even allowed ffs?!
Touch controls are becoming increasingly common in airplanes and then backed up by mouse cursors. Flight critical controls still need to be backed by physical hardware but stuff like route planning etc is now almost entirely touch based. For light sports aircraft’s even flight critical stuff can be approved as touch controls. Look at the G3X or Dynon SkyView. They both have some form of dial-based backup controls, but it’s clearly designed for touch first.
I got a loaner while my car was being fixed a while ago. The volume control on the wheel was touch sensitive. I would swipe it and blow my ears out while turning.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
As a safety risk, they should be recalled and replaced with proper controls for free.
Can confirm that these buttons on the steering wheel of the id4 are really, really dangerous bullshit. I regularly drive those cars as rentals, and I’ve never (not “rarely” - it’s really never) faced a worse decision on buttons in any device I ever handled. Those touchpads are solely the reason I despise all VW-cars - they are complete crap. (I use these cars only for short trips and never activate any system by these buttons after encountering numerous dangerous situations as described in the article.)
Shouldn’t automotive catch a hint from the fact that the only mainstream capacitive control devices are phones and tablets - something that you’re constantly looking at while operating?
They know.
Capacitive touch sensors are WAY cheaper than physical buttons, and aren’t nearly as prone to mechanical flaws. Plus they can market them as “newer”!
Car companies only care about your safety as much as it affects their bottom line. It’s unfortunately commonplace for there to be known fatal flaws which occur infrequently enough that it’s cheaper to just pay out the injured/killed victims than to issue a recall. Driving is inherently dangerous - any car companies that tried to fix everything would go bankrupt, or at least be squeezed out by those that don’t.
Now, if only there were a way to build the places we live so that we didn’t need to take on the risk of driving so frequently…
How would these be causing crashes? The ID.4 has a few cruise control buttons on the left side of the steering wheel. They are push buttons, but you can swipe the speed up or down to change it to the next 5 MPH. The resume button is not capacitive as the article states, you have to push it. Once again, this seems like people not wanting to take responsibility for their own lack of attention while driving and blaming it on the tech in the vehicle.
Wait a minute. There are SWIPE CONTROLS on the steering wheel that adjust the cruise control speed by 5 mph increments? And we don’t think that’s problematic? I’m either misunderstanding the controls or not sure how that seems like a good idea at all
It’s fine. Making a mountain out of a molehill.
Sure, I totally can’t see someone swiping on their steering wheel, say, shuffling across it to… I dunno, turn it? And either jetting forward because they just bumped it from 55 to 75 over the course of a turn, or suddenly slowing, probably without brake lights. Swipe on a steering wheel has got to be the worst car idea I’ve heard in a while, and I’ve heard some bad ideas.
Again, unless I’m misunderstanding the controls, which I am open to the possibility of. Please, if this is the case, let me know.
Modern cruise control systems are smart enough to not accelerate in a corner, regardless of what they are set to, and tapping the brake will cancel them.
I don’t think this is as much of an issue as you think.
According to the article there is a “resume” button for the cruise control.
No idea because I don’t own one of these, but if it’s true that’s insane.
I’ve driven a lot of cars from a lot of different manufacturers, and have never encountered a resume button that works how the article describes, where it will accelerate you to whatever the last cruise control speed was.
that works how the article describes, where it will accelerate you to whatever the last cruise control speed was.
That’s what the resume function does normally?
That is:
- You switch on and activate cruise control
- You’ve tripped it while active by pressing the brake
At this point cruise control is still “hot” and pressing resume will turn the cruise control back on, usually with a speed interlock so you can’t activate it at a dead stop.
If the car has “one pedal driving” then inadvertent activation could be pretty surprising, and would require you to lift your foot off the accelerator and hit the brakes. Coupled with the rocket-ship acceleration of most EVs this could easily cause an accident I guess.
Never been in a car with such a feature, as it seems inherently dangerous to me.
Every car I’ve been in, when you accidentally disengage the cruise, you just hit cruise again and it re-engages at whatever speed you slowed down to, then you adjust back to what you want.
Having the car suddenly accelerate without deliberate input just doesn’t seem wise.
Can confirm, my car has the following cruise control buttons:
On/off - res/+
Cancel - set/-
The on/off button arms or disarms cruise control entirely. With it armed and no speed set, set/+ will set the current speed as the target speed. With no speed set, the only other button that does anything is the on/off button, which disarms the system.
With a speed set:
On/off will still complete disarm the system
Cancel will remove the set speed, but keep the system armed
Tapping the brake will pause the cruise control
Res/+ will increment the speed by one mph, or resume cruise at the previous set speed if cruise has been paused
Set/- will decrement the mph by 1, or if held pause the cruise control until it’s released.
One of set or resume will set the current travel speed as the new cruise speed, if travel speed is higher than cruise. I think it’s res.
For the most part this works fine. I don’t use the resume function, like you said it can be a bit harrowing if you’re not certain exactly what speed is set, and my car is over a decade old - it doesn’t have that feature. But, critically, it’s not a fucking CAPACITIVE BUTTON, and I’ve never accidentally hit it once.
But, critically, it’s not a fucking CAPACITIVE BUTTON, and I’ve never accidentally hit it once.
Yeah. I use resume a fair bit because you can set it to the speed you want and if your cruising gets interrupted by a slow truck, or roadworks, or by passing through a town, you can just press it and the car will accelerate back up to the set speed. Not like a rocket, maybe a couple of km/hr per second.
But still, like you say, easily-triggered capacitive buttons for critical functions, holy shit that is a bad idea.
I’ve got a ID4 and they are all capacitive buttons. It makes a tactile vibration when engaged.
I hate my car. Nice to drive, but awful to use.
I have one too. The only part of the cruise control system that is capacitive is the speed up and down. Love it.
I mean they literally were talking about multiple ways. Someone could hit a stereo control and spike volume while turning the wheel which causes a huge break in concentration leading to an accident. That is absolutely possible and could be extremely dangerous in the right situation.
The stereo causing someone to crash the car? That’s just Darwin at work.
There are falsehoods in the article. Go test drive an ID.4. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is yet another EV hit piece.
Not really at all. I believe your view is wrong. Just because you believe your high level of intellect makes it impossible for you, you may be forgetting the legion of morons and old people out there driving. Is 100% entirely possible someone could be turning a corner and accidentally does something to cause a distraction and run someone over because they instantly look down away from the road.
Regardless of the persons intelligence, it absolutely can and almost guaranteed has happened numerous times over humans driving careers. The button style just makes these situations easier to take place.
Edit - this isn’t a hit piece on EVs, touch capacitive controls suck in general in cars. Physical buttons are always better, easier to press and locate, and do what you need without drawing your attention from driving.
Keep finding your axe against capacitive buttons, I don’t like them either. However, the ID.4 is most definitely not causing more people to crash than other cars. People can accidentally swipe touch controls on steering wheels, too.
Ban all touch screens in cars.
I only accept Touch Screens for Media and Navigation. Everything else better be a button.