- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
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 fully expect that aftermarket buttons for dashboards will become a range of popular products, from things like this all the way up to a full dashboard replacement.
Physical buttons will now be a paid option on vehicles…
When they should have been mandated long ago for safety reasons.
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”
Welcome to the world of tomorrow!
You’ve used Tesla voice control I see… :p
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.
Yeah, I was just looking at the modern version of my current car. Seems like it does still have 1 row of buttons. But most stuff seems to be on a teslaesque tablet.
My current model (from 2014) l has a lot of stuff you can do in the menu system, but anything you need to do while driving has controls on either the stalk or dashboard.
Oh and the current car has a touch screen radio and THAT is annoying on its own. So many times I want to just press a different station shown on the screen. Oh, you wanted to select that station? Well I thought you swiped and now I’m on a random page of stations you don’t want to listen to. Good luck getting back while driving!
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.
If Tesla doesn’t have voice control, they’re behind my 2016 Prius, which has it. You have to push a steering wheel button to access it. Of course, no-button Teslas could do an ‘Ok Google’ or ‘Hey Siri’ or whatever.
And if you don’t pay your monthly fee, the car will just ignore those buttons.
Available via OTA software update….
Premium physical buttons only available on budget models (like headphone jacks on smartphones)
For the Tesla enthusiasts that want their car to feel like a real car.
I’ll just get something else than a Tesla when EV’s get common enough.
I’m also interested in seeing used car prices for EVs. Like how much is a 20 year old Tesla/EV worth, and what range do you get at that time?
It’s not a Tesla nor 20 years old, but:
Before my Leafs battery melted (no active cooling, thanks Nissan) we were being offered 16k or so on the private market when it was 4.5 years old. Had gone from a max range of about 154 to 140ish in that time
It has a brand new battery now so that changes things, I’ll admit. Newer cars will have longer lasting batteries in no small part thanks to cooling the fucking Things lol
You just made me realize I want a standardized modular interfacing system for dashboards. Like a Framework laptop for cars. That would be so dope
That would be so cool! Not proprietary enough to sell the idea to automakers, but if the things on a dashboard could be switched out like the accessories of a desktop computer, we would quickly see what people actually want in their cars.