this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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I know this is more about switching from ICE to electric, but this is kinda hilarious
Every car I've ever bought had had glaringly terrible design choices that make it obvious nobody in development actually drove the car. This has got to be one of the worst examples of that though.
Has this as a rental car a few years ago... guess which knob I kept reaching for to turn down the volume...
That's the same kind of idiocy that killed Anton Yelchin.
That vehicle had a recall out to replace the badly-designed shifter. It was ignored.
The fix would have been free.
That doesn’t excuse the fact that the design was clearly idiotic in the extreme from its inception.
It was bad, yes. Not debating that, and I’m glad that the design was changed and existing owners could get the shifter replaced at no cost to them.
However, it’s frustrating to see that people so often ignore recalls and then are injured or killed in a way that would have been avoided had they done the free recall. I usually feel sad when I think of deaths like that because the death is just so final and was easy to avoid.
People have recently died to exploding airbag inflators, even though the Takata recall has been in the news for years, and even if a vehicle has had multiple owners, the publicity means that chances are that the current owner has seen at least a headline about it. Yet clearly people aren’t getting the recall work done, and they’re dying because of it.
Is it a hassle to take a car in for repair? Yep. Had to have mine serviced due to a recall for something that hadn’t manifested on my car in my own use. But given that the alternative could have been very bad (the car’s software was updated to ensure that it would shift into park more reliably when there was a rollaway risk, if the driver didn’t do so manually), I dealt with having a loaner for a day when the update took longer than expected.
Designers sometimes make bad choices. Regulations are written in blood, it’s said, because it’s often tragedy that leads to changes. But I don’t think it very likely that shifters like that will make it past design reviews again. It’ll be some other bad decision that causes the next big recall.
Chevy Cobalt
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/transport-canada-aware-of-deadly-gm-defect-8-months-before-recall-1.2807674
Man, that's a yikes.
I hate those knobs, but I'm also lucky to just drive a simple standard car right now. It has a touch screen for sat nav (Carplay/Android Auto), but volume and climate controls are all physical.
What does bigger one do?
That's the shifter
The one clearly labeled volume?
Labels are not safe. Drivers need to keep their eyes on the road.
Maybe you are right, but it better not be because of a label
Bro, sorry to say this, but you should think a bit about what the actual point is the person you're replying to is trying to make, and reconsider whether you really are that much smarter than everyone else.
2015 Ford Fusion, the touchscreen is pressure-sensitive, but the physical "buttons" for HVAC right below that are, for some reason, capacitive. Which means you can't really use either one while wearing gloves; you need a bare finger for the buttons, and gloves are too bulky to accurately press the little touchscreen things.
The Fusion of the 2010-13 generation was peak for this car in my opinion. I owned a few from this generation and earlier. While I still after 12 years of ownership on my 2011 Fusion still need to look down at a block of buttons to figure out which climate control option I'm choosing it's not this nightmare or the newer touchscreen nightmare either.
It's too bad Ford left behind the simpler but trusty tech for flash and glam that wasn't practical but this has been a repeating cyclical pattern for them for a long time.
When I think back to older Fords it was slide controls. Jeep had the twist knobs along with others. Those knobs honestly are still the best controls for safety and ease of use but it's form over function these days.
We had a 2013 as well, the dome lights were weird capacitive touch. They made those physical buttons in the next iteration, which was an excellent idea.
This is why I will never own a car without knobs or paddles for AC and heal controls.
I used to own a 2003 Hyundai Accent (of all things) that I was surprisingly impressed with in terms of interior and interface design. I particularly liked how they managed to fit cup holders suitable for 20oz plastic bottles into the door pockets.
It's not that they didn't know it wasn't very good. But it was a money saver, and they thought people would accept it because "modern".
Mercedes has those too... They suck.
You kind of get used to it. It's not as bad as it sounds. At the same time they should absolutely get back to regular buttons. The only thing that should be touch sensitive in a car should be the infotainment screen when it's displaying Android Auto or CarPlay.
Even then I think I'd like it to be a backup.
Both of those things have been acknowledged and will be changed. Cars have very long design cycles, though.
The ID.7 has the new sliders as does the facelift of the ID.4.
Yes, there’s other problems, but this one is already on the way out.