... I think that a good "driver's car" would have physical buttons to control more options so that you don't need to look for a button on a screen or talk to your car.
Agree with that. I love it when I'm in an unfamiliar vehicle and the controls make sense in location and touch, so that you learn them quickly and can switch the most needed things by muscle memory. You can tell this is important if you watched Star Trek (the real one, the first series from the 1960's). The bridge was filled with knobs and buttons and sliders. The future knows.
Here's an example. We have an '05 ES330 (fancy Camry) since new. I don't drive it much but took it to the car wash drive thru one day and the auto wipers came on while being dragged helplessly into a soapy maw. The entire trip through the flailing spindles I pulled on and twisted and pushed every knob and lever and stalk I could lay my hands on, and never found the position that would fully turn off the wipers That's bad design.
I can't imagine that experience with only a laptop sitting on the dash, or some monster TV monitor thingie with layers and layers of menus, and now I have to hope my logic of under what sub-menu I'd put the "shut the damn wipers off now!" icon matches what the software designers thinks makes sense., and how many layers down it is, and what the darn icon even looks like. That's bad design.
Notice that the Star Trek controls are odd-shaped lit crystals in all different colors. Size, shape, position, and color tell you instantly the function and importance. You can see the whole panel, nothing is hidden. Notice Lt. Sulu drives the ship without looking at his crystals, he knows where they are and can spot them peripherally; hand on the throttle like Casey Jones. Mr. Scott teleports people by hand, not by computer program, carefully feathering the power sliders while watching the de-atomization of the landing party. That is the future. No touch screens thank you. This is why all the following series are crap. They are all rubbing their greasy paws this way and that over a featurelss tactileless void... using unimaginative old school touchscreens. That's bullshit. Is that the icon I want? Did I press hard enough? Is it woking at all? Do I swipe it up or sideways or oh shit what did I just do? Hand-waving virtual reality gloves.... I hope I die first.
I"m still learning the sub menus on the E63...had the car years...don't even know 20%, and don't even know if that's right. The owner's manual is digital too, so I can't find it at all. I have no idea how to work the car, so i googeutub to find a video. Give me a damn book please. I'll study it on the toilet. Example II: I finally got a new "smart phone" (only feature I use besides phone is the clock). I could not find under what menu and sub menu was the link to the car. Weeks went by...I still don't know how to access the digital owner's manual...then one day, quite by accident, I bumped the select knob and the menu reveiled that the phone sync was the last item on the list, which was a scroll down, a scroll down on the next page, the only thing on that page, a page I never saw or knew was there. That's bad design.
So many of the mechanical bits behind the dash and under the hood are gone though, and that's good because the bits they connect to are mostly no longer mechanical either. Like, how long has it been since you drove a car with a throttle linkage? I'm the guy who set his points with a matchbook cover, had a timing light and a chalk mark...all old school "why when I was a kid" stuff. Digital is cheaper, and you have much more ultimate control, and you can tweak-out the bugs with software and add features...we have to adapt. Think how much easier it will be to change the menu layouts with software, rather than moving the wiper stalk on my '05 Camry, or bending the kink out of a sticky throttle link. We'll sort this out.
But a few buttons and knobs, I totally agree, make the whole experience more intuitive and allow the driver to focus on driving. I don't want a car with a dash that looks like the ATM at my bank. I want to drive like Sulu.
That is, I think I want to drive... I confess there is a big factor about EVs that I am very much looking forward to, and that is neutralizing all the bad, unpredictable, and inattentive drivers. Soon the cars will all be talking to one another. I love this safety feature. I hope I live to see it happen.
The day I picked-up the E63 I was in Bethesda, at rush hour. Never been there before. Never driven modern Merc. Never had a car with a push button...I did not know what to do with the key they gave me. They linked my phone and activated every feature, things I had no idea were even in cars. Within a block of the dealership I was at a jam-packed intersection looking every witchway, already lost, with a mysterious voice (ways?) telling me "there's too much traffic, go the other way, idiot". Cleared the left, turned to the right and suddenly the brakes locked and brought me to a dead stop (carbon brake option). A pedestrian had run through the intersection diagonally, taking advantage of the rush-hour chaos, and had the car not seen him ( I sure did not) I'd have crushed him. My digital car saved us, and I had no clue I was even in danger.
This is why I'm OK with giving in to computer menus over slow-reflexs and rows and rows of knobs and switches. You get a lot more.
Driving up 95 was a blast, racing the Acela North of Baltimore (passed it effortlessly in very light traffic). But a trip to NYC on the Jersey pike is terrifying all the time ... I'm too old for this stress of people passing on all sides pointlessly tailgating and cluelessly slowing as they try to merge. Let the cars sort this out so I can enjoy my Beatles CDs. There is no need for a "driver's car" on roads like that.
