For the first time in 28 years of JD Power’s car owner survey, there is a consecutive year-over-year decline in satisfaction, with most of the ire directed toward in-car infotainment.
Car manufacturers need to realize that people already have a touchscreen that has a GPS, podcasts, music, and text messaging service in their pockets 24/7. Best option would be to make built in phone holders that are plugged in via USB C and connect to the sound system. Voila.
Stuff like this makes me very glad to own my 2015 Nissan Altima. I get occasionally let down by its somewhat lackluster engine and CVT transmission, but it cuts all the crap with infotainment bloatware in the dashboard and how it works. The only screen in my car is a small black strip that can only display text as most cars used to have. All you do is plug in your phone to the aux cord and use your phone as the touchscreen it was made to be, no need for another one. Physical buttons galore.
Shocking. They’ve been trying to make the car a second living room, and in doing so sacrifice the driving experience by foregoing buttons, levers, and switches for capacitive surfaces and touchscreens.
The turn signal on the Tesla Yoke is shocking to me. It screams of tech boys adding “cool things” before thinking about whether or not it’s useful.
Then there’s all the anti-consumer practises. Buy a car, but don’t own it. Yes we shipped it with heated seats, which you obviously paid for, but to use them you’ll have to pay a monthly fee. And no, you’ll still pay for all the energy used, that’s not on us. But hey we’re actually giving you a better deal on it!
My gf’s Subaru makes me literally yell. No touch screen, but my god, all the controls are identical pushbuttons, pale grey symbols or tiny letters on silver. You have to squint at a pale LED readout to figure out what the HVAC is doing. Nothing is intuitive.
Meanwhile, in my 2002 Spyder and 2004 F-150, twist knobs, receive joy.
Then there’s all the anti-consumer practises. Buy a car, but don’t own it. Yes we shipped it with heated seats, which you obviously paid for, but to use them you’ll have to pay a monthly fee.
“Existence as a subscription service” should’ve been nipped in the bud long before automakers worked up the nerve to pull this nonsense but I’m afraid it’s now too late. We’re all just sentient ATMs being bled dry every month by corporations that feel entitled to our money and have no interest in doing anything to actually earn it.
I purposely bought the base dash on my Focus ST. Screen is smaller than a phone like 4 inches at most, has no apps. It Bluetooth syncs my phone for music and calls. There’s no touchscreen, all interactions are dedicated knobs and buttons.
For GPS I just use my phone and audio directions, my smart watch has the upcoming direction as well. If I really don’t know where I’m going I have a dash mount for my phone if I need it. But that’s not often.
It’s great honestly and the dash doesn’t blind me driving at night.
I was also looking at a Mazda before I got this car and their dash is absolutely horrendous. It’s like they just took a Alibaba knock off iPad and welded it on top of the dash. It’s literally in your view of the road causing a small blind spot.
Wait until you see what it takes to do so! I had an OEM nav unit in one of my cars, and the map update is sold on a DVD (!) and costs something like $400. I’m going to go with… no. (And yes, I checked to see if an .iso was available on any pirate sources; it wasn’t.) I’ll just run Google Maps or an OpenStreetMap client on my phone, thanks.
I travel for work and thus rent a lot of cars. Can confirm there are far too many options. What’s worse is that new cars don’t have an option for the USB to type C. It’s just type C to C, which is a cord that almost no one owns. Why not have both in the cars!! Bur yeah the new cars all do something a bit different in annoying ways.
FYI: My favorite vehicles. 1 Honda Civic, 2 Kia Soul.
The type c to c is becoming quite common and even better, it can charge much, much faster. If you have such an issue when traveling, I’d suggest getting a small USB c to USB a adaptor. They are about the size of a quarter.
USB A is, in the tech world, an outdated standard that is being replaced. I actively try to have any device I purchase now only use type C. If I never see another micro USB port on my life, it will be too soon. Even Apple has started to embrace type C for their devices and the EU is forcing them to use type C on iphones in Europe.
I’ve gotten happier the more cars that I rent that have wireless chargers built in somewhere. It’s especially nice not to have to worry about a cable at all anymore.
As someone working in the industry I dislike it as well. Many of the features have some really good usecases but the problem is just that they’re enabled/available for every user even if most people only use a small subset of features so the settings/interface gets so cluttered.
In my opinion though, the move away from physical interfaces towards touchscreens is way worse than the clutter.
When a physical button is buried under a menu, it ceases to become a feature and instead becomes a chore. Rear ac on / off should always be a dedicated button if not knob.
Wife and I had a car’s head gasket go and total the engine. We’re now looking at vehicles. Strongly like the Honda Pilot, in part, because it still has physical buttons for the temp controls. The last car was all touchscreen.
Now this is one of the features I want a button or knob for. Go ahead and bury all the advanced features in touchscreen menus but please don’t do that for the basic things I regularly use while driving like temperature, fan, volume, and seek.
On TikTok I’ll sometimes see some really nice older vehicles that have either been restored or just reeeaalllyyy taken care of and it kind of makes me miss when cars were a lot more simple. Don’t get me wrong, I love my newer car and having some kind of warranty but that won’t last forever
There was a period when cars were almost modular. Each component a discretely independent part. They might not have been exactly plug and play, but they were all super integrated with each other and every piece molded into the dash. If you wanted a stereo, it was single or double din.
Now if I want to replace something I either need to fab up or order some custom trim piece for everything. They’ve covered everything they could in plastic.
This is what I really like about my RAV4: the touchscreen is just for controlling CarPlay/Android Auto and system settings that you don’t change while driving anyway. There are physical controls for everything else, including the radio.
My wife’s Jeep Latitude, on the other hand, is a mess. Things like the seat warmers, heated steering wheel controls, and the climate control vents are only on the touchscreen and it’s super laggy. Trying to change any of that while driving is very risky.
I got a 2011 with basic matrix display for mpg mileage trip etc, every control is physical, Oretro fitted Bluetooth (because the inbuilt one is too janky for a modern phone which is a good demo of what happens to tech in a car) and have my phone in a cradle it’s absolutely perfect.
Less tactile controls made me choose a 2014 over 2015 Honda Accord when I bought my car a few years back, and I’m very happy with it! Can’t imagine having most everything controlled with a touch screen. The only tech I need is Bluetooth and a backup camera. Screw software subscriptions and OTA updates to potentially alter the car I own outright.
I actually want more technology in my car. Please make the fully autonomous driving car a reality. Would love to have the flexibility of a car without having to drive on my own.
Using and expanding public transport is much better for the environment (climate, pollution, urbanism, etc.) than making cars even more attractive by making them drive autonomously.
That’s true. But even if the railway service in Germany would be improved a lot, I still have around 10 kilometers from my home to the next train station.
For me, as a car enthusiast, this has been a turning point in my enthusiasm for cars. It has become very easy for me to accept electric vehicles and strive for less car dependency, since the EU mandated driver assistance systems and a bunch of other technology in new vehicles. For American readers: In the US there is an agreement between the NHTSA and car manufacturers to include such technology in all new cars by 2022-09.
I really dislike technology that is made to correct and monitor my behaviour and I am not keen on spending lots of money on a car that is filled with technology I don’t want (accident data recorder, intelligent speed assist, lane keeping assist, etc.). Apart from that, I haven’t seen one vehicle where the driver assistance systems aren’t annoying or even dangerous (e. g. the lane keeping system steering towards a ditch / wall on narrow roads, etc.). And to make matters worse: You can’t permanently turn those systems off, if they don’t work as advertised, as in the EU it is mandatory for such systems to re-activate themselves whenever you start the vehicle and the deactivation has to be a multi-step process (as far as I remember).
Nowadays my transport-related interests are therefore mainly complete streets / 15-minute cities / public transport, cycling, affordable electric cars and classic, non-digital vehicles. I no longer wish to own any expensive modern car(s) and I don’t care much for internal combustion engines anymore. Instead I value cities more that allow me to live car-free and the only vehicles I still want to own are classic ones.
My car is at that age where it’s too young for car play and too old for buttons and that’s literally my complaint about it beyond it being a full ICE. I’m baffled that they aren’t just all accepting that letting us use the console as a controller for our phone is just better
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Car manufacturers need to realize that people already have a touchscreen that has a GPS, podcasts, music, and text messaging service in their pockets 24/7. Best option would be to make built in phone holders that are plugged in via USB C and connect to the sound system. Voila.
Stuff like this makes me very glad to own my 2015 Nissan Altima. I get occasionally let down by its somewhat lackluster engine and CVT transmission, but it cuts all the crap with infotainment bloatware in the dashboard and how it works. The only screen in my car is a small black strip that can only display text as most cars used to have. All you do is plug in your phone to the aux cord and use your phone as the touchscreen it was made to be, no need for another one. Physical buttons galore.
Or for those without capability to do aux cables, there are cheap Bluetooth receivers that connect to your car radio.
Yes. And most modern phones nowadays let you play music through the charging port aswell
Phone holders need to be a thing. Maybe car manufacturers aren’t confident the general sizes of today’s phones won’t last long.
Some people also use tablets and even foldable phones
Shocking. They’ve been trying to make the car a second living room, and in doing so sacrifice the driving experience by foregoing buttons, levers, and switches for capacitive surfaces and touchscreens.
The turn signal on the Tesla Yoke is shocking to me. It screams of tech boys adding “cool things” before thinking about whether or not it’s useful.
Then there’s all the anti-consumer practises. Buy a car, but don’t own it. Yes we shipped it with heated seats, which you obviously paid for, but to use them you’ll have to pay a monthly fee. And no, you’ll still pay for all the energy used, that’s not on us. But hey we’re actually giving you a better deal on it!
It’s all BS.
My gf’s Subaru makes me literally yell. No touch screen, but my god, all the controls are identical pushbuttons, pale grey symbols or tiny letters on silver. You have to squint at a pale LED readout to figure out what the HVAC is doing. Nothing is intuitive.
Meanwhile, in my 2002 Spyder and 2004 F-150, twist knobs, receive joy.
“Existence as a subscription service” should’ve been nipped in the bud long before automakers worked up the nerve to pull this nonsense but I’m afraid it’s now too late. We’re all just sentient ATMs being bled dry every month by corporations that feel entitled to our money and have no interest in doing anything to actually earn it.
All I want is solid gps and Bluetooth.
I don’t need a fucking dominos app. Or to take my car to the dealer so my AC works again because of a fucking update
We are using a Garmin in our Mitsubishi ASX rather than the built-in navi, probably a custom TomTom. Bluetooth is largely useless and buggy.
I would have bought a used Lada if it was just for me.
If it’s an EV I’d much prefer an open source platform. No such things, so far.
I purposely bought the base dash on my Focus ST. Screen is smaller than a phone like 4 inches at most, has no apps. It Bluetooth syncs my phone for music and calls. There’s no touchscreen, all interactions are dedicated knobs and buttons.
For GPS I just use my phone and audio directions, my smart watch has the upcoming direction as well. If I really don’t know where I’m going I have a dash mount for my phone if I need it. But that’s not often.
It’s great honestly and the dash doesn’t blind me driving at night.
I was also looking at a Mazda before I got this car and their dash is absolutely horrendous. It’s like they just took a Alibaba knock off iPad and welded it on top of the dash. It’s literally in your view of the road causing a small blind spot.
My 2015 Tacoma has a great gps, but I cannot find a way to update the map, it is 7 years out of date.
Oh it’s simple. Just run a USB cable from your pc to the car’s tailpipe.
Wait until you see what it takes to do so! I had an OEM nav unit in one of my cars, and the map update is sold on a DVD (!) and costs something like $400. I’m going to go with… no. (And yes, I checked to see if an .iso was available on any pirate sources; it wasn’t.) I’ll just run Google Maps or an OpenStreetMap client on my phone, thanks.
I have yet to find a way to update/update the system, even paying for it.
I travel for work and thus rent a lot of cars. Can confirm there are far too many options. What’s worse is that new cars don’t have an option for the USB to type C. It’s just type C to C, which is a cord that almost no one owns. Why not have both in the cars!! Bur yeah the new cars all do something a bit different in annoying ways.
FYI: My favorite vehicles. 1 Honda Civic, 2 Kia Soul.
deleted by creator
The type c to c is becoming quite common and even better, it can charge much, much faster. If you have such an issue when traveling, I’d suggest getting a small USB c to USB a adaptor. They are about the size of a quarter.
USB A is, in the tech world, an outdated standard that is being replaced. I actively try to have any device I purchase now only use type C. If I never see another micro USB port on my life, it will be too soon. Even Apple has started to embrace type C for their devices and the EU is forcing them to use type C on iphones in Europe.
I’ve gotten happier the more cars that I rent that have wireless chargers built in somewhere. It’s especially nice not to have to worry about a cable at all anymore.
As someone working in the industry I dislike it as well. Many of the features have some really good usecases but the problem is just that they’re enabled/available for every user even if most people only use a small subset of features so the settings/interface gets so cluttered.
In my opinion though, the move away from physical interfaces towards touchscreens is way worse than the clutter.
When a physical button is buried under a menu, it ceases to become a feature and instead becomes a chore. Rear ac on / off should always be a dedicated button if not knob.
I wouldn’t mind voice activation however.
Wife and I had a car’s head gasket go and total the engine. We’re now looking at vehicles. Strongly like the Honda Pilot, in part, because it still has physical buttons for the temp controls. The last car was all touchscreen.
Now this is one of the features I want a button or knob for. Go ahead and bury all the advanced features in touchscreen menus but please don’t do that for the basic things I regularly use while driving like temperature, fan, volume, and seek.
On TikTok I’ll sometimes see some really nice older vehicles that have either been restored or just reeeaalllyyy taken care of and it kind of makes me miss when cars were a lot more simple. Don’t get me wrong, I love my newer car and having some kind of warranty but that won’t last forever
There was a period when cars were almost modular. Each component a discretely independent part. They might not have been exactly plug and play, but they were all super integrated with each other and every piece molded into the dash. If you wanted a stereo, it was single or double din.
Now if I want to replace something I either need to fab up or order some custom trim piece for everything. They’ve covered everything they could in plastic.
This is what I really like about my RAV4: the touchscreen is just for controlling CarPlay/Android Auto and system settings that you don’t change while driving anyway. There are physical controls for everything else, including the radio.
My wife’s Jeep Latitude, on the other hand, is a mess. Things like the seat warmers, heated steering wheel controls, and the climate control vents are only on the touchscreen and it’s super laggy. Trying to change any of that while driving is very risky.
I got a 2011 with basic matrix display for mpg mileage trip etc, every control is physical, Oretro fitted Bluetooth (because the inbuilt one is too janky for a modern phone which is a good demo of what happens to tech in a car) and have my phone in a cradle it’s absolutely perfect.
Less tactile controls made me choose a 2014 over 2015 Honda Accord when I bought my car a few years back, and I’m very happy with it! Can’t imagine having most everything controlled with a touch screen. The only tech I need is Bluetooth and a backup camera. Screw software subscriptions and OTA updates to potentially alter the car I own outright.
I actually want more technology in my car. Please make the fully autonomous driving car a reality. Would love to have the flexibility of a car without having to drive on my own.
Using and expanding public transport is much better for the environment (climate, pollution, urbanism, etc.) than making cars even more attractive by making them drive autonomously.
That’s true. But even if the railway service in Germany would be improved a lot, I still have around 10 kilometers from my home to the next train station.
For me, as a car enthusiast, this has been a turning point in my enthusiasm for cars. It has become very easy for me to accept electric vehicles and strive for less car dependency, since the EU mandated driver assistance systems and a bunch of other technology in new vehicles. For American readers: In the US there is an agreement between the NHTSA and car manufacturers to include such technology in all new cars by 2022-09.
I really dislike technology that is made to correct and monitor my behaviour and I am not keen on spending lots of money on a car that is filled with technology I don’t want (accident data recorder, intelligent speed assist, lane keeping assist, etc.). Apart from that, I haven’t seen one vehicle where the driver assistance systems aren’t annoying or even dangerous (e. g. the lane keeping system steering towards a ditch / wall on narrow roads, etc.). And to make matters worse: You can’t permanently turn those systems off, if they don’t work as advertised, as in the EU it is mandatory for such systems to re-activate themselves whenever you start the vehicle and the deactivation has to be a multi-step process (as far as I remember).
Nowadays my transport-related interests are therefore mainly complete streets / 15-minute cities / public transport, cycling, affordable electric cars and classic, non-digital vehicles. I no longer wish to own any expensive modern car(s) and I don’t care much for internal combustion engines anymore. Instead I value cities more that allow me to live car-free and the only vehicles I still want to own are classic ones.
My car is at that age where it’s too young for car play and too old for buttons and that’s literally my complaint about it beyond it being a full ICE. I’m baffled that they aren’t just all accepting that letting us use the console as a controller for our phone is just better