My 1997 Lexus has a knob that controls the digital climate control. Except that instead of a spinny position encoder, they used a knob with stops so you have tactile feedback for when the temperature is all the way up or down.
This is the kind of detail that I love about a well engineered car.
That's how the knobs normally work. And the original poster describes how "automatic a/c" or "climate controls" have always worked in cars, you set a target temp and they handle fan speed and air temperature.
Why does the article want to make a multifunction dial with no tactile feedback? Have they only ever driven a Tesla?
There's a whole section in the article about experimenting with different positions and weights of the haptic feedback as the dial is moved and how to tie them in to the display on the control itself.
> But how about a dial that stops turning at the minimum and maximum
That, too, is mentioned in the article ("This means you can simulate different types of haptic feedback, like different detent strengths and hard stops.").
> and doesn't need you to take your eyes away from the road at all?
Also addressed in the article ("Showing three different data types in one dial is possible but definitely the maximum. When adding a fourth function, keeping track of your position in the interface without looking down becomes too difficult.").
Early morning in summer: temperature is under 15°C, no need to heat over 20°C. Evening: outside is 30°C, I don't need 20°C in the car anymore but 25ish would be perfect. A 2 temperatures setting or 1 temperature + delta would prevent having to change it every time I enter the car.
You don't need any of that. You just need a knob that ranges from make as cold as you can to make as hot as you can and a reasonable fine grain in between. I can find the right set point because I'm literally sat next to the knob and I'm a better control system than anything they can come up with.
My (old, obsolete) car's knobs not only stop completely at the extremes, but they aren't truly continuous but have "stops" every half degree that you can feel in your hand while turning them without looking at them at all.
That's too ... physical ... for modern designs, I guess?
And I'm a lazy fucker: I want to set a temperature range and then not bother until I sell the car. Under the range? Heat it. Over? Freeze it. But a range, not a single point. So if the temperature is between min and max, the AC stays off.
I posit you're unusual in your opinion. I mostly observe people use the climate control knob like a heater knob. If it's cold, the set temperature gets cranked up; if hot it gets cranked down.
I don't like thermal shocks when getting in/out of the car so I stick it to a low-ish temperature in winter and something high-ish but still bearable in summer.
I really don't like getting out of a car cooled to 18 C when outside it's 30+.
However this just proves "smart" automatic a/c is useless because, newsflash, different people have different habits.
> I mostly observe people use the climate control knob like a heater knob.
That's because their car has badly designed and implemented climate control.
I do that in my current car because it has crap climate control, Tesla S 70D. In my previous car I set it when I bought the car and adjusted it perhaps once a year, Rover 75 Connoisseur.
Yeah, that's because climate control is crap. When I get into the car and it's 45° I want to a) get some hot air on my feet and hands, and b) warm the cabin up to a comfortable temperature ASAP. The standard climate control system doesn't do that, it sets the air temperature to roughly the target temperature and takes twenty minutes to get to something comfortable. I can "trick" it by setting the target temp to 95°, and then I'll actually get warm air.
I get that approach for AC, because cooling air takes energy, but there's no excuse for that behavior when (in an ICE car) you're warming the cabin with waste heat from the engine. Just give me some damn heat!
Fortunately, I have an old enough car that I can take manual control of the heater and blast it for a few minutes until I'm warm, and then switch over to climate control to maintain temp. Cars which don't have manual override have to be tricked by using the climate control like a heater knob. It's dumb, all around.
Do you wear the same amount of clothing all year around? Never excerted yourself or been in a blizzard before entering your car where you might want to get back to your ideal body temperature quickly?
BMW's first iteration of iDrive was very ill-received, and so they improved it. I think launching a global car brand is pretty difficult, even if you don't like the guy.
But I test drove a Tesla and besides the stupid tablet controls the smart turn stalks couldn't hold a turn signal when turning left at a crossroads that wasn't at 90 degrees. That's life threatening if you ask me.
No, I don't need to know Musk's politics to avoid his cars.
Of course, it's well known that BMWs come without a turn stalk so maybe it seems normal if you compare those two brands :)
My biggest objection to modern smart turn signal stalks is that you can’t turn the turn signal off easily. Sometimes the signal is on, I want it off, and there simply is no way to do it reliably. The old latching stalks could be moved to the center position, and the signal would turn off every time.
With the Tesla i couldn't keep it on to turn left at something like 30 to 45 degrees and at the same time maneuver to the lane reserved for taking that left. Which required turning the wheel right a bit.
Since I was test driving, I just moved forward instead.
On the originals, sure. The stock physically latches away from the center position when the signal is on. Works great.
On some of the newest ones, there is a left signal button and a right signal button. I think that, if you are signaling right and push the left button and you don’t lose the race against the automatic end of signaling, then you end up not signaling. This is both modal and racy.
On the intermediate models I’ve tried, I’m moderately confident that the stick always rests in the center position. You can’t push it toward center because it’s already there.
It’s the generation before juniper, or the latest currently shipping of the model y.
I tick it to the left it stays on until i tick it back to the center. it doesn’t stay lock to the left until i complete the turn, this is a key difference.
it’s really a nonissue. you have enough time to cancel a lane change with FSD running.
I have no idea what exact generation of Tesla model 3 I've tried. It had a stalk not buttons but the stalk wasn't staying down or up, you pulled it and it went back to the center (or even didn't really move, not sure any more) and the turn signal stayed on for as long as the "AI" decided.
And if you train the "AI" only on rectangular grid cities, that's a problem.
Yes the stalk doesn’t stay ticked in the direction of the signal.
There are 4 “positions” on the stalk, two towards the left and two towards the right. On each side there is one all the way at the end of the throw, and one about 1/3 into the throw. You push it to the 1/3 mark to cancel the signal.
You push it to the 1/3 mark which way to cancel the signal? And what happens if the AI cancels the signal after you start trying to cancel but before you get to the 1/3 mark?
The issue I see with AUTO most often is noise. Almost every time I've disabled AUTO was in the beginning of a drive while talking to someone having to yell over the fans or just going to move my car 10 meters and it just being annoyingly loud.
The temp I don't believe you can really fix. Sometimes I throw my jacket in the back, sometimes I keep it on, sometimes I'm tired or my stomach is upset and I want it to be a sauna, sometimes I'm sweaty and want it to be a fridge..
From my experience:
BMW, Subaru, and Mazda the auto settings are worthless / not functional.
Audi is okay.
The best I’ve found is Infiniti, which 2013 ish on, the auto settings are perfect 99% of the time.
(This of course means, you do have to adjust the temperature setting, but once set the fans spinning up and down are perfect along with the heat moderation. )
BMW could be user error on my part. The longest I’ve used a BMW is 3 weeks, with probably 9 weeks of total usage, and while I tried to get the auto settings to work, on multiple models it was nothing but agony for me.
The two thumb wheels on the steering wheel of my 2015 Tesla Model S 70D most definitely have tactile feedback. They can be 'programmed' to control various things such as media selection, cabin temperature, open/close the roof, etc. Unfortunately Tesla lost the plot with the Model 3 by removing most of the physical controls and then turned the Model S into a large version of the Model 3 by getting rid of the portrait orientation 17 inch screen and replacing it with the landscape 15 inch one from the Model 3.
I've rented a BMWs a few times in the past and they have a clever multifunction knob cum joystick on the centre console but it's a bloody nuisance to use compared to a touchscreen in my opinion
My 2004 5 series BMW had this (it was called iDrive). A command style knob that could move on an axis of sorts (up and down, left, right). You could also press it in. I absolutely hated it.
They have removed it in their newest models. They have truly lost their minds at BMW. Everything on the touch screen and the panel that housed all tactile buttons how now one big led strip. Truly dumb design and a ton of wasted space.
That was among the first generations of iDrive. I was (and to some extent still am) skeptical, particularly given how overwhelmingly negative the reception was at the time. But, FWIW, the motoring press was later – as BMW apparently improved the system significantly – swayed to accept, and sometimes even praise, the iDrive. At least from about 2015-20, or possibly as early as 2010-15.
Can't give any personal evaluation, as I've never (AFAICR) driven a BMW.
Small review, 2013 BMW 335xi (drove for a test drive).
Loved iDrive. Remained my benchmark for car infotainment UI for 10+ years. The main thing, you could DRVIE the car, aggressively, and give commands to infotainment without missing a beat.
The first iDrive version was CCC, and it was reviled back then and is still currently. I think the opinion shift happened with the CIC version, which started rolling out at around 2009 and had a massively different user interface. And you can tell that CIC was a much better system since the next version introduced around 2013, NBT, only tweaked the CIC UI instead of completely replacing it.
Curious if I am missing a detail: It sounds like a knob with endstops, incremental notches for a finite number of positions between the endstops, and probably a spinny position encoder underneath it?
(this also describes my 2009 saturn; I think; unsure, but that's a good sign: I don't look at/think about this knob conciously!)
This is the kind of detail that I love about a well engineered car.