this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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No. 9 but for media volume, touch controls are garbage and gestures are even more garbage.
Looking at you, VAG.
A special place in hell is reserved for whoever the hell keeps putting capacitive buttons on cars, ESPECIALLY when they put them on the steering wheel!
Oh yeah those shitty VAG touch controls. Went to a customer with my employee in summer. When returning home we opened the sunroof to cool the car down quickly. Couldn’t close that mf for 10kms on the autobahn until everything cooled down. Absolutely horrible.
Wouldn't AC cool it down quicker? And more efficiently at autobahn speeds anyway, drag is worse than running AC at speed.
I don't disagree with you on the horribleness of the controls though. Worst part is, MB has gone the same route. I've got the last generation with physical HVAC buttons. I have no idea what my next car will be, but apparently Mercedes doesn't want me to buy their cars anymore. Mazda has come out as anti-touchscreen, which I admire, but it's going to be a hell of an adjustment in terms of suspension and drivetrain comfort.
The plan was to let the heat out for a couple of seconds until the ac was cooled down 😉
Had a Mazda in the past and driving a Honda now. The Japanese cars are often conservative and not as fancy as the European ones but usually they just work in my experience. They are often cheaper and maintenance is also cheaper. My 320HP Civic Type-R has the same maintenance costs then our Fiat Tipo with 120HP. Performance wise it was comparable to a A45 AMG which cost twice as much with maintenance costs about 2-3x of the Honda.
Mazda may be a smaller car brand but their combustion engines are often very innovative.
I mostly drive slightly bigger cars. So while I'm fairly sure the Japanese will beat the A-class in just about every metric, but they don't really have a good answer for C-class and above - outside of maybe Lexus, but a 3 year old Lexus is way more expensive than a 3 year old Mercedes. I buy my cars after a few years of depreciation, so I actually like the fact that German cars depreciate a lot in their first few years. But then Lexus doesn't really have good diesel engines like the Germans do, so fuel consumption differences alone will add up a lot.
To be clear, I don't really need or want any of the fancy features (aside from Carplay, which is starting to be ubiquitous), but just the suspension setup alone between a C-class and a Toyota Camry is vastly different. The 9 speed auto box is also excellent, to the point that I don't even feel like I'm driving a tiny 2 liter diesel with only 190HP.
Thankfully, all cars I've driven that had a touch screen also had some media buttons on the steering wheel. I'd prefer to have good old physical buttons in the center console, but at least you didn't have to use the touch screen.
Buttons on the wheel are better than a touchscreen, but they suffer from being all backwards sometimes, as you use the wheel for it's intended purpose. The old Peugeots had this thing behind the wheel, you can controll the radio with, using just 2 fingers, without looking. It's the peak user experience. Nothing will ever beat it. I feel a suden urge to buy a beer for whoever came up with it.
https://www.cartronics.co.uk/media/Peugeot-207-Double-Din-Radio-Upgrade/Peugeot-207-Steering-Wheel-Controls.jpg
French cars regularly had sometimes strange looking but often quite useful quirks.
...who tf...which car maker has gestures? If you're gonna gesture how about you gesture your damn hand over to the button?
I think mostly VAG (VW-owned brands) and BMW, maybe Mercedes as well. VAG uses them to sense your hand approaching the touchscreen to hide additional items "when you don't need them", BMW uses full-on hand waving to navigate menus.