RE: Out of touch: Speed Matters

[Tuna]

Sion111R said:

My son and I went to look at the new Civic Type R yesterday. I am 50, he's 22 and has been raised a "proper petrolhead". Whilst is stood back and looked at the aero design, Brembo brakes, engine bay, recaro seats.....you get the picture, he settled in to the drivers seat and checked out the "infotainment", sat nav system and phone charging facilities. I fear all this technology is more attractive to the younger generation. Personally I couldn't give a damn about a touch screen. Simple, stylish logical design, like a Volvo. Oh god, just realised I am sounding old.

I don't know... when I was looking at my first few cars, I wanted them to have a decent stereo to play my music. Having a decent infotainment system is just an extension of that. Why should I buy a x thousand pound car and find I can't play the music off my phone? After all, it's where you spend most of the time in your car.

The problem comes when people think that the slinky touch screen of their phone still makes sense when it's held four feet away from you in a moving vehicle.

[veccy208]

Hope no one has said this already but back years ago, aircraft manufacturers tried to turn all their speed, height, engine readouts etc to digital numbers. After a while they had to change them all back to digital pictures of analogue gauges due to the fact that a pilot had to actually look at the numbers to read what speed/height etc they were at as opposed to being able to tell from the corner of their eye when it was a gauge. This took precious concentration away from flying.

I think its the same with touch screens. I regularly drive older cars and models that get blasted for having "terrible ergonomics" yet after a day of driving I can operate all the buttons I need to without looking away from the road. My personal opinion is that touch screens are dangerous and there is no place or need for them in a car.

[Thorburn]

veccy208 said:

I think its the same with touch screens. I regularly drive older cars and models that get blasted for having "terrible ergonomics" yet after a day of driving I can operate all the buttons I need to without looking away from the road. My personal opinion is that touch screens are dangerous and there is no place or need for them in a car.

I agree. My previous daily driver I was driving along one night and my passenger pointed out that none of the centre console lit up anymore (bulb behind it had died) - I'd genuinely never even noticed because I had no reason to look at it, I just adjusted thing by feel.

[waremark]

davehods said:

griffgrog said:

My 2015 Range Rover had the In Car tech from the 1980's. It was both woefully slow and really hard to use. Whoever thought that it would be a good idea to bury the heated seat function in a menu system....Grrrrr.

Whilst I agree that the Range Rover interface is slow and hard to use, the heated seat is just a push of the centre of the temperature dial. You can then turn the dial to raise or lower the temperature...Freelander and Discovery are the same!

Sounds ok. My superficially similarly equipped Jag XF really does need you to use the insensitive touch screen to control the seat heating and cooling. Abysmal.

I have a 2012 Aston - at least in that you expect the tech to be from the dark ages.

I have a Hyundai. It has a reasonable combination of chunky buttons and a responsive clear touch screen. Light years ahead of the more expensive cars.

[George Smiley]

Aah yes Jaguar. Great that you have to jump out of one screen to another to turn the seats on. Even better when it randomly crashes so you cant turn anything on or off until it eventually reboots after hard resetting the car

Even when it works it takes seconds to switch from screen to screen

[parachutepete]

I have an 11 year old Aston Martin DB9 Volante and the sat nav system is stoneage . Even after up-dating the disc I still can't find most place's and end up using my I Phone

[CDP]

On one of my older cars I pulled out the CD player and fitted a spare cassette and used it to connect my iPod shuffle which was clipped to my seat belt. Brilliant - no touch screen and dead simple interface that I didn't need to look at.

[Pothole]

saaby93 said:

E65Ross said:

Though how is that different from years ago....cars with cassette players now have defunct technology....Nothing new there, in that sense, no?

Not defunct - think retro

And you can buy a cassette converter that goes in the slot and plugs into your portable device's jack socket. There might even be a bluetooth version, I don't know.

[Paulcarcrazy]

The new Volvo Cars have touchscreens that work better than any others I have seen. However there are things I would still prefer on buttons and dials, particularly heating controls that you are likely to regularly change.

[Vi16v]

My 2011 vw touareg has a great system. Voice activated. Great touchscreen. One of the best satnav systems ive used with a heads up display too. You can put radio or hdd music back on, while still having just sat nav directions on the heads up. To anyone in the passenger seats you just seem like you know the way anywhere.