Let's talk about interiors

throwaway4372 said:
Wonder if anything will come of this:
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voice control is the successor interface beyond the safety critical physical controls ..
I'd like to see what kind of distraction that represents versus buttons, in the same manner that mobile phone conversation (hands-freee oc) is evidenced,
Having to speak commands distracts from conversation with others in the car or listening to music though.

Perhaps I could be brought around if the voice was like HAL/programmable
 
Voice commands probably are where it's heading towards as the manufacturers attempts at a solution, because software is cheaper than having to revert to physical controls. The problem is, it's dreadful. It takes so long for the voice control to initialise and start listening to you, then you tell it what you want, then it has to think about it, then it does it - and that's assuming it understood what you wanted in the first place. I could have just pressed a god damn button to do what I needed in a fraction of the time. It's not progress. It's actively worse. But the marketing guys love it because it looks impressive in an advert.
 
Firestar_3x said:
I imagine the socket is limited to 200 watts or less, so the other car would have returned to the earth before becoming charged.
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Though with how relatively limited its range is, you'd not have the energy to spare :cry:
 
Nasher said:
Adapters for that have been around forever. But not much using a 3 pin socket is is going to run at 12v.
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Its a 1500W 230 AC output....

Imagine thinking a 3 pin UK socket was only giving 12V out.

A nintendo switch or Xbox plugged into the socket and 3pin is the perfect example of a use case here.
 
About a month ago we collected a Mazda CX60 and one of the things I like about it most is that it quite intentionally moves away from the "touchscreen all the things!" approach.

It has a fairly wide screen up on the dash. To use it, there's a rotary dial just in front of the armrest. Clockwise for right/down, anti-clockwise for left/up. Push down to select. Buttons for Home/Back. All the menus are nicely laid out and you know that one 'click' from the dial is one option on screen. Link because I can't be bothered to re-host an image: https://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/mazda/cx-60/interior Scroll to image #19 for a close up the controls.

It's fantastic and honestly I prefer it to a touchscreen. I can easily move through the menus just by a quick glance, then turning the dial however many clicks to move to whatever menu item I need.
Want to go to Android Auto, you just nudge the dial forward. Apple Carplay? Backward.
Return to the car's home screen? Hold the Home button just next to the dial. Hold it again, and it will return to either AA or CP, whichever is currently connected.
Next to the main dial is a smaller dial for audio - twist for volume, hold down for mute/power, nudge left/right for track skip.
All climate controls on physical buttons below the screen.

It all just works really nicely and intuitively. It's so nice to be able to quickly move around menus with only the occasional glance at the screen and without keeping your hand extended, but instead just resting in it's natural position.

However despite all this, whoever engineered it obviously knew that Apple Carplay/Android Auto still work best with a touchscreen. So although you can't use touch to manipulate any of the car's system menus, there's a safety option in the settings to enable touch just for AA/CP. Meaning its still a breeze to search destinations, scroll the map, etc, when you're at a standstill - but even so, the dial works very nicely to use AA - nudging it left and right will move between the Maps/Spotify frames, then you can roll it to scroll through on screen items.

It works really well. Wish more manufacturers would take this approach.
 
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Hmm, when an interior that simple is shown to me I can't help but think of my brother's first car. A Nissan Micra MK1:



Just completely souless places to sit in in my opinion. It also exacerbates the feeling of not getting a lot for your money.

I had the displeasure of sitting in a Polestar 4 recently as a few of my team went for them when they came onto the company car list. It certainly didn't feel like I was sat in a £64k car....
 
Mekrel said:
Hmm, when an interior that simple is shown to me I can't help but think of my brother's first car. A Nissan Micra MK1:



Just completely souless places to sit in in my opinion. It also exacerbates the feeling of not getting a lot for your money.

I had the displeasure of sitting in a Polestar 4 recently as a few of my team went for them when they came onto the company car list. It certainly didn't feel like I was sat in a £64k car....
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You aren't, you're sitting on 60k of batteries :P
 
SDK^ said:
Bring back the buttons !

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Honestly - Good riddance to them :)

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Those button overload interiors are quite the straw man there. No one is saying that everything has to be a button. Far from it. I like to have screens but I want physical controls for things I use frequently. What I'm saying is that the design that is just a massive screen is dull in the extreme. They all looks nearly identical with just different graphics to differentiate them. Something you illustrated perfectly with whatever interior that is. I literally have no idea what make it is.
 
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SDK^ said:
Bring back the buttons !
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Just as much examples of bad design as an increasing number of modern cars.

Mekrel said:
Hmm, when an interior that simple is shown to me I can't help but think of my brother's first car. A Nissan Micra MK1:
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There is a happy balance in my opinion but the Micra MK1 was design approached as a utility - a vehicle for people to get from A to B with the bare essentials, personally I think Nissan peaked around the mid 2010s with the Tekna and n-vision specs in vehicles like the Qashqai which have a good balance of features and driver focus though the infotainment screen could have been a little bigger.

SonicSW20 said:
Though with how relatively limited its range is, you'd not have the energy to spare
:cry:
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From the description sounds like the AC outlet isn't pure sine wave, which doesn't make it the most useful as a fair few devices will have varying degrees of issue with it including buzzing, flickering lights or in some cases not even working at all.
 
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