or just unable to talk that day? muppet.

Right now Rivian and Tesla have a bit of elbow room in the electric market, but Iâ(TM)m guessing some of the other manufacturers will not take that attitude.

Wonder how long Rivian will survive? They have low volume and high priced vehicles which supposedly are kinda nice. Good luck.

How much of this animosity towards Carplay is because drivers might actually prefer Rivians user experience, and how much of it is because Rivian is missing out on all that additional monthly Connect+ subscription revenue?

Some things, you really do want a button for. If I'm looking to turn down the radio or turn off the mixing of outside air, I don't want to have a conversation with my car to accomplish those basic tasks.

Buttons work. You are wrong.

No, I don't want to interact with my car by voice. Even if voice recognition could be made reliable, I do not want to have to yell repeatedly, over road noise, over radio, to control anything. More so, I don't want other passengers, like kids, to be able to control the car while I am driving.

Voice recognition is what, 95% correct? You need something like 5 words to give one command, so that means one in four commands will fail. Button presses fail far less frequently than that.

Voice commands are useless at things like adjusting volume or temperature. They are too slow for emergencies.

The real reason these clowns are pushing away from buttons is because touchscreens and voice control have become cheaper than buttons.

> "Ideally, you would want to interact with your car through voice.

But then...

> The problem today is that most voice assistants are just broken."

Why would I want to use a broken system? I've been hearing for the last twenty years that voice commands will be the way to go soon. It still sucks. I've tried several different ways to tell my car to set the temperature to 72 degrees. Nothing ever works. Even if it does work, I can press a button and turn a knob far quicker than I can slowly and carefully tell my idiot car to set the temperature. Buttons forever! And I don't mean 'buttons' on touch screens, those suck too...

interacting with voice is very problematic and this idiot has no idea what he's talking about, fire him now.

This idiot loves software and hates cars, does not belong in his position.

It's been a long time since cars were first produced and in almost all that time there were buttons and knobs that controlled pretty much everything in the car; heater, wipers, lights, radio, windows, etc. Finding that knob or button was fairly easy and didn't require a lot of attention. Now with these screens (and I don't have a car with one, but friends do), finding the correct screen menu requires more attention and seem to be distracting. I would not purchase a car that didn't have at least some common knob/buttons (headlight), heater/AC, etc.

Touch interfaces better than Apple”

Says the car guy. Dunning-Kreuger much?

And he’s against physical buttons? I’m sure, on some planet, this guy’s tech game is strong. His problem is, this is earth.

GM wants to take my data. Rivian insists I have to talk to my car because 'buttons are obsolete'. These assholes who insist only they know what's good for drivers just piss me off. Guess I'll run my current 2016 (Frontier) into the ground....

Dude's high on his product plan.

For his next trick, he'll be designing guns with no controls. Because training and reaction time is meaningless when robots exist. "AI is a fantastic weapons platform."

I just want buttons and car play/android auto. I don't want a giant fucking tablet in my dashboard. I carry a computer around in my pocket all day long that has all the stuff I want on it, just let me use it. None of this bullshit about "integrated user experiences" is why you're being obstinate, we know it's all about data and money.

In the time it takes to say, "Dim the lights..." and the computer responds, the approaching car will have already passed you.

"Turn up the radio" ... "Turn it up more" ... "No, not that much" ... etc...

Some things are just done so much more easily with mechanical controls. Sometimes, you don't want the kids to be able to turn on the entertainment system, or change the climate control settings. Sometimes, as a parent, I don't want the children to know there's a McDonald's just five minutes away when I've already made up my mind that we aren't stopping there.

Yes, being able to say, "Find me a local restaurant" is nice, but most people don't even need to ask, because they already know where they want to eat and how to get there. Sure, it will come in handy for the rental car market, but I just don't see people using these features very often.

And sometimes, you don't really feel like talking. Imagine being unable to drive somewhere because you've caught a bad cold, and the car doesn't recognize your voice anymore.

JFC, these guys..

Where humans are concerned, tactile is best.

Look at airplanes. Yes, flat-panel MFDs everywhere, and your flight plan and checklists and wx are now all on an ipad.. but the way you talk to the airplane is still manual. Hand controls for all the important things. Yokes, sticks, pedals, throttles you move with your hand, flaps selector, gear switch, all of that did not get moved to a stupid touch screen.

This new trend in cars.. ugh. Double-ugh.

Cameras went through this. Touch this, menu that. And then in the early 2000s a miracle occured: the aperture ring and shutter dials came back. Huh. Almost as if 100 years of camera evolution dictated it be so.

A pox on touch controls, or even worse, voice controls. Give us manual controls, they work best for humans.

I want to speak to my passengers or listen to music. I do not want ot speak to an "AI" - I do not want to navigate a touch screen interface. I want a very straightforward button. On/off. Next. Previous. Up. Down.

I could ask google and the likes for many things but I do not because it's not the most convenient option. It's not the simplest. Even the fact that you can ask google to do X and then it tells you it's going to do X is annoying. Insteadof telling me/acknowledge it should just do it. The amount of

Sorry, but voice activation is not a new thing. My ride has it. It takes far longer to tell it to call someone than it does to just twist the "recent caller" dial, and hit the OK button. Even then, I'm not often calling people from the car.

Sorry, but I don't want to have to beg my car repeatedly to do a function by voice, like it is a toddler about to have a tantrum. There is a reason why car UI/UX design exists, and part of it is to be able to set something, and ensure that whatever is set works right.

1. If my kid falls asleep in the car, I don't want to wake him just to adjust the AC or turn on the wipers.

2. He must also not have friends. I don't want to interrupt someone when they're talking just to adjust the temperature.

3. He must also not like music...I hate stopping my favorite song to turn up the volume.

That's not even considering people with thick accents, language barriers, noisy environments, a dog in the car, or even just a sore throat.

We all like buttons. It's like keyboards. No matter how cool you think an iPad is, very few people stopped buying laptops/desktops and replaced them with iPads. We hate touchscreens. We accept that sometimes a touchscreen makes more sense, but people like buttons and tactile feedback and being able to adjust things without looking at the road. And voice commands?...they suck. Neither Siri nor Google nor Alexa get my commands right 80% of the time and I use them often, have a perfect midwestern newscaster accent, and have been using them for 10 years now, so am very good at annunciating and speaking slowly.

How have they not yet been banned? They are just one of many reasons I don't recommend buying a Tesla to my friends and family. Every time I see them in a new car I am interested in, I add that car to the "do not buy" list. This might mean I'm stuck driving older vehicles for the rest of my life, but that is fine by me!

It's basically just engineering laziness. It's way easier and cheaper than arranging mechanical buttons. Plus they can charge you a fee down the road to refresh the interface. More money for them without all the work. I love my Grand Cherokee but it's highly annoying to have to use the touch screen to turn on or off the heated seats. But it made them a few more pennies.

Rivian's CEOs is dead wrong. Few are asking for big screens and no buttons, but we do need vehicles so we choose from what's offered, ev

Voice-controlled? What could possibly go wrong? A driver and a passenger countermanding each other? Even if the passenger is in the back seat?

A car should not be feature rich . The more features a car has, the more distracting it is and the less safe it is.

I hope at some point there's a class-action lawsuit against all of these high-tech car manufacturers that are making unsafe cars. We really need Ralph Nader 2.0 to take on these idiots.

I want buttons. Voice would be nice too, but I want buttons. Period.

And you're telling me that you aren't technically capable of giving CarPlay a window or portion of the display? Hell, just use a separate smaller display for phones then. Obviously, this isn't hard, so they aren't being honest. They have other reasons for not wanting to support phones that they aren't saying out loud.

This turns me off to their brand.

> "Ideally, you would want to interact with your car through voice."

Um, no. I don't want to talk to my car to bump up the seat temp, to perform a single wipe on the window, to skip song, to adjust the dash brightness, or lots of other functions. Things that should be fast and simple, and don't interrupt a conversation, or music, or whatever. We should have physical controls for all common operations in a vehicle. Want to ALSO have a touchscreen? Fine.

I also want a real dashboard, with useful displays

Others in this thread have already covered a lot of the issues with this terrible, no-good, very bad idea. I'm going to focus on one that I don't think has been mentioned: security.

If they restrict commands to the owner, then they're going to have to solve the speaker recognition problem, which is difficult under ideal circumstances and gets still harder when it has to account for edge cases like the speaker having a cold or laryngitis. So assume they solve that: how do they plan to distinguish between the owner and a recording of the owner? How is this going to handle multiple drivers? What if someone is an emergency driver? (Last year, I tossed my car keys to a friend so that they could transport a patient while I stayed behind.) What if someone in possession of a recording standing outside the vehicle plays it loudly enough that it's picked up on internal microphones? (Owner's voice: "Start yourself and unlock the doors.") What if...I could go on, but the point is that this clown has clearly not considered how this is going to work (or not) in the real world, with its anomalies and threats, some of which are difficult to distinguish.

Nobody needs a touchscreen, or voice control, or AI in their car. Nobody with any sense wants these things, because they're pointless complexity and they make driving LESS safe and they make the vehicles LESS secure.

...voice control of my car! Ever!

I prefer tactile buttons and knobs for stuff I need to do while driving

My Tesla touchscreen in nearly impossible to use while moving

Or at best, an annoyingly chatty passenger. Obviously not a car guy.

I'm in tech, have been my whole life. I LOVE gadgets. I LOVE technology. But I also LOVE cars. Shoving ever more tech gadgetry into cars makes them undeniably worse. Don't misunderstand, there's a lot to be said for actual tech, like seat belt pre-tensioners, variable impact airbags, anti-lock braking and active handling assist. Those have saved countless lives. Closed loop engine controls, electronic ignition and the like have made

" "I'm hungry" the in-car assistant should be able to quickly direct them to a nearby restaurant that they might prefer."

And if you say "It's raining", the in-car assistant makes it stop raining.

"I'm hungry" = go to the place that paid the most for ad placement.

Physical buttons and dials you can operate by touch without taking your eyes off the road are superior to any voice assistant and far, far safer than any touchscreen will ever be.

They ought to be mandatory for safety reasons.

You can't even redirect the AC vent angle without using a touchscreen. I would never buy a vehicle with such an overreliance on technology. Some things are better with manual controls. Touchscreen interfaces aren't better, and they're less safe. I can adjust knobs, dials, and vents without taking my eyes off the road. As an engineer, I think touchscreen-heavy designs are cheap, lazy, or both.

I'm jotting this down and making sure I don't buy a car that has this tech in it. I drove a car once that wouldn't turn off the GPS audio. Driving is the most dangerous activity most people do and sometimes it can require full attention. If you get in a hairy situation you should be able to reach over and turn off all noise with a single click. Not a voice command, not a swipe on the screen, not two clicks. One punch of a button should cut off all audio. I want to have manual controls for most features,

Customer: "We really don't want touch screens!"

Tech: "No YOU'RE the problem!!"

Clearly this guy needs the boot of regulations shoved way, way up his bum.

Off is the direction in which you can fuck.

Hmmm, right.

why should i talk to the damn car instead of just pressing a button?

The only way to make sense of quote buttons as an anomaly is if they are designing cars that will eventually drive for you, so the American consumer can get back to staring at touch screens and taking in ads and such.

everything looks like a UI element

That includes cars.

More importantly, I don't talk to online things that have a microphone and a dystopian company listening in on everything you say.

When you're driving your eyes should be on the road , not fumbling around for what part of a gods-be-damned touchsceen you should be stabbing at.

YES, I KNOW, he's talking about 'voice commands' -- which I think is even more pants-on-head stupid than touchscreens.

Common functionality should be physical controls within easy reach of the driver. That way, once you get used to the cockpit layout of the vehicle, you don't have to take your eyes off the road to do something, you just reach out because you alread

If I can't hear someone talking from the backseat, phone, whatever and want to turn down the fan, close sunroof, roll up windows, or turn down the radio, I don't want to have to wait for them to finish to not interrupt, then explain to them I'm not talking to them but the car, then command the car. Just let me reach over without looking and turn a f'ing dial!

Also losing your voice is a thing.

No touchscreens please.

Give me buttons and knobs.

I do not want to fondle a piece of smooth glass with no tactile feedback that turns into a useless, smudgy mirror in the afternoon sun.

I do not want to bark commands at my car having it do nothing or worse, something unintended, nor do I care for the idea of my car constantly listening to me all the time.

Just give me a fucking button. That button should do exactly one thing, so when I want to do that thing I know exactly where it is and don't even have to look at it. Bonus points i

his bias from being a software developer is likely to blame for the idiocy spewing out of his mouth.

Do car manufacturers not know about usability research?

Single function knobs and dials are king when it comes to function over form - and that should be the goal when it comes to an environment where every distraction can cause an accident.

There is a reason most jurisdictions ban the handling of a phone while driving.

Adding voice function is one thing. Replacing a safer solution with a more dangerous solutio

I want to talk to my passengers or someone on the speaker phone. My car needs to STFU, never talk and never listen either.

Give me buttons and knobs and fuck off with the voice bullshit. I don't want to talk to a computer like it's a real person.

This fool really jumped the shark with the "it's a bug, not a feature" talk about buttons. Physical UX is comprised of design choices. By definition, conscious design choices are not "bugs".

This kind of attitude is why Rivian is in such poor condition.

When driving I seem to be able to assess when there's a high likelihood that a driver around me will do something stupid/dangerous involving my vehicle, such as cut me off as I enter their blind spot which apparently still exists despite all the technology.

So I rest my thumb on the small physical horn button on the side arm of the steering wheel, while maintaining a firm grip on the wheel with both hands.

This allows an instantaneous and usually effective warning honk should they initiate the dangerous move.

Forcing people to use voice control of their cars is also an accessibility problem for speech-impaired people. Several deaf people are also speech impaired and cars' speech recognizers may fail to correctly recognize their speech.

Fortunately my car still uses buttons for most functions. The only function I use in my car, which needs touch screen use, is Waze and I interact with it when my car is stopped anyway.

In the first place, passengers sometime sleep in cars. As the driver, do I really want to risk waking up a passenger by having to talk to my car to adjust climate controls?

In the second place, sometimes I like to play music loud when I'm driving. Should I have to turn the volume down so the "AI" can "hear" me to turn the wipers on? And even if I am willing to do that, how can I, when there's no manual volume control ?

In the third place, if I'm having a conversation while I'm in the car, I don't want to inter

No, buttons are not an "anomaly". They are how people with an actual clue do things. For bonus points, make the buttons not only different by location, but also tactile. This person is an utterly clueless cretin.