11 ms·

Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

425 points by devy 4y ago

dhosek 4y ago
Reminds me of an aggravating feature (or really lack thereof) in my new Prius. It has wireless charging, but requires a cable connection for CarPlay. I hope I never meet a Toyota engineer in person, because it would be hard not to do something criminal to them.
- TimTheTinker 4y ago
  Wait, iPhones support CarPlay without a cable?
  - luisrudge 4y ago
    Not all cars support that, though. Due to licensing or tech, some cars (even new ones) only support Apple car with a cable (my case). I bought a wireless adapter on Amazon and it works seamlessly.
    - fazfq 4y ago
      A wireless adapter that lets you use wireless carplay on a car that doesn't have it? Could you please post a link?
      - dhosek 4y ago
        I bought this one that’s arriving tomorrow. I’ll write up a review of it once I’ve used it a while. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0B8RKXK9R/donhosek http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0B8RKXK9R/donhosek
  - LeoPanthera 4y ago
    Yes, it's called Wireless CarPlay. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205634 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205634
  - izacus 4y ago
    Yeah,both CarPlay and Android Auto have wireless support these days. You can buy wireless CarPlay/Auto USB dongles for cars that only support cable.
- sand500 4y ago
  That's just the usual features taking a while to come to Toyota.
  - dhosek 4y ago
    It’s just a crazy order to add things. Qi charger for a phone that you would want plugged in to properly use.
- pkulak 4y ago
  You’re mad that Toyota didn’t include an extra WiFi radio in your car, so that you can be more conveniently distracted by text messages and speed trap warnings, in the same thread where everyone else thinks that electric starters ruined cars forever?
  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    Most people mount their phones someplace in their line of sight. If anything, car play is less distracting than a phone.
  - dhosek 4y ago
    Carplay lets me use the car to control audio with the car controls instead of the phone. That’s a big non-distractor. Your comment tells me that you have never actually used CarPlay (and perhaps that Android Auto is not so good—I wouldn’t know, I always assumed it was roughly equivalent to CarPlay in features and functionality). My phone doesn’t notify me about text messages when I’m driving and with the Prius, if I want navigation, CarPlay is the thing. Having the nav on the big display instead of the little display (which would be well out of the normal peripheral line of sight if it’s sitting on the wireless charger) is again an improvement in safety.
- knifie_spoonie 4y ago
  Keep in my that a manager made that decision, not one of the engineers doing the hands-on work.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    That's a cop out. The engineers can say no. Many managers are former engineers anyway.
soitgoes511 4y ago
Amen! Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
thih9 4y ago
At first I thought this is about some extra functionality, like having an additional way of opening the glove box, or perhaps even locking it. I thought it's harmless, since that action wouldn't be performed too often. I never thought this would be about actually replacing the physical latch.
dbttdft 4y ago
All these problems are caused by the mindless American consumer. If you look at a hardware review for absolutely anything tech related, it will be some absolutely useless 1 paragraph of content surrounded by 3 paragraphs of non useful information, and then some type of sponsor insert, like a pitch, or an Amazon referral link to the product. If you shop for LCDs, there is not even one website from 2000-2023 that provides real reviews (even tft central never says anything bad about products that have pushed the envelope of lowering quality, because the author is naturally biased against that due to his conflict of interest along with not really knowing what he's talking about). The most contentful review will merely talk about how good the build quality of the stand of the monitor is. If you go on whatever forum for discussing some subset of technology, you will get banned if you point out 2 issues with some product, (due to the fanboy effect, not claiming a conspiracy here). Continuing from that last sentence, a big part of the problem is that the Christian religion is all but replaced with a corporate equivalent. It's now plausible to claim someone is racist and homophobic if they don't like Apple products. This is a huge part of the issue. There is almost no criticism in media about technology. On any nerd social internet corner, you'll have a bunch of burger eating slobs who do exactly what I complained about: You'll explain that this toaster is bad because it smells like burning plastic and has holes in it that drop bread crumbs all over your counter which get blown around the kitchen. They'll respond by saying, "how dare you insult this prestigious company that only existed for 5 minutes, they are my favorite. I have never actually tried another product but this is the best because I bought it and it had a shiny thing on it and I felt so good after this purchase". Thanks to this social environment, it's basically impossible to get a good review of any product what so ever on the internet. 99.9999% of "Nerd culture" is actually just about buying stuff. Any time I want to buy something I expect to take days out of my time just to find a product that isn't severely crippled so badly that the mindless consumer will complain about it (on 1/20 review sites). Don't get me wrong, this isn't an internet problem. Most people IRL hold the same mentality. Vehicles have all the garbage you'd expect for this demographic: - ECU with shoddy and fraudulent software (dieselgate, uConnect, unintended acceleration) - LEDs that flicker worse than a CRT (these are actually dangerous as at night you can't immediately tell the position of a car within a split second, which goes to show how much shits regulators give, "at least they saved a penny and some carbon emissions (TM)") - Terrible inputs with issues like being touch screen, horrible debounce, etc - Cheap, vain, lack of taste, glossy paint that easily sells to idiots who like shiny things and they'll even pay extra for it despite it being worse in every way - All kinds of dangerous half working gimmicks around "steering for you" which are especially easy to upsell to idiots - Spyware that phones home
macintux 4y ago
Someone in the comments pointed out that not only is this terrible, you can only open the glove box while stationary. I thought GM had jumped the shark when they started leaving the reverse lights on when you park, just to make sure people or cars nearby don’t know whether it’s safe to pass you in the parking lot. This is a whole new level of stupidity.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
  what?? this one is stupid but the reverse lights is dangerously stupid
  - gambiting 4y ago
    How is that even legal in fact? Doesn't legislation specify that those lights should only be on when the car is in reverse gear?
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Likely not, some pickup trucks can "force" the backup lights on as "bed lights" it seems. When parked, the car doesn't have tons of requirements vis-a-vis the lighting (the laws are usually worded like "when in reverse gear, two rear-facing white-burning lights must be visible with a power of X lumens" or something).
      - dylan604 4y ago
        Um, what truck bed can be lit by using the reverse lights? The only way I can see this working is if there's another truck behind you so that your reverse lights are pointed at the other truck. Truck bed lights have always been behind the cab. I've never seen reverse lights considered as bed lights.
        bombcar 4y ago
        All pickups I've seen have reverse lights built into the third brake light which is behind the cab above the bed. And with that it makes sense as a safety feature - if the only way to turn those on is go into reverse, people would be tempted to throw the truck in reverse and leave the parking brake on while they jump in the back to look for something. Unfortunately it seems not all of them are locked out as I've seen trucks driving on the freeway with the reverse lights on.
spike021 4y ago
I read on another forum that there isn't even a manual release somewhere. I understand for security it's nice not to but maybe hide one _somewhere_ so at least you have some backup option in an emergency?
- defrost 4y ago
  That'd be nice .. or just bypass the entire added layer of relay controls and go back to a manual latch. The article scenarios raise some of the real life issues: * What if your battery dies, and you have your small emergency charger in the glovebox? * What if you’re waiting in a turned-off car while your friend or parent or lover pops inside the liquor store, and you need to get, say, your hyper-important pills out of the glove box? * What if you get pulled over by a cop, and they tell you to turn your car off, like they do, but then you have to explain to the already tense cop that you need to turn your car back on so you can open the fucking glove box door so you can get your documents? ( Depending on the cop and the circumstance, this can only make things worse. ) etc. I've spent decades on bleeding edge tech .. and I still detest this kind of ill thought through "just because we can" stupidity.
  - D13Fd 4y ago
    The real answer for all of those things is obvious - don’t put important stuff in the glove box. But they still show just how dumb this design is, because it doesn’t fit how people use glove boxes.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      Wow, I never thought I'd hear a more tone deaf response than "you're holding it wrong", but yet, here we are. Maybe you forgot the /s?
      - D13Fd 4y ago
        I was trying to say that yes, the design is bad, but the problems are not exactly unsolvable either.
bagels 4y ago
Tesla has the same. Irritating.
- electric_mayhem 4y ago
  You can use a voice command to open it. But that’s only somewhat better. You can buy S3XY buttons to give yourself a physical button for it.
chmod775 4y ago
A conversation that should have happened during the development of this car, but didn't: "Remind me again why the brake pedal isn't a button buried in a sub-menu? Because that would be inconvenient, unintuitive, and doesn't allow quick access? Then why the fuck would you do this with anything?"
- forgetfreeman 4y ago
  This comment should be a government mandated poster displayed in every design & software shop on the planet.
- ilammy 4y ago
  > Remind me again why the brake pedal isn't a button buried in a sub-menu? “Because title 49, subtitle B, chapter III, subchapter B, part 393, subpart C, paragraph 393.40 of Federal Safety Regulations requires us to install brakes as specified by subpart B, paragraph 571.105 of the same regulations, which require a pedal. And if those did not exist, then we absolutely would install some other bullshit, make you pay extra for it, and bear no responsibility for it whatsoever.” Glove box isn’t a safety feature? Do whatevs, land of the free.
  - jiggawatts 4y ago
    Hand brakes are also known as emergency brakes, but in my new Toyota it's electric and activated by a tiny little tab switch. My previous car a big lever that the passenger could easily yank in an emergency. No thought required, it's a big level you grab and pull. By the time you find the little black plastic tab amongst all the other similar black plastic doo-dads, you're dead.
    - anikom15 4y ago
      Unless you really know what you’re doing, you’re better off trying to steer the car into the safest crash site/uphill possible than to try to stop it with the hand brake. The hand brake only locks the rear wheels and are not designed to brake at driving speeds (they are for keeping a stationary car from moving). Improper use of the handbrake results in the car spinning out.
jonathanberger 4y ago
Most product decisions represent a tradeoff. The tradeoff the author doesn't mention is one of a clean look versus ease of use. The author also doesn't mention how frequently they actually open their glovebox. From my personal experience I probably open my glovebox four times a year. How many times do I look at my glovebox? That's much harder to estimate but I'd guess dozens. Do I like a clean looking dashboard? It was actually a major selling point for me when I recently went car shopping. People obsess about how their cars look on the outside but how things look (and thus feel) on the inside is more important. A glovebox latch only minimally affects the look and feel but I don't find the tradeoff that automakers have chosen as obviously bad as the author.
- rasse 4y ago
  Mechanical push to open latch. Problem solved. Dozens of new problems not introduced.
- aristophenes 4y ago
  Your argument basically boils down to you don’t really use your glove box and prefer the slightly cleaner aesthetics. In your case you might argue for a car that doesn’t have a glove box. But if the glove box is included it should be intended for use. To not be able to access it by the passenger while driving, or while the car is off can be very frustrating for people who like to have a glove box.
  - kennend3 4y ago
    All the comments on this thread seem to ignore a basic simple truth. On long road trips with passengers, they often use the glovebox to store things. When we go on road trips the kids rotate sitting in the passenger seat. They store their books, kindle, phone, etc there as it is a very convenient storage space easily accessible to them.
    - macintux 4y ago
      And in the event of a crash it’s safer to have items in the glove box than lying around waiting to become projectiles.
BizarreByte 4y ago
I don't want touch screens in cars period and I can't stand this trend of using them. I'm finally starting to understand the feelings my grandfather had for anything thing he considered superfluous or inconvenient in a car.
- D13Fd 4y ago
  I think touch screens are ok right now for two things: settings menus that you set once and never touch again, and Apple CarPlay. I recently moved backwards from a CarPlay car to a non-CarPlay car. Even with a very convenient MagSafe phone mount right where the CarPlay screen used to be, I still miss CarPlay. It was just easier and more convenient for controlling phone media, gps, etc. On the settings app, the choice is between a crappy touchscreen UI and a crappy non-touchscreen UI, so I’m kind of neutral.
  - sand500 4y ago
    Mazda disables touch for Android auto and carplay and I think that's awesome. The wheel is much better to use.
    - schuke 4y ago
      I have never driven a Mazda but I watch a lot of car reviews. It seems to me they're the only car manufacturer that gets car interactions right. They actually have a philosophy how human-cars should interact and design everything based on it. Hence everything comes natural and consistent and logical.
      - CornCobs 4y ago
        Dad has a Mazda. Can vouch for this 100%. It's very clear to me when I drive it that their car interfaces are very deliberate and properly designed. That rolling knob thing which controls the screen is amazing and I wish it were standard
      - para_parolu 4y ago
nickhalfasleep 4y ago
This is a great feature for a leased car, or a car rented out through the manufacturer. This is not for someone who owns the car. Car companies, like software companies, want to go to a subscription model.
- userbinator 4y ago
  Car companies, like software companies, want to go to a subscription model. "You can open your glovebox up to 10 times for only $9.99 per month!" Even for a rental car, I think that's taking it a little too far.
JoeyBananas 4y ago
I bet implementing the glove box control in this way simplifies the tooling/assembly somehow.
- jeffybefffy519 4y ago
  Yep this, overall makes the car cheaper to make.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    Now extend this reasoning to see why everything has become touch screen. It will all make sense. My oven has touch buttons. No idea if I pressed it or not because it doesn’t give feedback for a second or two. Good automotive quality switches and encoders are expensive. And they don’t make them anymore because market dumped them. See the dwindling alps catalog.
    - Gibbon1 4y ago
      I got a new washer. You have to push a touch button for four seconds to wake it up. Then wait a couple of seconds for the controller to boot and show the touch screen. Then you select what wash mode you want by pressing the touch screen for two seconds for each selection.
      - Brian_K_White 4y ago
        It truly is Halloween
- devmor 4y ago
  There is no world where wiring, relays and motorized latches are cheaper than a button latch.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    This. It's a very different situations from touch screens being cheaper than physical controls, since in this case the latch is already necessary.
brandonp0 4y ago
I hate a lot of the touch screen controls in the Tesla - like AC controls. But the glovebox is actually pretty nice. Being software controlled means I can require a PIN to open it. Also, there's no handle so it doesn't even look like a glovebox is there. If someone breaks in they probably aren't getting to any valuables in the glovebox.
- rootw0rm 4y ago
  you keep valuables in your glovebox?
  - brandonp0 4y ago
    I keep a revolver in it.
    - ruined 4y ago
      free gun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH0Qx26iDTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH0Qx26iDTU
    - abitlegacy 4y ago
      There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea - first and foremost - where do you keep your registration and insurance?
      - brandonp0 4y ago
        There's more than one storage area in the car. I use one of the center console spots for that.
        abitlegacy 4y ago
        So you store a weapon in the area where police are expecting you to reach for and instead store your license and registration to one of the spots where police are trained to prevent people from reaching into because of the fear of storing a weapon there. I also hope that you either live in a state where there aren't any CCW permits required or that you have a CCW permit (which during my class, they went on and on about why you shouldn't store a weapon in the glove box). Regardless - locks on glove boxes have been a thing for a long time. Having a PIN Enabled glove box even for your (imo very stupid) use case isn't enough of an argument to make touch screened glove boxes standard.
vicapow 4y ago
I like it. It means if someone breaks into the car they can’t get into the glove box. Also, with a Tesla, the car is never off so you don’t need to turn the car on again to get access to it.
- devmor 4y ago
  What a fantasy scenario. In what world can someone force their way into to your locked car but can't force their way into the glove box?
  - herewulf 4y ago
    Most glove boxes don't have large panes of glass? The sound of a broken window to get in will also motivate a thief to not stick around messing with a glovebox very long. Maybe leave something worth running off with in the center console as a deflection.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - izacus 4y ago
      This is a seriously marginal bizarre contriviance of a scenario to piss off people daily who use the glove box. For your benefit, you'd need to have a thief that somehow can break class (which is suprisingly hard to do if you ever tried it) and then can't defeat a simple latch on a glovebox where they now for sure valuables lie? Get out of here.
    - kennend3 4y ago
      You seem unaware that a car's glovebox door is made out of plastic and usually has just a single "hook" style latch? Thief's who break windows to get into cars carry tools.. your glovebox is NOT secure. Lastly, you seem unaware that most car thief's don't break the windows because this often leads to their capture.
- userbinator 4y ago
  It means if someone breaks into the car they can’t get into the glove box. If the attacker already broke into the car, I doubt the glovebox is going to put up much of a fight. Also, I'm pretty sure the glovebox itself has a lock in a lot of cars.
ytch 4y ago
Presonally I didn't like the response time. Just like the DVB-T takes more time to switch between channels. When controlling the light, temperature or others from touch-screen, I need to wait those animations and a slight delay after touch the trigger.
xwdv 4y ago
People raise their blood pressure for nothing. You could have both a touch screen glove box release and a discreet manual release for emergencies. It’s just for aesthetics.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  > It’s just for aesthetics What about form follows function?
  - xwdv 4y ago
    The function is to sell more good looking cars.
  - nordsieck 4y ago
    > What about form follows function? Often designers privilege form over function. Examples: lots of silly architecture, and the fact that my kitchen countertops are tiled.
- temac 4y ago
  If it was just for aesthetics, you could have just a discreet manual release. Anyway, you don't have "a discreet manual release" on actual implementation of that crap, so yeah that's the point: you could and you should have a manual release. At which point the touchscreen insanity for that would not make sense and would disappear.
userbinator 4y ago
It's worth watching the other few dozen seconds of the Cadillac video; not only is the glovebox overengineered, but so are the other doors on that car. Then again, it is a Cadillac, so "luxurious excess" is not surprising, but I'm not sure how having to go through that awkward indirection could be considered a luxury.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Excellent point. There are a lot of people for whom the #1 goal when purchasing a car is to stake out as high a spot in the "Who's Got More Bling?" pecking order as possible. If a car company CEO developed some weird obsession with maximizing profit, it wouldn't take much genius to start ignoring the practical & thrifty car buyers in favor of the bling maximizers...
  - narcraft 4y ago
    It wouldn't take a genius because that would be a terrible business decision when you consider number of units sold. And profit-maximizing wouldn't be a particularly weird obsession for a CEO to have, in fact, it's exactly the obsession you'd want him to have.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
permo-w 4y ago
one tangentially related extremely irritating “feature” of Teslas is automatic updates, which not only disable the car while they’re going on, but often rearrange the UI so you have to figure out where the buttons are all over again. it’s a flat out disgrace. you get into your extremely expensive car, ready to go, but no the car isn’t available because some dev team somewhere a few thousand miles away decided to push an almost certainly unnecessary change to YOUR possession. I don’t like this concept on mobile devices and PCs, but I despise it for cars
- rikschennink 4y ago
  Agree that they change buttons and UI too often, this should be a more gradual process, or they should offer a choice to move to new UI. They do ask if you want to update now or wait + tell you that the car won’t be available for x amount of minutes.
  - benj111 4y ago
    Why even gradual? It's a very software idea to ship things unfinished and fix them later. At best it's annoying, in a car it's dangerous. I expect when I buy a car that the manufacturers have spent time thinking about the layout, and they've got it the best they can, ironed out the bugs etc. I don't want to come in in the middle of an iterative process. I don't want buttons moving, I don't want 'improvements', I want to buy an actual functioning car from day one. One that the manufacturer is happy to stand by from day one, and they don't feel entitled to 'improve'.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  And updates could totally be cancellable... Nearly every device has an "A" and "B" firmware stored, and therefore if you need to drive away during an update they could just stop the update and reboot every device back to the old firmware that's already stored and you'd be good to drive in 10 seconds.
- oh_sigh 4y ago
  In what model of Tesla are the updates automatic? I've always been prompted whether I want to install an update, or schedule it to be installed at some early hour in the morning. I'm also told about how long the update will take (generally 25 mins). But I agree about the horribleness of the UI changes - I still hate whatever the UI update was that went out like a year ago and haven't figured out why they actually did it.
throwaway892238 4y ago
Can we make the steering wheel a touch screen too? Like a digital wheel you turn with your finger to steer the car. Wouldn't that be just super duper? Couldn't possibly go wrong.
- pkulak 4y ago
  Except that I open my glove box twice a year and turn the wheel slightly more often than that.
  - b112 4y ago
    This makes an interesting point. The less used something is, the more apparent it must be how to use it. If something is used once a year, most users won't know what myriad of menus to follow. Some won't even know it is a menu option, and may hunt all over the car for a hidden release.
    - pkulak 4y ago
      Except that by that logic, the hood release should be a giant red button in the middle of the dash.
      - b112 4y ago
        It is provably different for you, but where I am (Canada), you'll open the hood release at least a half dozen times a year, just for windshield wiper fluid. That said, the hood release has been on the driver side somewhere, under the dash, in every car I own. With a physical release, you can often hunt for a thing, much faster than a dozen submenus.
- bipson 4y ago
  Ha. The newer VW models (Golf, ID series, etc.) had touch controls on the steering wheels instead of physical buttons. Of course what happened is what you anticipated. Bad customer feedback made them reverse that for future models.
neilv 4y ago
I'm not looking forward to buying another car, since I've been hearing of a lot of criminally negligent human factors engineering for at least a decade, combined with increasingly invasive spying on people in their own cars. Is there any decent automotive company remaining?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jamiek88 4y ago
  Subaru is too small for this crap and also design their cars around people wearing gloves so lots of chunky knobs. We are getting their ev next the Solterra which is a shared venture with Toyota.
  - californical 4y ago
    Big +1 for Subaru, but some of their newer cars are starting to fall victim to these gimmicks now. But they generally give you some of the tech features without getting in your way. Eg. you get CarPlay, but also physical climate controls and volume knobs. Automatic cruise control & lane centering, but you can disable certain parts of it that you don’t like. And the Outbacks are some of the safest cars out there in terms of “deaths per million miles” statistics according to the IIHS [0], probably due to their over-engineered frames and engine-dropping crumple zones [0]: https://www.iihs.org/api/datastoredocument/status-report/pdf/55/2 https://www.iihs.org/api/datastoredocument/status-report/pdf...
- slang800 4y ago
  Toyota is alright. I've got a recent RAV4 without any of this nonsense.
- pxtail 4y ago
  No hope unfortunatelly, car-as-subscription is the dream of automakers and they will do everything to reach the goal. Adding various gimmicks and as many electronic failure points as possible is to make device less reliable and obsolete in a couple of years so new one needs to be bought.
rnoises 4y ago
Leaving aside the question of whether touchscreens make sense inside a car at all, I’m not sure how a control to open the glove box which is not situated on the actual glove box help? I mean, you probably opened the glove box to put something in or take something out. Once it is open, you would almost certainly physically reach inside it.
- themitigating 4y ago
  You can lock the glovebox with a pin
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > You can lock the glovebox with a pin That doesn't mean you can't put a touch button on the actual glovebox. Use the UI (with a pin) to lock the glovebox so that it doesn't open when the glovebox button is touched, use the UI (with the same pin) to reverse that at a later stage. Putting the button anywhere but on the glovebox makes non-fanboys seriously question the suitability of the car as a convenience.
MrFoof 4y ago
GM also has electronic primary door release mechanisms in their vehicles. So if the car has no power, you can’t open the doors from inside. Granted, because of regulatory requirements there is STILL A MANUAL RELEASE… on the floor, near the chassis sill (and might be driver-seat only). So you save money going to electronic releases, but still have to put a manual one in anyways. The glovebox is merely annoying (though I can think of edge case situations where it could lead to your death), but with the door release, there are documented instances where it HAS led to someone’s death: https://jalopnik.com/texas-man-and-his-dog-die-after-getting-trapped-in-a-co-1710670440 https://jalopnik.com/texas-man-and-his-dog-die-after-getting...
- pmontra 4y ago
  How does electronic release save money (or when is the breakeven), considering the engineering of the electronic / sw system and the new emergency release system vs adapting the usual manual system to a new car model?
  - userbinator 4y ago
    It feels a bit like what happens when you have too many designers with too little to do.
  - yummypaint 4y ago
    Electronic locks create future revenue opportunities! Maybe the next auto industry innovation will be subscription doors. "Upgrade your vehicle from 3 doors to 4, just $19.99/month!"
- devoutsalsa 4y ago
  if you're doors won't open when the power goes out, that is just frikkin' stupid.
  - f1shy 4y ago
    Not only stupid. That is plain criminal.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Next: glove box pro. 10 daily opens; lights up; no content restrictions; 4.99/month
- devoutsalsa 4y ago
  With mandatory SMS 2FA.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    First factor is your DOB
- f1shy 4y ago
  Or wait: you can get it for free, but it will show an ad each time you open it! --We should not mention it, and give the idea to the OEMs...
  - prox 4y ago
    “The glove box will open after you watched this ad from Geico. Have a nice day!”
etaioinshrdlu 4y ago
Easily the single dumbest decision in the Model 3 IMO.
- pornel 4y ago
  Wipers on touchscreen are as dumb, but also dangerous.
Brian_K_White 4y ago
I was so looking forward to the Rivian suv ever since the truck came out, and then saw the first video of it where it requires navigating menues to AIM THE AIR VENTS. That Rivian was so bad I feel like it should be illegal. Who the F comes up with this stuff?
gorgoiler 4y ago
Well how are you going to make Passenger Storage+ a $2.99 monthly subscription if the latch isn’t software controlled? Is a robolatch cheaper, compared to a manual latch? Is there a cost saving for the manufacturer?
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  That 2.99 adds $360 to the companies market cap for each subscription!
- redox99 4y ago
  The thought of the glovebox becoming a DLC like the BMW heated seats is hilarious.
  - m463 4y ago
    It's more storage slots, just like every game ever. And with every oil change at the dealer, you unlock a cupholder. Get an extended warranty and unlock 2 driver and 2 passenger cupholders.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  > Is a robolatch cheaper Doubt it. It's still a latch but now you need a power release and some wires. Glovebox cover is still made in 1 operation regardless if it have the opening for the latch on front or not, you still need someone to install that latch in the cover, but now you need to trace wires to it.
- jffry 4y ago
  > Is a robolatch cheaper Doubtful, but as an extra "feature" they can probably use it to justify increasing the price of the car by more than it cost to add it. Granted, to me, this would REDUCE the value of the car, but car makers are operating in fantasyland
- jrootabega 4y ago
  Cheaper than a locking latch is the real comparison
voidz 4y ago
I can fully relate to the criticism expressed, but does the article have to be that filled with expletives? I would argue that it could appeal to a far wider audience if the writer would be able to find a way around this crude use of a language. Less is more.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  They could reach an even wider audience by writing about pop stars and other celebrities.
squarefoot 4y ago
This is a gem (emphasis mine): "The touch-screen-actuated glove box is terrible because it’s one of those examples where carmakers have found that they have the technology to do something, so they do it, without considering literally anything about what they’ve done. Did anybody want this? At all? It takes something that has never been a problem, opening a glove box, and added cost and complexity to the construction, and added time and inconvenience to the process. No problem is solved, but a fuckload of new problems are introduced." Here's the gist: carmakers, as many other businesses -this can apply to pretty much every product-, need more bullet points to be shown in advertising, so they use technology to add every possible feature, including those that are technically useless but still could add points of failure because of their bare existence. I think there's no way out until people is taught how this works very early in their life, and I mean children at school, so they can use their wallets when time comes. I can't see this coming anytime soon, however, as our economy totally embraces advertising the useless.
- henrikschroder 4y ago
  Remember curved TVs? Remember 3D for TVs? That was essentially technology bullet-point features, but since they flopped hard you can no longer buy curved TVs or 3D TVs. Turns out if people really don't want shit, it disappears again, no matter how hard various corporations push the shit.
  - izacus 4y ago
    Except that you can't "not buy" a vehicle you need for transport just because the manufacturers decided to remove the latch from the glove compartment. Your logic only works in healthy markets like TVs where you could buy _EQUIVALENT_ device without the curvature or 3D. Meanwhile with cars this isn't true - the touchscreen crap trend is being implemented across the market (since its cheaper) and many people can't freely choose a model and brand of their car (either due to costs, dealer availability or other factors like interior space or fuel consumption requirements). If you'd be able to buy the same car, just with different control stack, THAT would enable the behaviour you describe.
quattrofan 4y ago
leogout 4y ago
I understand that this is a rant about a niche feature but you know what we really should stop doing right now? We should stop producing giant piles of metal with four weels weighting more than 2 or 3 tons. No matter what stupid options they have, SUVs and big cars and trucks are a total nonsense. Sadly they are slowly becoming the norm. We should keep our vehicles under a ton so that we stop wasting so much of our precious energy moving these f-ing tanks on the road. Roads that we pay for and that are decaying faster and faster the more we keep buying them. Not to mention car accidents involving those monstrosities...
- gambiting 4y ago
  Sure. You're right, but I don't see how that's a relevant comment for this article.
  - unnamed76ri 4y ago
    Even saying this person is right is being generous to them. The attitude that there is no use case for a truck or suv is quite the privileged city dweller point of view.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  Of course the /r/fuckcars denizens have to get their licks in on every single online conversation about personal vehicles. Cars aren’t going away.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  Cool, we must have TARDIS's now or personal levitation & force field belts or something to replace the functionality. Been waiting for that.
bmitc 4y ago
Humans are just apes looking for the newest color of banana. We already know a lot about human machine interfaces and safety and human attention, and yet we throw that all away to offer and get the new shiny toy that merely changed something and usually for the worse. The older you get, the more you realize why older people are so cranky about certain things. As you gain age and experience, you become aware of the reality that humans simply will not change for the better in the collective, and that we remain driven by emotional needs rather than the reason we pride ourselves on.
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  I'm barely 30 and already feeling this. I can't imagine how I'll feel in another 30 years.
j-bos 4y ago
From (the) experience(s of many, many people), I've learned that GM makes mechanically terrible cars. Digitizing a handle that doesn't even require a lock tells me that they're simply bad at design and build across many domains. So my misunderstanding is, why does anyone with enough money to finance a new car, ever, buy GM? What do people see in their cars?
- neogodless 4y ago
  The plural of anecdote is not data. And GM sells a great many vehicles. Some are just fine. Some are "mechanically terrible". You'd have to look at big picture stats to see how often it's the case. Most people that buy GM do not end up with mechanically terrible cars, but because so many are bought, a large number are. Beyond that, there are nationalists (will only buy American) or otherwise brand loyal, often taking up the same preferences as parents.
- userbinator 4y ago
  They used to be good. I guess it's somewhat like IBM. (Owner of early 70s GM.)
a_square_peg 4y ago
That's not entirely true. There is a SW / mechanical/ test & integration team somewhere who was employed due to this feature that I'm sure very much appreciated this feature. There is a product manager who got to add a line item to their list of accomplishments and a sales team lead show get to draft instructional material to all the dealers, again justifying his existence. ... which is to say, this is all very horrible.
rco8786 4y ago
I continue to be genuinely shocked that we don't treat touch screens in cars the same way we do as phones in cars (that is to say, it is literally illegal to use them while the vehicle is moving in most places because the distraction is such a danger). Moving away from tactile in-car controls has to be among the more boneheaded things we've allowed that industry to do.
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago
  It's a cost cutting move. One touch screen is cheaper than 30 individual buttons, and ultimately many people have died because of it. But I'm sure GM would never do anything sketchy or illegal to lower cost or increase revenue
  - williamcotton 4y ago
    How is a manual glovebox latch more expensive than an electronic latch? I think there must be consumer demand for this feature. Oh how luxurious it must feel to never have to use a manual latch unlike the unwashed…
    - jimmyswimmy 4y ago
      It's not. But at the margin it is. If you already have a touch screen display then adding a button costs next to nothing on a per car basis. And there are a ton of solenoids in cars so they can probably reuse one and save the cost of the manual latch. Not to mention the Apple-esque design ideals that eradicated headphone jacks. You now have a cleaner looking passenger side of the dashboard. None for me, thanks.
      - williamcotton 4y ago
        Auto-manufacturers are still buying manual latch mechanisms in bulk as well for their non-luxury cars. A demand for Apple-esque design seems more plausible!
        4y ago
nikau 4y ago
But how am I going to keep my glovebox items safe while my car is earning passive income as a robotaxi?
- jaclaz 4y ago
  That's an easy one, you add fingerprint recognition, of course.
casey2 4y ago
? If you don't want it don't buy the car? I fail to see the issue.
- neogodless 4y ago
  Not buying one car in a sea of available choices sends a very vague message of why that particular car wasn't purchased. Plus such a car might be the ideal, desired car except for one specific egregious flaw. Why shouldn't people write articles that clearly communicate what makes a specific feature a deal breaker?
- macintux 4y ago
  This is the kind of “feature” which you may not realize you’re buying. Also, the earlier we raise a stink about the incredible user hostility of something that can’t be opened in motion, and can’t be opened with a dead battery, the better the chances that it won’t be widely adopted.
tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
The sensible thing would be to make it optional: Have a manual release latch that can be electronically locked, if you want to. Want fast access, you got it. Want to lock the glovebox, you got that too.
janosdebugs 4y ago
This is going to cost lives. Most people I know have their safety vests in the glovebox. Imagine if your car breaks down and you can't get the darn thing open/on the side of a highway?
- narcraft 4y ago
  People keep safety vests in their cars?
  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    I do.
  - rideontime 4y ago
    Yes.
    - veidr 4y ago
      I'm American, so — you know. It does make logical sense to do so, but I've never known anybody who keeps a safety vest in their vehicle. Is this something like the metric system?
      - jaclaz 4y ago
        It is required by Law, like the warning triangle, requirements are different in different countries, some mandate also a first-aid kit and/or a fire extinguisher: https://trip.studentnews.eu/s/4086/77076-Safety-equipment-for-cars-and-bikes-in-Europe.htm https://trip.studentnews.eu/s/4086/77076-Safety-equipment-fo... Lots of people keep the hi-vis vest together with the triangle/spare wheel, etc. in the trunk, but in theory these high-vis vest should be put on as soon as you get off the vehicle, so a better place is the glove box or (even better if available) the pockets on the rear of fronts seats.
        janosdebugs 4y ago
        In Austria, if you have your hi-vis vest in the trunk, an officer will at least let you know their disappointment in case of a control. Driving schools also teach you to put it in the glove compartment.
yosef123 4y ago
The reason they do this is simple, money. It is much easier for a manufacturer to produce a single screen that contains all the functionality that can be adjusted on the fly using software. The alternative (and the way it has always been) is early in a car conception, to design the cabin with the buttons layout, design the switches, find a manufacturer, test the switches, test the layout, repeat, etc… Plus if they find a flaw in the cars button design / layout late in the process, it becomes even more expensive to fix. Nowadays, car companies have an excuse to use screens, not only does it save them money, but they can disguise it under « modernism ». Disclaimer, this is from what I heard and using common sense, but in might be completely wrong.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Someone1234 4y ago
  This argument applies to maybe HVAC, it doesn't apply at all to what we're talking about: A glove-box. A traditional, mechanical, glove-box contains all the same components as this one (a latch, hinges, door, etc) but this adds a new wire harness, new connection points, new software, and an electro-magnetic servo to unlock it. I can think of no argument at all for how this decreases cost. It only increases them and increases failure points, all for what? Nobody knows exactly for what.
rubyist5eva 4y ago
I don’t want touch screen anything that doesn’t also at least have a manual release. I will continue to buy junker cars and fixing them up. Thanks Dad for teaching me how to fix my own cars (and YouTube has filled in the gaps).
m3kw9 4y ago
Prob as bad as touch screen steering
barbarbar 4y ago
This is the worst feature I have seen in a car. Or are there any that are worse?
killjoywashere 4y ago
Contrary to the author's belief, grocery store doors do not open when you step on a mat. They open due to change in incident light on a photoelectric effect sensor above the door. It makes me so happy to think the Nobel committee, which was dominated by experimentalists, when considering Einstein's contributions to science, could only bring themselves to award him the prize for grocery store door openers.
- falcolas 4y ago
  They used to open with pressure mats. Quite awhile ago, but I distinctly remember having to stomp on the less sensitive ones.
- m463 4y ago
  it used to be radar sensors.
malshe 4y ago
The author answers their own question. It's in the marketing research! /s Did they do focus groups for this feature? Did they get responses like these? “I hate how easy and quick it is to get the glovebox open. Can you guys solve that?” “Is there any way to make simple acts I’m used to doing a real fucking chore?” “How can I be sure every single tiny fucking thing on this car will be an expensive hassle to repair in 10 years? “If the battery dies, is there any way to fuck me over even more than normal? Like, you know, hard?” “Can you just smack the shit out of me over and over again with like a slab of roast beef, or is there some electromechanical and software solution you can integrate into the car for the same effect?”
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
  10 years? I prefer when my car fucks me in the first year of ownership. I can't hold out that long!
- m463 4y ago
  What's funny is what happens when the 12v battery dies on a tesla (even with a full EV battery). Hazard lights not working is a big one.
frob 4y ago
This is on the same level as designing doors that are supposed to open with a button but shame your passenger and supposedly damage your seals if they use the highly obvious and intuitive latch instead of the button that looks like a window control.
indus 4y ago
Why not write to NHTSA or/and NIST?
cwlucas41 4y ago
gaze 4y ago
I can’t help but wonder if/when such things will be leveraged into having glovebox subscriptions, with the unlock functionality being disabled if the subscription lapses
olouv 4y ago
I do! Digital pin protection and slick design without handle is an upgrade for me.
paulryanrogers 4y ago
Courage
DangitBobby 4y ago
This is bad, but what Tesla has done is much worse, not least because they will probably lead the way for bad decisions industry wide, and anything "novel" they do is probably a sign of things to come from other manufacturers trying to be "hip". There is no longer anything useful on the dash above the wheel. No speedometer, odometer, battery level indicator, repair lights, nothing. All of it is integrated into the infotainment unit on the dead center of the dash. Similarly, there are no knobs or real buttons anywhere on the center of the dash; it's all touch screen. All of it. I wanted to moan about it the entire time I was in the car, but I didn't want to just complain about my friend's nice new vehicle. The F-150 lightning I test-drove similarly has all of the climate control and music controls stuffed into infotainment center with no physical knobs or dials to be found. If you read online, you will also find that its infotainment center is notoriously slow. Otherwise, it's a very nice truck. Tesla is basically the Apple of EVs right now. Leading the way in some really interesting technology and features while causing potentially irreparable long-term damage to the health of the industry overall (think storage-tier pricing and the removal of all but USB-C ports/headphone jacks). Edit: found this video in the Twitter thread linked in the article 1. Actually what the Cadillac is doing here (particularly with the doors) is aggregious. Tesla has added an additional step to opening doors from the outside (you push your thumb in first and then grab the handle) which is something you can become accustomed to in one fluid motion. At least it looks kind of nice and is only mildly less convenient than traditional handles. The push-to-release-pull-side-of-door-because-theres-no-handle mechanism on the Cadillac is absolutely braindead. Seeing this video and multiple other new cars in person, I've also noticed a disturbing trend of changing the hatch opening mechanism. Before: manually open the hatch assisted by hydraulics which prop the door open until manually closed. Now: automatically open the hatch (slowly) on a button press and close it (slowly) on a button press. What's the problem here? Apart from being actually worse UX once the novelty wears off, the second mechanism is much more failure prone over the lifetime of the vehicle. The nice salesman at the Ford dealership actually told me off for trying to manually close the frunk on the Lightning because he was afraid I'd break it! My honest opinion is that these changes all point in one direction but cut two ways. 1. Increase revenue by increasing standardization and eliminating many pieces from the manufacturing process (at the expense of UX/longevity) and 2. Mitigate the lost recurring revenue due to how much more reliable EVs are than ICEs by introducing new failure modes masked as modern features for plausible deniability. 1. https://m.youtube.com/shorts/sirCpkqvpE0?feature=share https://m.youtube.com/shorts/sirCpkqvpE0?feature=share
nojvek 4y ago
Big-touch-screen-only interaction is one of the things that keep me from buying a Tesla. There’s the simplicity of Toyotas that keeps me attracted to them. Although when battery dies, you can’t open the trunk in newer RAV4s. So they’re going to shit as well. I would buy a dumb cheap electric car in a heart beat.
cbeach 4y ago
I like physical buttons for many things. But just to play devil’s advocate here: the benefit of the glovebox being software-controlled is that it enables features like PIN-protecting the glovebox contents, or Tesla’s “valet mode” where certain car features (including opening the glovebox) are disabled when you hand your keys to a stranger.
Tagbert 4y ago
I don’t mind touch screen in cars for things that are not critical during driving. Things that you need during driving should be physical controls. For things like glove box latches and door latches, just simple mechanicals please.

425 points by devy 4y ago

Reminds me of an aggravating feature (or really lack thereof) in my new Prius. It has wireless charging, but requires a cable connection for CarPlay. I hope I never meet a Toyota engineer in person, because it would be hard not to do something criminal to them.

TimTheTinker 4y ago
Wait, iPhones support CarPlay without a cable?
- luisrudge 4y ago
  Not all cars support that, though. Due to licensing or tech, some cars (even new ones) only support Apple car with a cable (my case). I bought a wireless adapter on Amazon and it works seamlessly.
  - fazfq 4y ago
    A wireless adapter that lets you use wireless carplay on a car that doesn't have it? Could you please post a link?
    - dhosek 4y ago
      I bought this one that’s arriving tomorrow. I’ll write up a review of it once I’ve used it a while. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0B8RKXK9R/donhosek http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0B8RKXK9R/donhosek
- LeoPanthera 4y ago
  Yes, it's called Wireless CarPlay. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205634 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205634
- izacus 4y ago
  Yeah,both CarPlay and Android Auto have wireless support these days. You can buy wireless CarPlay/Auto USB dongles for cars that only support cable.
sand500 4y ago
That's just the usual features taking a while to come to Toyota.
- dhosek 4y ago
  It’s just a crazy order to add things. Qi charger for a phone that you would want plugged in to properly use.
pkulak 4y ago
You’re mad that Toyota didn’t include an extra WiFi radio in your car, so that you can be more conveniently distracted by text messages and speed trap warnings, in the same thread where everyone else thinks that electric starters ruined cars forever?
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  Most people mount their phones someplace in their line of sight. If anything, car play is less distracting than a phone.
- dhosek 4y ago
  Carplay lets me use the car to control audio with the car controls instead of the phone. That’s a big non-distractor. Your comment tells me that you have never actually used CarPlay (and perhaps that Android Auto is not so good—I wouldn’t know, I always assumed it was roughly equivalent to CarPlay in features and functionality). My phone doesn’t notify me about text messages when I’m driving and with the Prius, if I want navigation, CarPlay is the thing. Having the nav on the big display instead of the little display (which would be well out of the normal peripheral line of sight if it’s sitting on the wireless charger) is again an improvement in safety.
knifie_spoonie 4y ago
Keep in my that a manager made that decision, not one of the engineers doing the hands-on work.
- bmitc 4y ago
  That's a cop out. The engineers can say no. Many managers are former engineers anyway.

soitgoes511 4y ago

Amen! Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.

thih9 4y ago

At first I thought this is about some extra functionality, like having an additional way of opening the glove box, or perhaps even locking it. I thought it's harmless, since that action wouldn't be performed too often. I never thought this would be about actually replacing the physical latch.

dbttdft 4y ago

All these problems are caused by the mindless American consumer. If you look at a hardware review for absolutely anything tech related, it will be some absolutely useless 1 paragraph of content surrounded by 3 paragraphs of non useful information, and then some type of sponsor insert, like a pitch, or an Amazon referral link to the product. If you shop for LCDs, there is not even one website from 2000-2023 that provides real reviews (even tft central never says anything bad about products that have pushed the envelope of lowering quality, because the author is naturally biased against that due to his conflict of interest along with not really knowing what he's talking about). The most contentful review will merely talk about how good the build quality of the stand of the monitor is. If you go on whatever forum for discussing some subset of technology, you will get banned if you point out 2 issues with some product, (due to the fanboy effect, not claiming a conspiracy here). Continuing from that last sentence, a big part of the problem is that the Christian religion is all but replaced with a corporate equivalent. It's now plausible to claim someone is racist and homophobic if they don't like Apple products. This is a huge part of the issue. There is almost no criticism in media about technology. On any nerd social internet corner, you'll have a bunch of burger eating slobs who do exactly what I complained about: You'll explain that this toaster is bad because it smells like burning plastic and has holes in it that drop bread crumbs all over your counter which get blown around the kitchen. They'll respond by saying, "how dare you insult this prestigious company that only existed for 5 minutes, they are my favorite. I have never actually tried another product but this is the best because I bought it and it had a shiny thing on it and I felt so good after this purchase". Thanks to this social environment, it's basically impossible to get a good review of any product what so ever on the internet. 99.9999% of "Nerd culture" is actually just about buying stuff. Any time I want to buy something I expect to take days out of my time just to find a product that isn't severely crippled so badly that the mindless consumer will complain about it (on 1/20 review sites). Don't get me wrong, this isn't an internet problem. Most people IRL hold the same mentality. Vehicles have all the garbage you'd expect for this demographic: - ECU with shoddy and fraudulent software (dieselgate, uConnect, unintended acceleration) - LEDs that flicker worse than a CRT (these are actually dangerous as at night you can't immediately tell the position of a car within a split second, which goes to show how much shits regulators give, "at least they saved a penny and some carbon emissions (TM)") - Terrible inputs with issues like being touch screen, horrible debounce, etc - Cheap, vain, lack of taste, glossy paint that easily sells to idiots who like shiny things and they'll even pay extra for it despite it being worse in every way - All kinds of dangerous half working gimmicks around "steering for you" which are especially easy to upsell to idiots - Spyware that phones home

macintux 4y ago

Someone in the comments pointed out that not only is this terrible, you can only open the glove box while stationary. I thought GM had jumped the shark when they started leaving the reverse lights on when you park, just to make sure people or cars nearby don’t know whether it’s safe to pass you in the parking lot. This is a whole new level of stupidity.

8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
what?? this one is stupid but the reverse lights is dangerously stupid
- gambiting 4y ago
  How is that even legal in fact? Doesn't legislation specify that those lights should only be on when the car is in reverse gear?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Likely not, some pickup trucks can "force" the backup lights on as "bed lights" it seems. When parked, the car doesn't have tons of requirements vis-a-vis the lighting (the laws are usually worded like "when in reverse gear, two rear-facing white-burning lights must be visible with a power of X lumens" or something).
    - dylan604 4y ago
      Um, what truck bed can be lit by using the reverse lights? The only way I can see this working is if there's another truck behind you so that your reverse lights are pointed at the other truck. Truck bed lights have always been behind the cab. I've never seen reverse lights considered as bed lights.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        All pickups I've seen have reverse lights built into the third brake light which is behind the cab above the bed. And with that it makes sense as a safety feature - if the only way to turn those on is go into reverse, people would be tempted to throw the truck in reverse and leave the parking brake on while they jump in the back to look for something. Unfortunately it seems not all of them are locked out as I've seen trucks driving on the freeway with the reverse lights on.

spike021 4y ago

I read on another forum that there isn't even a manual release somewhere. I understand for security it's nice not to but maybe hide one _somewhere_ so at least you have some backup option in an emergency?

defrost 4y ago
That'd be nice .. or just bypass the entire added layer of relay controls and go back to a manual latch. The article scenarios raise some of the real life issues: * What if your battery dies, and you have your small emergency charger in the glovebox? * What if you’re waiting in a turned-off car while your friend or parent or lover pops inside the liquor store, and you need to get, say, your hyper-important pills out of the glove box? * What if you get pulled over by a cop, and they tell you to turn your car off, like they do, but then you have to explain to the already tense cop that you need to turn your car back on so you can open the fucking glove box door so you can get your documents? ( Depending on the cop and the circumstance, this can only make things worse. ) etc. I've spent decades on bleeding edge tech .. and I still detest this kind of ill thought through "just because we can" stupidity.
- D13Fd 4y ago
  The real answer for all of those things is obvious - don’t put important stuff in the glove box. But they still show just how dumb this design is, because it doesn’t fit how people use glove boxes.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Wow, I never thought I'd hear a more tone deaf response than "you're holding it wrong", but yet, here we are. Maybe you forgot the /s?
    - D13Fd 4y ago
      I was trying to say that yes, the design is bad, but the problems are not exactly unsolvable either.

bagels 4y ago

Tesla has the same. Irritating.

electric_mayhem 4y ago
You can use a voice command to open it. But that’s only somewhat better. You can buy S3XY buttons to give yourself a physical button for it.

chmod775 4y ago

A conversation that should have happened during the development of this car, but didn't: "Remind me again why the brake pedal isn't a button buried in a sub-menu? Because that would be inconvenient, unintuitive, and doesn't allow quick access? Then why the fuck would you do this with anything?"

forgetfreeman 4y ago
This comment should be a government mandated poster displayed in every design & software shop on the planet.
ilammy 4y ago
> Remind me again why the brake pedal isn't a button buried in a sub-menu? “Because title 49, subtitle B, chapter III, subchapter B, part 393, subpart C, paragraph 393.40 of Federal Safety Regulations requires us to install brakes as specified by subpart B, paragraph 571.105 of the same regulations, which require a pedal. And if those did not exist, then we absolutely would install some other bullshit, make you pay extra for it, and bear no responsibility for it whatsoever.” Glove box isn’t a safety feature? Do whatevs, land of the free.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Hand brakes are also known as emergency brakes, but in my new Toyota it's electric and activated by a tiny little tab switch. My previous car a big lever that the passenger could easily yank in an emergency. No thought required, it's a big level you grab and pull. By the time you find the little black plastic tab amongst all the other similar black plastic doo-dads, you're dead.
  - anikom15 4y ago
    Unless you really know what you’re doing, you’re better off trying to steer the car into the safest crash site/uphill possible than to try to stop it with the hand brake. The hand brake only locks the rear wheels and are not designed to brake at driving speeds (they are for keeping a stationary car from moving). Improper use of the handbrake results in the car spinning out.

jonathanberger 4y ago

Most product decisions represent a tradeoff. The tradeoff the author doesn't mention is one of a clean look versus ease of use. The author also doesn't mention how frequently they actually open their glovebox. From my personal experience I probably open my glovebox four times a year. How many times do I look at my glovebox? That's much harder to estimate but I'd guess dozens. Do I like a clean looking dashboard? It was actually a major selling point for me when I recently went car shopping. People obsess about how their cars look on the outside but how things look (and thus feel) on the inside is more important. A glovebox latch only minimally affects the look and feel but I don't find the tradeoff that automakers have chosen as obviously bad as the author.

rasse 4y ago
Mechanical push to open latch. Problem solved. Dozens of new problems not introduced.
aristophenes 4y ago
Your argument basically boils down to you don’t really use your glove box and prefer the slightly cleaner aesthetics. In your case you might argue for a car that doesn’t have a glove box. But if the glove box is included it should be intended for use. To not be able to access it by the passenger while driving, or while the car is off can be very frustrating for people who like to have a glove box.
- kennend3 4y ago
  All the comments on this thread seem to ignore a basic simple truth. On long road trips with passengers, they often use the glovebox to store things. When we go on road trips the kids rotate sitting in the passenger seat. They store their books, kindle, phone, etc there as it is a very convenient storage space easily accessible to them.
  - macintux 4y ago
    And in the event of a crash it’s safer to have items in the glove box than lying around waiting to become projectiles.

BizarreByte 4y ago

I don't want touch screens in cars period and I can't stand this trend of using them. I'm finally starting to understand the feelings my grandfather had for anything thing he considered superfluous or inconvenient in a car.

D13Fd 4y ago
I think touch screens are ok right now for two things: settings menus that you set once and never touch again, and Apple CarPlay. I recently moved backwards from a CarPlay car to a non-CarPlay car. Even with a very convenient MagSafe phone mount right where the CarPlay screen used to be, I still miss CarPlay. It was just easier and more convenient for controlling phone media, gps, etc. On the settings app, the choice is between a crappy touchscreen UI and a crappy non-touchscreen UI, so I’m kind of neutral.
- sand500 4y ago
  Mazda disables touch for Android auto and carplay and I think that's awesome. The wheel is much better to use.
  - schuke 4y ago
    I have never driven a Mazda but I watch a lot of car reviews. It seems to me they're the only car manufacturer that gets car interactions right. They actually have a philosophy how human-cars should interact and design everything based on it. Hence everything comes natural and consistent and logical.
    - CornCobs 4y ago
      Dad has a Mazda. Can vouch for this 100%. It's very clear to me when I drive it that their car interfaces are very deliberate and properly designed. That rolling knob thing which controls the screen is amazing and I wish it were standard
    - para_parolu 4y ago

nickhalfasleep 4y ago

This is a great feature for a leased car, or a car rented out through the manufacturer. This is not for someone who owns the car. Car companies, like software companies, want to go to a subscription model.

userbinator 4y ago
Car companies, like software companies, want to go to a subscription model. "You can open your glovebox up to 10 times for only $9.99 per month!" Even for a rental car, I think that's taking it a little too far.

JoeyBananas 4y ago

I bet implementing the glove box control in this way simplifies the tooling/assembly somehow.

jeffybefffy519 4y ago
Yep this, overall makes the car cheaper to make.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Now extend this reasoning to see why everything has become touch screen. It will all make sense. My oven has touch buttons. No idea if I pressed it or not because it doesn’t give feedback for a second or two. Good automotive quality switches and encoders are expensive. And they don’t make them anymore because market dumped them. See the dwindling alps catalog.
  - Gibbon1 4y ago
    I got a new washer. You have to push a touch button for four seconds to wake it up. Then wait a couple of seconds for the controller to boot and show the touch screen. Then you select what wash mode you want by pressing the touch screen for two seconds for each selection.
    - Brian_K_White 4y ago
      It truly is Halloween
devmor 4y ago
There is no world where wiring, relays and motorized latches are cheaper than a button latch.
- userbinator 4y ago
  This. It's a very different situations from touch screens being cheaper than physical controls, since in this case the latch is already necessary.

brandonp0 4y ago

I hate a lot of the touch screen controls in the Tesla - like AC controls. But the glovebox is actually pretty nice. Being software controlled means I can require a PIN to open it. Also, there's no handle so it doesn't even look like a glovebox is there. If someone breaks in they probably aren't getting to any valuables in the glovebox.

rootw0rm 4y ago
you keep valuables in your glovebox?
- brandonp0 4y ago
  I keep a revolver in it.
  - ruined 4y ago
    free gun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH0Qx26iDTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH0Qx26iDTU
  - abitlegacy 4y ago
    There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea - first and foremost - where do you keep your registration and insurance?
    - brandonp0 4y ago
      There's more than one storage area in the car. I use one of the center console spots for that.
      - abitlegacy 4y ago
        So you store a weapon in the area where police are expecting you to reach for and instead store your license and registration to one of the spots where police are trained to prevent people from reaching into because of the fear of storing a weapon there. I also hope that you either live in a state where there aren't any CCW permits required or that you have a CCW permit (which during my class, they went on and on about why you shouldn't store a weapon in the glove box). Regardless - locks on glove boxes have been a thing for a long time. Having a PIN Enabled glove box even for your (imo very stupid) use case isn't enough of an argument to make touch screened glove boxes standard.

vicapow 4y ago

I like it. It means if someone breaks into the car they can’t get into the glove box. Also, with a Tesla, the car is never off so you don’t need to turn the car on again to get access to it.

devmor 4y ago
What a fantasy scenario. In what world can someone force their way into to your locked car but can't force their way into the glove box?
- herewulf 4y ago
  Most glove boxes don't have large panes of glass? The sound of a broken window to get in will also motivate a thief to not stick around messing with a glovebox very long. Maybe leave something worth running off with in the center console as a deflection.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - izacus 4y ago
    This is a seriously marginal bizarre contriviance of a scenario to piss off people daily who use the glove box. For your benefit, you'd need to have a thief that somehow can break class (which is suprisingly hard to do if you ever tried it) and then can't defeat a simple latch on a glovebox where they now for sure valuables lie? Get out of here.
  - kennend3 4y ago
    You seem unaware that a car's glovebox door is made out of plastic and usually has just a single "hook" style latch? Thief's who break windows to get into cars carry tools.. your glovebox is NOT secure. Lastly, you seem unaware that most car thief's don't break the windows because this often leads to their capture.
userbinator 4y ago
It means if someone breaks into the car they can’t get into the glove box. If the attacker already broke into the car, I doubt the glovebox is going to put up much of a fight. Also, I'm pretty sure the glovebox itself has a lock in a lot of cars.

ytch 4y ago

Presonally I didn't like the response time. Just like the DVB-T takes more time to switch between channels. When controlling the light, temperature or others from touch-screen, I need to wait those animations and a slight delay after touch the trigger.

xwdv 4y ago

People raise their blood pressure for nothing. You could have both a touch screen glove box release and a discreet manual release for emergencies. It’s just for aesthetics.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
> It’s just for aesthetics What about form follows function?
- xwdv 4y ago
  The function is to sell more good looking cars.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > What about form follows function? Often designers privilege form over function. Examples: lots of silly architecture, and the fact that my kitchen countertops are tiled.
temac 4y ago
If it was just for aesthetics, you could have just a discreet manual release. Anyway, you don't have "a discreet manual release" on actual implementation of that crap, so yeah that's the point: you could and you should have a manual release. At which point the touchscreen insanity for that would not make sense and would disappear.

userbinator 4y ago

It's worth watching the other few dozen seconds of the Cadillac video; not only is the glovebox overengineered, but so are the other doors on that car. Then again, it is a Cadillac, so "luxurious excess" is not surprising, but I'm not sure how having to go through that awkward indirection could be considered a luxury.

bell-cot 4y ago
Excellent point. There are a lot of people for whom the #1 goal when purchasing a car is to stake out as high a spot in the "Who's Got More Bling?" pecking order as possible. If a car company CEO developed some weird obsession with maximizing profit, it wouldn't take much genius to start ignoring the practical & thrifty car buyers in favor of the bling maximizers...
- narcraft 4y ago
  It wouldn't take a genius because that would be a terrible business decision when you consider number of units sold. And profit-maximizing wouldn't be a particularly weird obsession for a CEO to have, in fact, it's exactly the obsession you'd want him to have.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

permo-w 4y ago

one tangentially related extremely irritating “feature” of Teslas is automatic updates, which not only disable the car while they’re going on, but often rearrange the UI so you have to figure out where the buttons are all over again. it’s a flat out disgrace. you get into your extremely expensive car, ready to go, but no the car isn’t available because some dev team somewhere a few thousand miles away decided to push an almost certainly unnecessary change to YOUR possession. I don’t like this concept on mobile devices and PCs, but I despise it for cars

rikschennink 4y ago
Agree that they change buttons and UI too often, this should be a more gradual process, or they should offer a choice to move to new UI. They do ask if you want to update now or wait + tell you that the car won’t be available for x amount of minutes.
- benj111 4y ago
  Why even gradual? It's a very software idea to ship things unfinished and fix them later. At best it's annoying, in a car it's dangerous. I expect when I buy a car that the manufacturers have spent time thinking about the layout, and they've got it the best they can, ironed out the bugs etc. I don't want to come in in the middle of an iterative process. I don't want buttons moving, I don't want 'improvements', I want to buy an actual functioning car from day one. One that the manufacturer is happy to stand by from day one, and they don't feel entitled to 'improve'.
londons_explore 4y ago
And updates could totally be cancellable... Nearly every device has an "A" and "B" firmware stored, and therefore if you need to drive away during an update they could just stop the update and reboot every device back to the old firmware that's already stored and you'd be good to drive in 10 seconds.
oh_sigh 4y ago
In what model of Tesla are the updates automatic? I've always been prompted whether I want to install an update, or schedule it to be installed at some early hour in the morning. I'm also told about how long the update will take (generally 25 mins). But I agree about the horribleness of the UI changes - I still hate whatever the UI update was that went out like a year ago and haven't figured out why they actually did it.

throwaway892238 4y ago

Can we make the steering wheel a touch screen too? Like a digital wheel you turn with your finger to steer the car. Wouldn't that be just super duper? Couldn't possibly go wrong.

pkulak 4y ago
Except that I open my glove box twice a year and turn the wheel slightly more often than that.
- b112 4y ago
  This makes an interesting point. The less used something is, the more apparent it must be how to use it. If something is used once a year, most users won't know what myriad of menus to follow. Some won't even know it is a menu option, and may hunt all over the car for a hidden release.
  - pkulak 4y ago
    Except that by that logic, the hood release should be a giant red button in the middle of the dash.
    - b112 4y ago
      It is provably different for you, but where I am (Canada), you'll open the hood release at least a half dozen times a year, just for windshield wiper fluid. That said, the hood release has been on the driver side somewhere, under the dash, in every car I own. With a physical release, you can often hunt for a thing, much faster than a dozen submenus.
bipson 4y ago
Ha. The newer VW models (Golf, ID series, etc.) had touch controls on the steering wheels instead of physical buttons. Of course what happened is what you anticipated. Bad customer feedback made them reverse that for future models.

neilv 4y ago

I'm not looking forward to buying another car, since I've been hearing of a lot of criminally negligent human factors engineering for at least a decade, combined with increasingly invasive spying on people in their own cars. Is there any decent automotive company remaining?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jamiek88 4y ago
Subaru is too small for this crap and also design their cars around people wearing gloves so lots of chunky knobs. We are getting their ev next the Solterra which is a shared venture with Toyota.
- californical 4y ago
  Big +1 for Subaru, but some of their newer cars are starting to fall victim to these gimmicks now. But they generally give you some of the tech features without getting in your way. Eg. you get CarPlay, but also physical climate controls and volume knobs. Automatic cruise control & lane centering, but you can disable certain parts of it that you don’t like. And the Outbacks are some of the safest cars out there in terms of “deaths per million miles” statistics according to the IIHS [0], probably due to their over-engineered frames and engine-dropping crumple zones [0]: https://www.iihs.org/api/datastoredocument/status-report/pdf/55/2 https://www.iihs.org/api/datastoredocument/status-report/pdf...
slang800 4y ago
Toyota is alright. I've got a recent RAV4 without any of this nonsense.
pxtail 4y ago
No hope unfortunatelly, car-as-subscription is the dream of automakers and they will do everything to reach the goal. Adding various gimmicks and as many electronic failure points as possible is to make device less reliable and obsolete in a couple of years so new one needs to be bought.

rnoises 4y ago

Leaving aside the question of whether touchscreens make sense inside a car at all, I’m not sure how a control to open the glove box which is not situated on the actual glove box help? I mean, you probably opened the glove box to put something in or take something out. Once it is open, you would almost certainly physically reach inside it.

themitigating 4y ago
You can lock the glovebox with a pin
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > You can lock the glovebox with a pin That doesn't mean you can't put a touch button on the actual glovebox. Use the UI (with a pin) to lock the glovebox so that it doesn't open when the glovebox button is touched, use the UI (with the same pin) to reverse that at a later stage. Putting the button anywhere but on the glovebox makes non-fanboys seriously question the suitability of the car as a convenience.

MrFoof 4y ago

GM also has electronic primary door release mechanisms in their vehicles. So if the car has no power, you can’t open the doors from inside. Granted, because of regulatory requirements there is STILL A MANUAL RELEASE… on the floor, near the chassis sill (and might be driver-seat only). So you save money going to electronic releases, but still have to put a manual one in anyways. The glovebox is merely annoying (though I can think of edge case situations where it could lead to your death), but with the door release, there are documented instances where it HAS led to someone’s death: https://jalopnik.com/texas-man-and-his-dog-die-after-getting-trapped-in-a-co-1710670440 https://jalopnik.com/texas-man-and-his-dog-die-after-getting...

pmontra 4y ago
How does electronic release save money (or when is the breakeven), considering the engineering of the electronic / sw system and the new emergency release system vs adapting the usual manual system to a new car model?
- userbinator 4y ago
  It feels a bit like what happens when you have too many designers with too little to do.
- yummypaint 4y ago
  Electronic locks create future revenue opportunities! Maybe the next auto industry innovation will be subscription doors. "Upgrade your vehicle from 3 doors to 4, just $19.99/month!"
devoutsalsa 4y ago
if you're doors won't open when the power goes out, that is just frikkin' stupid.
- f1shy 4y ago
  Not only stupid. That is plain criminal.

quickthrower2 4y ago

Next: glove box pro. 10 daily opens; lights up; no content restrictions; 4.99/month

devoutsalsa 4y ago
With mandatory SMS 2FA.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  First factor is your DOB
f1shy 4y ago
Or wait: you can get it for free, but it will show an ad each time you open it! --We should not mention it, and give the idea to the OEMs...
- prox 4y ago
  “The glove box will open after you watched this ad from Geico. Have a nice day!”

etaioinshrdlu 4y ago

Easily the single dumbest decision in the Model 3 IMO.

pornel 4y ago
Wipers on touchscreen are as dumb, but also dangerous.

Brian_K_White 4y ago

I was so looking forward to the Rivian suv ever since the truck came out, and then saw the first video of it where it requires navigating menues to AIM THE AIR VENTS. That Rivian was so bad I feel like it should be illegal. Who the F comes up with this stuff?

gorgoiler 4y ago

Well how are you going to make Passenger Storage+ a $2.99 monthly subscription if the latch isn’t software controlled? Is a robolatch cheaper, compared to a manual latch? Is there a cost saving for the manufacturer?

quickthrower2 4y ago
That 2.99 adds $360 to the companies market cap for each subscription!
redox99 4y ago
The thought of the glovebox becoming a DLC like the BMW heated seats is hilarious.
- m463 4y ago
  It's more storage slots, just like every game ever. And with every oil change at the dealer, you unlock a cupholder. Get an extended warranty and unlock 2 driver and 2 passenger cupholders.
justsomehnguy 4y ago
> Is a robolatch cheaper Doubt it. It's still a latch but now you need a power release and some wires. Glovebox cover is still made in 1 operation regardless if it have the opening for the latch on front or not, you still need someone to install that latch in the cover, but now you need to trace wires to it.
jffry 4y ago
> Is a robolatch cheaper Doubtful, but as an extra "feature" they can probably use it to justify increasing the price of the car by more than it cost to add it. Granted, to me, this would REDUCE the value of the car, but car makers are operating in fantasyland
jrootabega 4y ago
Cheaper than a locking latch is the real comparison

voidz 4y ago

I can fully relate to the criticism expressed, but does the article have to be that filled with expletives? I would argue that it could appeal to a far wider audience if the writer would be able to find a way around this crude use of a language. Less is more.

Brian_K_White 4y ago
They could reach an even wider audience by writing about pop stars and other celebrities.

squarefoot 4y ago

This is a gem (emphasis mine): "The touch-screen-actuated glove box is terrible because it’s one of those examples where carmakers have found that they have the technology to do something, so they do it, without considering literally anything about what they’ve done. Did anybody want this? At all? It takes something that has never been a problem, opening a glove box, and added cost and complexity to the construction, and added time and inconvenience to the process. No problem is solved, but a fuckload of new problems are introduced." Here's the gist: carmakers, as many other businesses -this can apply to pretty much every product-, need more bullet points to be shown in advertising, so they use technology to add every possible feature, including those that are technically useless but still could add points of failure because of their bare existence. I think there's no way out until people is taught how this works very early in their life, and I mean children at school, so they can use their wallets when time comes. I can't see this coming anytime soon, however, as our economy totally embraces advertising the useless.

henrikschroder 4y ago
Remember curved TVs? Remember 3D for TVs? That was essentially technology bullet-point features, but since they flopped hard you can no longer buy curved TVs or 3D TVs. Turns out if people really don't want shit, it disappears again, no matter how hard various corporations push the shit.
- izacus 4y ago
  Except that you can't "not buy" a vehicle you need for transport just because the manufacturers decided to remove the latch from the glove compartment. Your logic only works in healthy markets like TVs where you could buy _EQUIVALENT_ device without the curvature or 3D. Meanwhile with cars this isn't true - the touchscreen crap trend is being implemented across the market (since its cheaper) and many people can't freely choose a model and brand of their car (either due to costs, dealer availability or other factors like interior space or fuel consumption requirements). If you'd be able to buy the same car, just with different control stack, THAT would enable the behaviour you describe.

quattrofan 4y ago

leogout 4y ago

I understand that this is a rant about a niche feature but you know what we really should stop doing right now? We should stop producing giant piles of metal with four weels weighting more than 2 or 3 tons. No matter what stupid options they have, SUVs and big cars and trucks are a total nonsense. Sadly they are slowly becoming the norm. We should keep our vehicles under a ton so that we stop wasting so much of our precious energy moving these f-ing tanks on the road. Roads that we pay for and that are decaying faster and faster the more we keep buying them. Not to mention car accidents involving those monstrosities...

gambiting 4y ago
Sure. You're right, but I don't see how that's a relevant comment for this article.
- unnamed76ri 4y ago
  Even saying this person is right is being generous to them. The attitude that there is no use case for a truck or suv is quite the privileged city dweller point of view.
DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
Of course the /r/fuckcars denizens have to get their licks in on every single online conversation about personal vehicles. Cars aren’t going away.
Brian_K_White 4y ago
Cool, we must have TARDIS's now or personal levitation & force field belts or something to replace the functionality. Been waiting for that.

bmitc 4y ago

Humans are just apes looking for the newest color of banana. We already know a lot about human machine interfaces and safety and human attention, and yet we throw that all away to offer and get the new shiny toy that merely changed something and usually for the worse. The older you get, the more you realize why older people are so cranky about certain things. As you gain age and experience, you become aware of the reality that humans simply will not change for the better in the collective, and that we remain driven by emotional needs rather than the reason we pride ourselves on.

DangitBobby 4y ago
I'm barely 30 and already feeling this. I can't imagine how I'll feel in another 30 years.

j-bos 4y ago

From (the) experience(s of many, many people), I've learned that GM makes mechanically terrible cars. Digitizing a handle that doesn't even require a lock tells me that they're simply bad at design and build across many domains. So my misunderstanding is, why does anyone with enough money to finance a new car, ever, buy GM? What do people see in their cars?

neogodless 4y ago
The plural of anecdote is not data. And GM sells a great many vehicles. Some are just fine. Some are "mechanically terrible". You'd have to look at big picture stats to see how often it's the case. Most people that buy GM do not end up with mechanically terrible cars, but because so many are bought, a large number are. Beyond that, there are nationalists (will only buy American) or otherwise brand loyal, often taking up the same preferences as parents.
userbinator 4y ago
They used to be good. I guess it's somewhat like IBM. (Owner of early 70s GM.)

a_square_peg 4y ago

That's not entirely true. There is a SW / mechanical/ test & integration team somewhere who was employed due to this feature that I'm sure very much appreciated this feature. There is a product manager who got to add a line item to their list of accomplishments and a sales team lead show get to draft instructional material to all the dealers, again justifying his existence. ... which is to say, this is all very horrible.

rco8786 4y ago

I continue to be genuinely shocked that we don't treat touch screens in cars the same way we do as phones in cars (that is to say, it is literally illegal to use them while the vehicle is moving in most places because the distraction is such a danger). Moving away from tactile in-car controls has to be among the more boneheaded things we've allowed that industry to do.

SQueeeeeL 4y ago
It's a cost cutting move. One touch screen is cheaper than 30 individual buttons, and ultimately many people have died because of it. But I'm sure GM would never do anything sketchy or illegal to lower cost or increase revenue
- williamcotton 4y ago
  How is a manual glovebox latch more expensive than an electronic latch? I think there must be consumer demand for this feature. Oh how luxurious it must feel to never have to use a manual latch unlike the unwashed…
  - jimmyswimmy 4y ago
    It's not. But at the margin it is. If you already have a touch screen display then adding a button costs next to nothing on a per car basis. And there are a ton of solenoids in cars so they can probably reuse one and save the cost of the manual latch. Not to mention the Apple-esque design ideals that eradicated headphone jacks. You now have a cleaner looking passenger side of the dashboard. None for me, thanks.
    - williamcotton 4y ago
      Auto-manufacturers are still buying manual latch mechanisms in bulk as well for their non-luxury cars. A demand for Apple-esque design seems more plausible!
      - 4y ago

nikau 4y ago

But how am I going to keep my glovebox items safe while my car is earning passive income as a robotaxi?

jaclaz 4y ago
That's an easy one, you add fingerprint recognition, of course.

casey2 4y ago

? If you don't want it don't buy the car? I fail to see the issue.

neogodless 4y ago
Not buying one car in a sea of available choices sends a very vague message of why that particular car wasn't purchased. Plus such a car might be the ideal, desired car except for one specific egregious flaw. Why shouldn't people write articles that clearly communicate what makes a specific feature a deal breaker?
macintux 4y ago
This is the kind of “feature” which you may not realize you’re buying. Also, the earlier we raise a stink about the incredible user hostility of something that can’t be opened in motion, and can’t be opened with a dead battery, the better the chances that it won’t be widely adopted.

tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago

The sensible thing would be to make it optional: Have a manual release latch that can be electronically locked, if you want to. Want fast access, you got it. Want to lock the glovebox, you got that too.

janosdebugs 4y ago

This is going to cost lives. Most people I know have their safety vests in the glovebox. Imagine if your car breaks down and you can't get the darn thing open/on the side of a highway?

narcraft 4y ago
People keep safety vests in their cars?
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  I do.
- rideontime 4y ago
  Yes.
  - veidr 4y ago
    I'm American, so — you know. It does make logical sense to do so, but I've never known anybody who keeps a safety vest in their vehicle. Is this something like the metric system?
    - jaclaz 4y ago
      It is required by Law, like the warning triangle, requirements are different in different countries, some mandate also a first-aid kit and/or a fire extinguisher: https://trip.studentnews.eu/s/4086/77076-Safety-equipment-for-cars-and-bikes-in-Europe.htm https://trip.studentnews.eu/s/4086/77076-Safety-equipment-fo... Lots of people keep the hi-vis vest together with the triangle/spare wheel, etc. in the trunk, but in theory these high-vis vest should be put on as soon as you get off the vehicle, so a better place is the glove box or (even better if available) the pockets on the rear of fronts seats.
      - janosdebugs 4y ago
        In Austria, if you have your hi-vis vest in the trunk, an officer will at least let you know their disappointment in case of a control. Driving schools also teach you to put it in the glove compartment.

yosef123 4y ago

The reason they do this is simple, money. It is much easier for a manufacturer to produce a single screen that contains all the functionality that can be adjusted on the fly using software. The alternative (and the way it has always been) is early in a car conception, to design the cabin with the buttons layout, design the switches, find a manufacturer, test the switches, test the layout, repeat, etc… Plus if they find a flaw in the cars button design / layout late in the process, it becomes even more expensive to fix. Nowadays, car companies have an excuse to use screens, not only does it save them money, but they can disguise it under « modernism ». Disclaimer, this is from what I heard and using common sense, but in might be completely wrong.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Someone1234 4y ago
This argument applies to maybe HVAC, it doesn't apply at all to what we're talking about: A glove-box. A traditional, mechanical, glove-box contains all the same components as this one (a latch, hinges, door, etc) but this adds a new wire harness, new connection points, new software, and an electro-magnetic servo to unlock it. I can think of no argument at all for how this decreases cost. It only increases them and increases failure points, all for what? Nobody knows exactly for what.

rubyist5eva 4y ago

I don’t want touch screen anything that doesn’t also at least have a manual release. I will continue to buy junker cars and fixing them up. Thanks Dad for teaching me how to fix my own cars (and YouTube has filled in the gaps).

m3kw9 4y ago

Prob as bad as touch screen steering

barbarbar 4y ago

This is the worst feature I have seen in a car. Or are there any that are worse?

killjoywashere 4y ago

Contrary to the author's belief, grocery store doors do not open when you step on a mat. They open due to change in incident light on a photoelectric effect sensor above the door. It makes me so happy to think the Nobel committee, which was dominated by experimentalists, when considering Einstein's contributions to science, could only bring themselves to award him the prize for grocery store door openers.

falcolas 4y ago
They used to open with pressure mats. Quite awhile ago, but I distinctly remember having to stomp on the less sensitive ones.
m463 4y ago
it used to be radar sensors.

malshe 4y ago

The author answers their own question. It's in the marketing research! /s Did they do focus groups for this feature? Did they get responses like these? “I hate how easy and quick it is to get the glovebox open. Can you guys solve that?” “Is there any way to make simple acts I’m used to doing a real fucking chore?” “How can I be sure every single tiny fucking thing on this car will be an expensive hassle to repair in 10 years? “If the battery dies, is there any way to fuck me over even more than normal? Like, you know, hard?” “Can you just smack the shit out of me over and over again with like a slab of roast beef, or is there some electromechanical and software solution you can integrate into the car for the same effect?”

8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
10 years? I prefer when my car fucks me in the first year of ownership. I can't hold out that long!
m463 4y ago
What's funny is what happens when the 12v battery dies on a tesla (even with a full EV battery). Hazard lights not working is a big one.

frob 4y ago

This is on the same level as designing doors that are supposed to open with a button but shame your passenger and supposedly damage your seals if they use the highly obvious and intuitive latch instead of the button that looks like a window control.

indus 4y ago

Why not write to NHTSA or/and NIST?

cwlucas41 4y ago

gaze 4y ago

I can’t help but wonder if/when such things will be leveraged into having glovebox subscriptions, with the unlock functionality being disabled if the subscription lapses

olouv 4y ago

I do! Digital pin protection and slick design without handle is an upgrade for me.

paulryanrogers 4y ago

Courage

DangitBobby 4y ago

This is bad, but what Tesla has done is much worse, not least because they will probably lead the way for bad decisions industry wide, and anything "novel" they do is probably a sign of things to come from other manufacturers trying to be "hip". There is no longer anything useful on the dash above the wheel. No speedometer, odometer, battery level indicator, repair lights, nothing. All of it is integrated into the infotainment unit on the dead center of the dash. Similarly, there are no knobs or real buttons anywhere on the center of the dash; it's all touch screen. All of it. I wanted to moan about it the entire time I was in the car, but I didn't want to just complain about my friend's nice new vehicle. The F-150 lightning I test-drove similarly has all of the climate control and music controls stuffed into infotainment center with no physical knobs or dials to be found. If you read online, you will also find that its infotainment center is notoriously slow. Otherwise, it's a very nice truck. Tesla is basically the Apple of EVs right now. Leading the way in some really interesting technology and features while causing potentially irreparable long-term damage to the health of the industry overall (think storage-tier pricing and the removal of all but USB-C ports/headphone jacks). Edit: found this video in the Twitter thread linked in the article 1. Actually what the Cadillac is doing here (particularly with the doors) is aggregious. Tesla has added an additional step to opening doors from the outside (you push your thumb in first and then grab the handle) which is something you can become accustomed to in one fluid motion. At least it looks kind of nice and is only mildly less convenient than traditional handles. The push-to-release-pull-side-of-door-because-theres-no-handle mechanism on the Cadillac is absolutely braindead. Seeing this video and multiple other new cars in person, I've also noticed a disturbing trend of changing the hatch opening mechanism. Before: manually open the hatch assisted by hydraulics which prop the door open until manually closed. Now: automatically open the hatch (slowly) on a button press and close it (slowly) on a button press. What's the problem here? Apart from being actually worse UX once the novelty wears off, the second mechanism is much more failure prone over the lifetime of the vehicle. The nice salesman at the Ford dealership actually told me off for trying to manually close the frunk on the Lightning because he was afraid I'd break it! My honest opinion is that these changes all point in one direction but cut two ways. 1. Increase revenue by increasing standardization and eliminating many pieces from the manufacturing process (at the expense of UX/longevity) and 2. Mitigate the lost recurring revenue due to how much more reliable EVs are than ICEs by introducing new failure modes masked as modern features for plausible deniability. 1. https://m.youtube.com/shorts/sirCpkqvpE0?feature=share https://m.youtube.com/shorts/sirCpkqvpE0?feature=share

nojvek 4y ago

Big-touch-screen-only interaction is one of the things that keep me from buying a Tesla. There’s the simplicity of Toyotas that keeps me attracted to them. Although when battery dies, you can’t open the trunk in newer RAV4s. So they’re going to shit as well. I would buy a dumb cheap electric car in a heart beat.

cbeach 4y ago

I like physical buttons for many things. But just to play devil’s advocate here: the benefit of the glovebox being software-controlled is that it enables features like PIN-protecting the glovebox contents, or Tesla’s “valet mode” where certain car features (including opening the glovebox) are disabled when you hand your keys to a stranger.

Tagbert 4y ago

I don’t mind touch screen in cars for things that are not critical during driving. Things that you need during driving should be physical controls. For things like glove box latches and door latches, just simple mechanicals please.