This works well and it’s not a hill I’ll defend but automatic control of temperature is better when it’s done well. In the UK we have a culture of driving cars with manual transmission and I’ve never understood it when automatic transmissions exist and are pretty good. People wanna feel like they are in control of stuff.
Well, as a kid I thought by the time I’ll do my driver’s license there will be no more manual transmissions around.
Turns out, automatic is just still way more expensive to buy AND, as I recently learned, crazy expensive in maintenance.
how hard do you want it? how hot do you want it? where do you want it?
That has 5 moving parts, while a touchscreen has none. It’s much easier and cheaper for the manufacturer to install the touchscreen. But instead of passing the savings to you, they probably keep it or pass it on to investors.
But the touch screen comes with a price you pay for the UI development which is not a small amount. So while installing it might be cheaper, in the end I would argue it’s more expensive.
The screen could well be more expensive than the dial parts, but installation would be cheaper, so we’d need the numbers. The thing about software is that it’s very expensive to make but selling price is as low or high as you need it to be.
Exactly.
Each of those knobs needs an injection mould, each switch behind it a supply chain. Iterating on digital design is far cheaper as well.
It’s far cheaper to use what are effectively 10 year old tablets in the cheaper cars. Since LCDs are being mass manufactured for other things that likely get a nice economy of scale.
Be nice if those savings were passed on…
Or worse, they charge extra because the touch screen is a luxury product.
That depends on what badge they put on the hood. They might market a screen as luxury, but the fact is I much prefer dials myself so I’d consider dials to be luxury and I’d actually pay more for dials.
It’s -5C/23F outside, you hop in the car, winter boots and thermal layers. Your climate control’s lowest setting is 16C/61F. You have two options: personal sweaty sauna or drive in your winter jacket with frozen hands.
Other options: blast heat with windows down. Full AC, just get it over with.
I always just freeze while the car warms up. Driving with a jacket on is an absolute no-go. I see so many people do it and I don’t understand how, it’s restrictive and you will inevitably start to bake when the sun hits you.
It’s difficult to take thermals(wool under-layers) off/on for a regular car ride. Just let me set temps down to 5C or something even if the AC couldn’t achieve that in California.
You’re opposed to stripping butt naked in the parking lot?
Sorry internet, I love the auto climate.
My dial has auto on it
Por que no los dos?
I almost agree with this, but I prefer just one more advancement over this: the thermostat kind. I like to just set the temperature so I don’t have to keep adjusting it.
Nothing fancy, no touchscreen bs, just simple knobs. I was perfectly happy with the thermostat feature in my old 1997 Pontiac Grand Prix GT.
My new car is a 2025 model, but it’s an Indian made Japanese Kei car so the interior is super basic. and it has large, infinitely spinning knobs for temperature and fan strength, and a digital temperature readout. I really like them.
When the temp was cold in the morning but now it’s hot, I spin those dials like wheel of fortune to the left and immediately set the AC to cold and fast. No repeated button presses.
The only downside is that it doesn’t have one of those knobs for music volume.
Not only do those knobs sound awesome to use, but I could see them being cheaper and more reliable as well.
Instead of being mechanically connected to whatever custom parts to direct air flow, it can just be an off the shelf encoder sending a signal to a processor that already exists.
Oh, there is. I love having a set of controls separate from the passenger side.
I’ve got an old car and it’s still like this. I don’t look forward to the day I have to get a new car.
Yeah like, all I wish my car had was Bluetooth capabilities but besides that I love my older car.
Swap the radio its pretty easy and only costs like $50. I got an old Japanese import that has Bluetooth that connects to my phone as I enter the car. Its also got USB to play music from and charge from.
Good call, I definitely had the thought but never pulled the trigger on it because I never found a specific replacement that I liked. I’ll have to look into it again when I can afford it!
I was considering upgrading to something with a screen and maybe gps, but couldn’t lock a model down.
We had to buy a new (used 2022) car after we ran out old car into the ground. The touch screen controls temperatures. There wasn’t a single variant of the car that didn’t have a giant ass touch screen. It makes me really uncomfortable when the screen no longer works.
There’s also some other things that piss me off.
But Some of the pros (and why we accepted that trade off):
- all wheel drive
- fancy sensors when someone is in my blindside
- it opens when it senses the key is nearby.
- heated seats with controls. (Used to bring hot packs because it gets cold here)
- cameras for the rear
- it does that cool thing where it breaks if it senses you might collide. I hated it at first but I’m old now and it saved me once from collision.
Either way, fuck cars and if public transportation was better here, id use that.
I would be really uncomfortable with a car where I had to touch a giant’s ass to make it go.
Kia doing static controls for entertainment and HVAC is a big part of why I bought one.
Oh Look at Mr fancy pants here with his working heater in his reasonable priced car!
Only missing a night picture with the red LED backlight on
Yes the temp sensor is a worthy addition to the formula. Imagine fiddling with your 80s/90s A/C running on ye olde R-12 to get the temperature right lol.
Agree with the addition of a low and high setting. I don’t care what the target cabin temp is, if I just got into my car after braving some crazy wind chill I want to be air fried for a bit.
If you truly believe this, replace your home thermostat with the same controls. Live with that shit for awhile.
Ok, and?
That’s a thermostat. The OP image specifically lacks a thermostat
It’s really interesting that I agree with you, but so many people insist that they’re new and fancy tools are somehow making their lives significantly better. And obviously it’s an opinion question, it’s not like they’re lying, but I just don’t see the value that many of them do.
My car has climate control. I set it to 72 degrees once a long time ago and rarely have touched it since.
The fascination with dumb controls in a car is odd to me. It seems like people overshoot the “I want physical controls I can feel my way around without looking” and get into “give me the Flintstones car” lately.
Everything after THIS was a mistake.
1985 Nissan 300ZX
85 Subaru XT
Oh, that was my first car. Sometimes, the display changed to something weird though, like this:
looks like something from cyberpunk
So fucking cool.
One of my best good mates in school had an 84 200 that we dubbed Tron cause of this awesome setup. Great share, thanks!
