Touch screens suck. My twenty year old son and I were just discussing this a couple days ago. He has been working part time as a valet to make some extra money, so he gets to drive a lot of different cars, just to park them, but has to interact with the transmissions, at the very least, and often has to turn off blaring sound systems (yeah, people drop their cars with the valet with the radios cranked.)
His daily driver is a 2012 Hyundai Elantra GLS. He also occasionally drives my 2007 Ford Fusion. Both have fairly logical physical controls.
He hates how non-intuitive the touch screen controls are, and how you physically have to look (even if briefly) at the screen to see what state it is in, and to find the buttons. You cannot just operate them by feel.
He also does not like electronic shifters. I have never driven a Mercedes, but he says the shifter on the newer Mercedes is frustratingly slow. You have to put you foot on the brake, tap the lever, then wait for the indicator to actually change.
What I find particularly frustrating on all this, I know that the knob driven climate controls are just inputs to a computer that is driving servo motors under the dash. There are no cables. But it is intuitive, it is tactile. I don't have to look to change the fan, or the temperature, or the vent configuration.
Same with the radio. I know where the on/off and the volume is. I know where the AM/FM/CD buttons are. I know where the six preset buttons are. I can run the radio with out looking. And when I move the shift lever on the Elantra, it has a very distinctive 'gate' flow. It is easy to know what gear it is in without looking. Doubly true for the five speed manual in the Fusion.
So this change to glass panels is not for the consumer, it is for the manufacturer. It is for the designer. We have reached the age in electronics where the display is cheaper than physical controls. The manufacturers are trying to sell it as a 'feature'. It is not a feature, it is cheapness. It is crass.
His daily driver is a 2012 Hyundai Elantra GLS. He also occasionally drives my 2007 Ford Fusion. Both have fairly logical physical controls.
He hates how non-intuitive the touch screen controls are, and how you physically have to look (even if briefly) at the screen to see what state it is in, and to find the buttons. You cannot just operate them by feel.
He also does not like electronic shifters. I have never driven a Mercedes, but he says the shifter on the newer Mercedes is frustratingly slow. You have to put you foot on the brake, tap the lever, then wait for the indicator to actually change.
What I find particularly frustrating on all this, I know that the knob driven climate controls are just inputs to a computer that is driving servo motors under the dash. There are no cables. But it is intuitive, it is tactile. I don't have to look to change the fan, or the temperature, or the vent configuration. Same with the radio. I know where the on/off and the volume is. I know where the AM/FM/CD buttons are. I know where the six preset buttons are. I can run the radio with out looking. And when I move the shift lever on the Elantra, it has a very distinctive 'gate' flow. It is easy to know what gear it is in without looking. Doubly true for the five speed manual in the Fusion.
So this change to glass panels is not for the consumer, it is for the manufacturer. It is for the designer. We have reached the age in electronics where the display is cheaper than physical controls. The manufacturers are trying to sell it as a 'feature'. It is not a feature, it is cheapness. It is crass.