Also, I managed to rent a #Tesla for the first time this week. It's an interesting experience - it seems to have been designed by someone who has never designed a car before, and knows nothing about #UserInterfaceDesign for safety-critical environments.
I think I now know why Tesla drivers are always cutting up cyclists. They're too busy trying to find controls on a massive touch-screen to pay attention to the road.
@steve Tesla's whole UI reminds me of Vegas casinos: a thin veneer of flashy polish that falls apart exposing a grungy interior once you look behind the curtain.
The whole thing is supposed to look futuristic and lure in techbros convinced that the car is going to drive itself (and thus interfacing to a human driver is an afterthought).
I've never driven one (hoping to keep it that way) but the first thing that caught my attention the one time I had no choice but to ride as a passenger in one was the fact that you had to push a button to open the rear doors.
I'm very curious what the failure mode is in the case that the vehicle has a total power loss, ends up in water and shorts out, etc... but I'm guessing it's not "you can easily escape".
@azonenberg@steve Set aside Elon is a total ass$##@.
You've never driven a Tesla but have strong opinions about its UI and operation? The interface is great. You want a shitty interface, try a Toyota RAV4 prime that's four years newer and nowhere near as good. As for the door buttons, if the power fails all the doors have manual latches at your finger tips.
@petergleick@steve I'm just gonna say there's a reason that aircraft, ships, etc. have important controls a) not touchscreens and b) distinctively shaped so they can be easily operated by touch without looking.
A lesson in human factors that was clearly lost on Tesla.
And before you mention that some modern ships are adding touchscreen controls, the US navy recently backpedaled on that after a fatal collision that was in large part caused by a confusing touchscreen UI [1].
The last thing I want is to get uncomfortably warm/cold in a car I'm driving and have to either live with that distraction, or look away from the road to find a touchscreen because the folks who built the car were too cheap/cool to put in physical knobs for environmental controls.
@petergleick I've never yet found any voice command system in N. America that works with my British accent, so I've given up trying with them.
But at least other cars I've driven had a very clearly labelled button on the steering wheel to activate voice command. The #Tesla? I had to look it up in the manual.
I've driven many many rental cars before, and have never had to read a manual for one. In the last two days, I've had to consult the manual a dozen times, for very basic stuff #UXfail
@steve That's very frustrating, indeed. We've had our Tesla for almost 5 years and we're used to all its differences now. We have a new Toyota Prime plugin and its UI is a nightmare. Even with the manual I still can't figure out how to do things.
There are much better EV options. Like a Chevy Bolt (I have the EUV verson).
Better still would be if the cities of North America had never abandoned superior technology and urban development; if they still had the streetcars they had in the 1890s through the mid 1950s. Those would be cities worth living in. #transit#CarsRuinCities#enshitification
@steve I hired one back in June and came to a similar set of conclusions. Do Not Want to repeat the experience, ever.
The touchscreen was a big fail, as was the car's abrupt and inappropriate response to two perceived hazards (both laughably minor....and yes, I had turned off all the driver assist attributes I could find). I can see how one of those incidents would have been deadly to a non-autoboxed person had they been in the zone of interest.
@phil_stevens@steve Yeah I rented a non-Tesla (but very modern) vehicle chock-full of ADAS features a while back.
It was a terrifying experience full of distractions such as the car flashing warnings at me for driving 65 in a 35 because I had passed an exit ramp and it thought the speed limit sign on the ramp was meant for me.
Overall I felt like I was a less safe driver in it than in a dumb vehicle, because I found myself constantly second-guessing whether it was going to behave like I expected or if I'd suddenly have it beeping at me or trying to swerve into what it thought was my lane etc.
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