Crap design in modern cars

[integrale_evo]

A general moaning thread for things I think are crap on modern cars. Feel free to add your own.

First up, the absolutely seamless integration of a modern digital display into the traditional hooded dial dashboard layout in the new Alfa junior ( if that’s what it’s called now)



I actually laughed when I saw it

[Matty]

Strange thing about the Junior is they've slapped some amazing looking seats into a relatively 'standard' car

[GG.]

That's horrendous.

Not quite as bad but a number of Defenders during the chip shortage had analogue dials grafted in in place of the full TFT screen. Looked v similar

[nuttinnew]

Holy fuck that Alfa's bad
There's work been put into the Defender, I think they recovered it well.

[Mito Man]

Grenadier dash...


How big do you want your bezels on the display of your £100k car? I'll have them like a 20 year old flatscreen TV thanks.


Do you prefer your air vents horizontal or vertical? How about both.

[jamcg]

Do you prefer your air vents horizontal or vertical? How about both.

This picture shows the ultimate bad design in modern cars and it’s not the air vents. It’s touchscreen hvac controls

[mik]

Any fake vents, fake exhausts or noise generators.

Example here - just 'cos I watched this last night - but it's obviously far from unique in this aspect.

[ZedLeg]

A general moaning thread for things I think are crap on modern cars. Feel free to add your own.

First up, the absolutely seamless integration of a modern digital display into the traditional hooded dial dashboard layout in the new Alfa junior ( if that’s what it’s called now)



I actually laughed when I saw it

That looks like some sort of 90s stereo that sold itself on bowel liquifying bass.

[V8Granite]

I’ve a new VW Caddy at the minute, haptic buttons don’t like mechanics hands as every touch registers twice. So when I go to the heater screen it goes on and then instantly off

Made worse by this model having no auto function so you are constantly adjusting it.

All TFT dashes look cheap, whatever the screen quality, a clean analogue gauge with a smooth sweep always looks better.

Dave!

[Swervin_Mervin]

A general moaning thread for things I think are crap on modern cars. Feel free to add your own.

First up, the absolutely seamless integration of a modern digital display into the traditional hooded dial dashboard layout in the new Alfa junior ( if that’s what it’s called now)



I actually laughed when I saw it

Wow that's terrible.

[Jobbo]

That Alfa dash is hilarious. Is it available in other trim levels with traditional dials filling the space correctly?

Mik's Youtube link is I think to the fake vents on the Macan E. The fake exhausts on my Audi amuse me, but at the weekend, after owning it 19 months I noticed that it has real vents into the wheelarches at the front. Which was a nice surprise.

[Ascender]

There's some AMAZING work there, well done everyone.

Its almost as if people who make cars don't know jack shit about technology UI design but also think they know better than to have to pay for people who do.

[Ascender]

This picture shows the ultimate bad design in modern cars and it’s not the air vents. It’s touchscreen hvac controls

I'm going to stand up for touchscreen HVAC controls, so long as it's how BMW did it on the M3 - I think I'd have that system over traditional physical dials but it does come at a cost.



The good...
That Climate Menu button and the temp controls never moves or changes size regardless of what's being shown on the screen above. Pretty quickly, I could touch that button from memory and then the top part of the screen turns into the HVAC menu with nice big touch targets to adjust stuff on a really nice, large, bright screen. I thought it was one part of the system which worked brilliantly.

Even just being able to quickly turn the temp up from that Home Screen at any time becomes pretty intuitive and easy to adjust with minimum distraction from driving.

Even adjusting where the air is blowing is pretty easy to do.

The bad...
It's a very big, very bright screen, especially at night although you do get used to it. There's also a lot of other ambient light going on and I think with later models they seem to have turned the brightness up even further and added more 80s Hi-Fi lighting accents around the cabin too.

I like that Porsche has easy to find and use rocker type switches down on the centre console to adjust temp and blowers, but if you want to adjust where the air is blowing in the cabin, its buried in the touchscreen sub-menus. The screen is a fraction of the size of the BMW system, which I like, but the downside is that it's fiddly to find anything unless it's at the top menu or the first level of a sub-menu.

[Jobbo]

The HVAC controls in my Audi are on a touchscreen, separate to the main screen so they don't interfere with the other functions. They're still annoying though; turning on the heated seats requires you to aim your finger accurately and they to look to see that the light has come on and it recognised the press. Physical buttons are almost impossible to miss with your finger, and you can feel around for them before pressing if you're looking at the road; that's not possible on a touch screen even with the most sophisticated haptic feedback.

[Sundayjumper]

My F10 has a knob for temperature and buttons to cycle the air direction & seat heating. Hiding that stuff in a menu on a touchscreen is in no way an improvement.

On the Disco, to adjust the zoom level on the nav screen you need to look and press the spot for “zoom” then press the bit for + or - the number of times you want, then press another spot to confirm and go back to where you started. And the screen is slightly out of reach so you have to lean forwards a bit while doing this.

On the F10, the idrive dial is right under where my left hand falls naturally, no need to look or move my body, and zooming one click or three is one fluid action.

[Rich B]

i’m liking the simplicity of my van. i have a touchscreen for carplay and 3 old school knobs for heating. Also, the fan speed knob has increments from 1 all the way up to 6 - because reasons…?

[Jobbo]

My F10 has a knob for temperature and buttons to cycle the air direction & seat heating. Hiding that stuff in a menu on a touchscreen is in no way an improvement.

Even if it's always displayed on a second screen, it's still worse than knobs.

Shame there aren't really any desirable cars where a properly big screen for nav etc is accompanied by physical switchgear. The screens were smaller and resolutions worse until knobs and buttons started to be phased out. My MX5 is probably as good as anything, since Mazda grafted on a bigger, higher-res screen for 2024 but kept the rest of the interior. So you have a touchscreen or an iDrive style wheel and can use either, the HVAC is entirely button/knob based and the screen is high res. But the screen is a bit shallow and wide to fit on top of the dash, so you can't see very far ahead when using nav unless you zoom way out.

[JonMad]

Suzuki Swift.
One two finger stab - front and rear demisters on/off. Perfection.

Screenshot 2024-11-22 at 16.33.03.png (184.7 KiB) Viewed 670 times

[Beany]

25.5deg?

somelikeithot.jpg (201.12 KiB) Viewed 635 times

[DeskJockey]

Both Galaxy and Zoe have knobs for HVAC.

Galaxy has a very useful max button that turns the fan to max (obvs), directs the air to the screen and turns on the front and rear heated elements.

Edit: Zoe has an annoying feature that if it is in eco mode it can't keep the screens from steaming up when it is cold. So you have to run it in normal.