Physical buttons are the reason why I bought A4 B9. I had the opportunity to drive A6 and Model 3, but I couldn’t understand why most of the controls were screens.
After driving a couple hundred thousand miles and knowing that at least in Germany you are not allowed to use your smartphone while driving (isn’t that just a screen?!) I’m slowly starting to think that we may have reached the top with interior car tech.
I can't begin to tell you how bad and annoying the software is in my 2015 Honda Odyssey.
Honda... I'm at about 98% of the straws of the camel's back on deciding why I should never contribute to Honda's business as a customer, ever again.
It's as though Honda never tested this vehicle nor drove it for a few days. Nor drove it until things started breaking and software made stupid decisions.
- Sliding door doesn't work? Oh! Guess what-- Now you can't open the gas cap because the software can't communicate with the sliding door! Yay! We'll just take extra special care not to let our software let you open the gas cap... we don't want that non-responsive sliding door to accidentally hit it. And you, customer? You're too dumb to do that on your own, we'll be your nanny.
- Oh, you installed a rear cargo trailer? Sorry! You'll just have to endure the loud constant warning-beep on reverse! And no-- we'll provide no way of turning that off :) Because we care so much about your convenience and comfort. And no-- Don't expect us to ever expect you might install anything our rear view camera warning-beep-system might detect, on your back trailer hitch. No one ever installs things on the rear side of the vehicle, duh! ...The customer is stupid, Not us, the car manufacturer! We'll make extra special care to be extremely stupid to ensure you can never be quite as stupid as extremely stupid!
Perhaps they discovered all the bugs and threw their hands up because of operations/finance/sales/marketing deadlines, and said "Haha... screw it. Just sell it. To hell with the customer!"
The one which got me was when I took our elderly Subaru in to the dealer for a combination of recall and maintenance work a few years back. They gave me a loaner which normally works as a sales encouragement but in my case the experience was terrible. CarPlay should have been an easy sell - the one we own lacks it - but that meant using a slow touchscreen to close a dialog every time you start the vehicle, and then it crashed because the 10k tracks in my music collection is apparently more than the designer ever considered possible, which meant another modal dialog to dismiss before actually using anything. When I dropped the loaner off two days later, it was such an implausible relief to go back to a vehicle with fewer features but 100% of them working reliably and instantly.
This is still somehow better than the Microsoft mess Ford shipped in the same era where it would crash and reboot, so I could only pair it using Bluetooth.
My 2021 Toyota has a screen and I hate it so much.
- When I start the car it takes a minute for the software to boot so radio and stuff is unresponsive
- I get a popup warning to obey the laws and drive safely that stays up for 30 seconds. Why in the hell do I need a reminder for this?
- If its cold enough it warns be to drive slowly because the roads could be icy... yes I know Its 30 degrees out, I didn't need this warning.
