What an interesting coincidence – a story from earlier this year that lines up well with our story from yesterday.
Tablet-like touchscreens have become the ubiquitous interfaces of choice, and they’re seemingly everywhere in daily life, on everything from thermostats to coffee makers and refrigerators. But Mazda really doesn’t think they belong in cars—or at least anywhere near the driver’s seat.
It wasn’t a decision that was hastily made, according to company officials. However, as they started studying the effects of touchscreens on driving safety (and driving comfort), it soon became clear what the priorities should be with this completely new system that makes its debut in the 2019 Mazda 3.
This is a bold move by Mazda, especially now that touchscreens in cars have become such a hyped supposed selling point. I hope other manufacturers follow suit.
I’m personally torn on this. The geek in me loves the touch screen. It’s clean, it’s sleek. It’s not a jumbled field of buttons like my 2010 Ford Fusion. But as a driver I do notice I have to look far too long of a time at the touchscreen on my wife’s Ford Explorer, fumbling around with music, climate control, etc. I try to use the tactile buttons as much as possible, but sometimes you got to touch the control surface.
It’s a careful balance, I agree. Usability vs safety.
Phloptical,
I agree it’s about both usability and safety, but I wouldn’t actually say “Usability vs safety” since sometimes both usability AND safety call for dedicated physical controls. I’m not against touchscreens alltogether, and there may be some features that genuinely belong there. I find a GPS is very useful addition for example. A backup cam can be useful too. It’s just that I don’t want all the physical controls to get consolidated into it. The buttons to open the sunroof belong in the ceiling such that you can access them via muscle memory without even looking. I also prefer physical knobs for climate control.
The problem with touchscreens is twofold:
1. The lack of tactile feedback costs us the ability to use muscle memory (touchscreens are inherently more distracting)
2. Context sensitive screens means it’s inherently a prolonged multi-step operation involving screen navigation (which is unambiguously dangerous for the driver to do while driving).
Not to long ago I had to use Car Play on a Mercedes B-Class that for some reasons didn’t have a touch screen. If you find a touch screen in your car then wait till you tried to navigate a somewhat complex UI using one of these rotary controls. I’m sure Mazda has a point about ease of use of touch screens in cars, but their “let’s remove all this modern nonsense” approach won’t be the solution.
Three things:
1. This sounds like Mazda saying “we don’t want to be liable for distracted driving.” If you take the touch screen entertainment system out of the car, commuters are just going to turn to their phones which have to be more of a safety risk than a touch screen entertainment center mounted up on the dash.
2. I think it honestly comes down to how you, as a car company, see the driving experience. A “driver’s car” really doesn’t need a ton of entertainment tech that takes away from the driving experience — safety tech? Sure. But one of my favorite “driving cars” is a Toyota 86 where the tech screams “you’ve entered a time machine back to the 1990s.” Commuter cars, on the other hand? Tech is a comfort feature.
3. Have any of you all ever used the entertainment center in a Mazda? I test drove a Miata two years ago and the system was… old… Makes me wonder if this is Mazda’s way of spinning a decision to give up on R&D into making a better system.
For trucks at least, a big screen for backup cameras is a critical feature. Making it touch sensitive and adding navigation, audio, etc. is a reasonable choice. The critical functionality is all duplicated in tactile controls anyways.
1. Why would they “turn to their phones”? What exactly is it that they can do on a touch screen infotainment system, that without a touchscreen, they’d need to use their phone for?
2. Tech for the sake of tech is just bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWUqrn2yKns A lot of modern cars are going to look as dated and rubbish as this thing one day. Do you seriously think the massive touch-screen in the Tesla Model S is going to look good in 20 years time? Heck, it even looks dated now.
3. Just because something is old, doesn’t mean it’s not good. Most aftermarket head units still incorporate physical buttons and knobs, because customers demand them: https://www.halfords.com/technology/car-audio/car-stereos
1. Phone for GPS navigation (smaller screen, perched on a vent or dash-mounted phone holder or *worse* sitting on the driver’s lap). Phone for not-hands-free-calling. Phone, connected by Bluetooth to the car’s stereo head unit where driver needs to fiddle with the phone to change albums or songs.
2. I agree. I think the implementation of the “tablet interface” craze will make a lot of cars look dated in a few years (heck, the new… I think Corolla… has what looks like a tablet sitting 6 or 7 inches above the line of the dashboard.
3. Totally agree. Knobs are far better than touch sliders.
1. Your first point: You can get small, dedicated GPS navigation devices. They’re not expensive, plus you can get holder for your phone, so there should be no need to “fiddle” with it, even if you’re using it for navigation. Second point: Using your phone for not-hands-free calling and texting is, AFAIK, illegal in most countries. The third point can be negated by using voice assistants, or dedicated controls built into the head unit or steering wheel.
There is literally no reason you should ever need to touch your phone whilst driving.
The123king,
Speaking for myself, I don’t like fiddling with phone holders when I get in my car, it’s a hassle. There’s no great mounting options and the phone inevitably ends up blocking something. In my car it blocks a vent and I have to lift the phone to access the heat controls. I’ve seen some that go up on top of the dash, but that’s detrimental to normal visibility. I’m no fan of the dangling power cord either. Some cars have a cubbyhole to keep your phone much lower at your side, but it’s a bad place for a GPS. So while I’m not one to tout about fancy car features, I think an integrated GPS may be the best option for safety and convenience. I’m just opposed to replacing all the car’s basic controls with touchscreens.
I’m perfectly fine with this approach, provided the buttons are durable.
I find myself touching the actual buttons on my vehicles, especially the ones in the steering wheel when driving. Touch screen is mostly for when I’m stopped and configuring stuff or passengers.
Touch screens are pretty “stupid”. However, so are consoles with a gazillion buttons.
Simplicity for the win… anyone? anyone?
I drive a 2006 car, and I’m going to miss its console the most. Has a clear large digitial speedometer, and real controls, but not over done (I mean it has a CD player, for younger folks, that’s a way of playing music from physical media without the warpage that your love for vinyl has when exposed to sun).
Definitely! Can’t agree with you more enthusiastically.
I drive an old Saab, they knew what usability ment.
During service I became an very new VW Golf and was very happy to have my own car back.
Too much gadgets, useless features and loads of electronical stuff that distracts from driving.
My Saab has a “Night Panel” meaning that at night all control lights go out except for the bare minimum like speed.
That is what I call “smart”.
My father drives a new ford galaxy with a touchscreen.
It can show you everything between heaven and earth.
Needless to say it’s a total PITA to use while driving…
Keeping the touch screen is fine provided they have decent voice assistant capabilities. I use the voice features in my mustang all the time.
Good on-ya Mazda. Being male (read: Genetically Challenged), I can do exactly one thing at a time. If I need to do more than one thing at a time, then something’s going to be very half-a***d. I’m just happy on my Toyota ZR6 I can disable that display in the middle of the dash. It catches my eye all the time and distracts me if I don’t. Luckily it goes off or I’d cover it. I’ve been wondering how long it’ll take for car companies to start selling adverts on there to make post-sales revenue. Anyway. I’m happy mine goes off and really do get distracted by fondleslab screens in other people’s cars when I need to drive them. Being a Geek, I love tech sure.. but Geek > Safety? No. I’m not safe with one on. Also going from someone else’s car that requires I wait 18s to read a EULA, then click I agree before I can start the thing (you know which maker I’m talking about!), to driving my hobby car a 1983 Ford Falcon XE with mechanical controls for everything suddenly is a huge un-distracted pleasure. Extremes .. I know. Maybe elegance and simplicity?
I’ve a new Mazda, all that has really happened is they are moving the data display into the HUD or onto the digital dash. Now you have extra steering wheel switches and more functions around indicator and washer paddles, you still have to take your hands off the wheel to operate the multifunction dial near the gear shift. I asked them why they just didn’t make the HUD larger, but apparently roadworthy regulations prevent that in many jurisdictions.
I was at a display panel show in Taiwan last year and they were previewing a new bright flexible thin film display for cars that gave you AR on the windscreen only visible from inside the vehicle. The demonstrator required you to wear special glasses to track your eye line and head orientation, but they said the next version would just use your eye line for the same purpose. Currently the laws in many countries would also ban this type of display as it enters the drivers line of sight, even though AR might actually make you a safer driver!
One thing that matters is how good the UI is without the touchscreen.
Lexus ran into this with their “Remote Touch” system, which basically replaced the touchscreen in a touch-based UI with a force feedback mouse (that tried to enforce UI detents), and later a trackpad… and it was pretty universally hated, and now their newest cars have touch as an option.
I think a good non-touch UI can be done, but Lexus shows how you can make an incredibly bad one that’s worse than the touchscreen. (That said, Mazda has IIRC a 7-way rotary/rocker controller with a few shortcut keys, instead, which will probably be better.)
I like buttons, i actually discarded cars that controlled everything by touch screen. Specifically i refuse to use touch to adjust the temperature or start defogging the windscreen or controlling things like volume. My VW does however still have a 8 inch touch screen for the infotainment system which i think is working reasonably well, especially since there are hard buttons to change between the different main “apps”
I am however not ready to give up the touch screen totally, for things like controlling the sat nav it is just much more intuitive than fiddling around with buttons or a rotary dial, same with the phone bluetooth integration (i keep the phone in my pocket), so for me no touch screen would be a deal breaker.