Who’s in the mood for a chilling glimpse into our possible future? You are! I mean, I assume you are. The glimpse into the future I’m talking about is one that was suggested by a story from last week, where we were scrutinizing the ideas put forth by Rivian’s Head of Software. If you didn’t get to see the story, I think it can best be summed up by saying that his ideas that a voice-controlled interface that utilizes AI agents will be the future of human/automotive interfaces were received, um, poorly.
And not just by the erudite, sexy Autopian audience, either: the People of Reddit were talking about that story, and they came to much the same conclusions, too. Nobody wants to talk to an AI agent to do things in their car. And nobody wants every damn thing to be on some interface accessible from a menu on a touchscreen. And yet it’s still happening.
While we’re seeing some pushback, even legal-level pushback in some countries, there are still cars for sale today that require the glovebox to be opened from a touchscreen button, or HVAC vents that can only be moved by sliding your finger on a touchscreen drawing of a vent inches from the actual vent. We’re still very much in the middle of an era of automotive design and engineering that is being dominated by inane interface decisions, ones chosen because they fit into some perverse technological fetishes rather than anything that anyone actually, you know, wants.
So, with that in mind, I’d like you to join me in a little thought-experiment. Let’s just extrapolate from what we’ve been seeing already in the automotive world, and just imagine what may be coming next:
Touchscreen Control Steering
Cars have been using drive-by-wire steering for well over a decade now, so this is completely possible, from a technological point of view. And I bet there’s some sick bastards who grew up vigorously masturbating to scenes of people flying starships by gliding their fingers over screens on shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation and now they have jobs designing car interfaces and you know some of them want to try this.
Just imagine it: no physical steering wheel, just an image of a wheel on a screen. And you use your finger to move the wheel, either by swiping right or left or dragging the on-screen wheel radially. It’d be awful! Just awful!
They’ll justify it by pointing out how there’s so much more legroom without the wheel, or that the car is “self-driving ready” or some other inanity. I hope if they do this they at least have a port so you can connect your Xbox controller or something to drive. Maybe even via Bluetooth, as long as you promise to make sure your controller is charged before heading out on the highway.
Toe-Touchscreen Pedal Interface
Why should hands get all the fun! Let’s really be sickos here and consider this: a lower touchscreen for your feet (which will need to be bare to use, but don’t worry, that’s not actually illegal) that replaces the pedals. Now we’re really getting somewhere! The areas for the on-screen pedals will allow for slider-like control to adjust intensity, and, unlike boring old physical pedals, will have visual feedback for how much they’re being “pressed.”
And, just to keep it exciting, we’ll make the throttle slider vertical, and the brake one horizontal. Look how futuristic that looks! These should be an aftermarket option of Cybertrucks already!
Oh, and as a little Easter Egg bonus for the old folks, the high beam control could be on the screen down there, too, just like in the Before Times.
All-Voice AI Agent Command Driving
What if we just take Rivian’s Chief Software guy at his word? Remember, the man stated this:
“The final north star I have is having voice [controls] become the primary means of interaction with the vehicle.”
He pretty clearly believes that voice controls should be the “primary means of interaction” with your car. So what if we imagine what that would really be like? You could be sitting in your car, legs crossed, hands in your lap, and say
“Car, please select drive and apply the throttle to 18%.”
… and off you go. Maybe you’d say “wait, no, make it 45 mph” and the AI agent that controls your car’s LLM-based AI agent would say “Right, great idea. 45 mph sounds fantastic for this sort of driving. I’m sure everyone else in the left lane of this highway respects your careful and sedate approach to driving.”
Or maybe you can tell it to brake by yelling “Slow down! Slow down!” and it can tell you something like “Slowing down seems like a great idea; I really like how you’re willing to pause your progress to see what’s happening around you. That’s one of your best qualities. So, just say the word and I’ll be happy to slow down.”
And then you’ll yell “Stop stop stop we’re in a school zone there’s kids around please!”
…and the AI will tell you “Sure, happy to stop. Stop what, though? Music? Navigation? Your reminders? Just let me know, and I’ll get to stopping as soon as possible.”
By this time you’re already a good 200 feet into the playground.
Touchscreen-Control Sun Visors
This one may be less dramatic than something like Total Voice Control, but I think it’s just as stupid and, given the fact that touchscreen-openable gloveboxes exist, unsettlingly plausible. Here’s what we’re thinking: touchscreen-controlled sun visors. You can try to flip down the visor manually, but the motor that drives it will offer a lot of resistance, and if you insist and try to force it, you’ll hear some horrible crunching sounds and end up with a floppy visor and a $2100 repair bill.
The touchscreen controls let you swipe up or down to move the visor position, or you can rely on a photocell that reads the amount of incoming light and adjusts the visors for you, though in practice this usually ends up with the visors flapping up and down all the freaking time, like a slow-motion chicken.
There’s also a toggle to open or close the vanity mirror in the visor, and you can even use a special app on your phone to have full visor angle control from anywhere in the world, anytime!
These all sound absurd, I know, but the scary thing is that, based on the developments we’ve seen so far, none of these are so outlandish that they couldn’t happen. These crazy bastards in charge of modern automotive UX have severe touchscreen and AI obsessions, and they’ll take us all down into automotive control hell if we don’t push back!
We must not let these fever dreams become reality! Fight back! We can’t give up the future to this madness!
Just wait until all these screens have unstoppable ads
????????
You just gave me horrible nightmares, ha ha. Oh wait, this is close to real. Don’t give them any ideas!
My immediate thought was, imagine having a conversation with a passenger and you have to keep interrupting to tell the car what to do.
Second thought was remembering driving from Durango to Flagstaff with my then toddler daughter screaming non-stop for 3 hours, and also having to tell the car what to do. Holy shit, some auto executives would need to get Luigi’ed for that.
Easy to keep the kids from driving the car, switch the operating language into something odd, like Esperanto or Aramaic
artstay ethay engineyay
I SWEAR TO PARSH JASON, DO NOT GIVE THESE SICKOS IDEAS
Oh Jason, bless your heart, you think there will be a honk button for the horn? That will definitely be voice activated with people saying “Hey car, honk the horn. Car honk the horn. Car honk. Honk HONK. HOOOONNNNKKK.”
What if we start putting touchscreens on the outside of cars too? Like, we all hate the electronic door handles right? We can make it worse by replacing them all together with a touchscreen with a picture of a door handle on it! Let’s do it tech bros!
They’ve kinda already done this, at least for the external lock/unlock button, in that VW and Hyundai use capacitive buttons.
Strangely not across all models. My wife’s GLI has a black button on the door handle to lock/unlock, its a real button. My GTI just has a little depression on the handle that is capacitive. Both same year vehicle, one American factory made, one German factory made.
Reinventing the Ford/Lincoln keypad.
Why not just make the whole car a fucking screen? I can see them doing that. Well, then it’s not a car. They’d probably just throw some “Fuckstone” tires on and call it a car
https://www.theautopian.com/holy-crap-you-can-buy-motorcycle-tires-called-fckstones/
I really like the idea of automatic visors during certain seasons
We are in the faffing about era of automotive design. We’ve attained great power delivery, efficiency, and safety features through years of experience and trial and error. We’ve designed the minutiae such as latches, locks, knobs, and linkages to be pretty much failure proof over decades of use. The only thing left to do is try and throw simple, ergonomic, perfected human controls behind a flat glass touchscreen for no reason other than give the feeling of them now being technologically advanced.
Much like a bicycle, there are items in the world that don’t need to be advanced more than they already are.
My real life job has made all of this far to relatable.
I work for an industrial equipment manufacturer, coordinating the field service branch. When I started working here, I offered to keep the product engineers up to date on field service activities that would be a good opportunity for new engineers to their teams to see the equipment in the field – how it’s used, how operators interact with it, etc.
The blank looks and response of “why would they need that?” was far too common. I’ve watched them try to ‘innovate’, just complicating things that were simple and intuitive operations too many times over the years. .
I have had 2 cars with the touch screen vent control. It is fine, you get used to it quickly, and I have never had an issue with them. You can get a finer control of where the air is going, sort of like the difference between a manual steering column or an electric one, way easier to exactly dial in an electric one (side note, I have been driving since 1994, first car was a bare bones Chevy S10 without power steering or power brakes, so I have driven the crappiest of crap).
I like it in Teslas. It’s kind of fun, and I’m a set-and-forget vent position person. Do it once a year, maybe?
I’m the same way, but how much are we paying for powered vents that we never move?
For cars where the vents are clearly visible and could be manual, I wouldn’t want them powered.
But in a Model 3, for example, they hide the vents, so having them powered enabled the clean design.
Hmm, you’re overlooking the huge savings in complexity and pedal and steering wheel manufacturing costs. And you holding on to 18-century controls (like pedals, levers and other archaic interface devices as Mercedes Benz first pioneered) is very un-progressive.
I for one, look forward to the much cheaper prices these deletions will bring, the ability to transport myself while completely incapacitated (but still able to speak clearly) and the peace of mind of not having to worry about opening doors, turning steering wheels and butt- wait buttons are already gone, whew.
So if we expanded bus routes ….
What about steering by voice control? Works in rallying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacenotes
I though for sure your link would be to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9-voINFkCg
Thanks, I didn’t know that one!
I grew up admiring Christian Geistdörfer almost as much as Walter Röhrl.
Man, does this article ever drive home one of the best historic examples of why the AI hype is way overblown.
You remember a decade or so ago? When Tesla was first touting “self-driving”? And then a shit ton of startups popped up to burn cash and we all wrung our hands in worry about the steering-wheel-less, autonomous future that was about to take over?
Now, we have a strikingly similar hype cycle going, except instead of the computers driving the cars (which is something that practically any adult human is capable of doing, even if poorly), the computers are suddenly all going to take over everyone’s entire lives and do every job better than every human that ever lived. Seriously. Trust us, bro. Look how much money we’re spending on it. It’s coming whether you like it or not.
But all these AI hucksters give up the game when suddenly the only thing AI is going to be able to do in your car is open the trunk when you tell it you have a bag in there or whatever. It says a lot about what they think the capabilities of AI are going to be when Rivian’s CEO won’t even say that the voice control will be, “Car, take me to work” and it drives you there. That shit was hyped for a decade and never happened, so they don’t want you thinking this shit is just going to get hyped for a decade and never happen.
Preach!
This can only lead to the return of mouse belts.
“Buckle me in!”
*whirrrrr click*
Nooooooooooooo!
Any time I attempt a simple operation with modern automotive UI: https://effinbirds.com/post/779557631365922816
I don’t play racing games on mobile. Most of the time an (aftermarket Razer) XBOX controller will suffice, but I do have a Logitech G29 and when set up, that is the best way of doing it. I don’t play racing games on mobile for a reason…ok, two reasons, but the relevant one is Touch controls suck. (The other is that Mobile Gaming is predatory and Microtransactions are the shadiest monetization scheme ever concieved since The Pyramid Scheme)
A touchscreen command to open the glove box is insane. There is no reason to do that.
With the position of the vents, that’s a bit different though. Hear me out.
The position of the vents, which I for one almost never change, much less while driving, could be part of the driver profile memory settings. The only reason why electrically adjustable seats in a privately owned car make sense, actually. You may have a family sharing a car with everyone having their favourite seat, wheel, mirror and vent positions. With purely mechanical control systems, that is not possible. And while you could add electrical switches on the vents or mirrors themselves, that adds unnecessary complexity and cost. (And seats, actually.)
The correct answer is oscillating vents. If they have motors and can’t do that you’ve failed.
That makes sense, yes.
Shoutout to the Lexus LS430, all the vents can be positioned manually but the center two vents oscillate back and forth. They even have different routines depending on whether the front passenger seat is occupied or not all the way back in 2001!
I don’t adjust them often, but I adjust them often enough where a touchscreen interface is… awful. A vent that was previously blowing nice cooling A/C on my face is now responsible for drying out my eyes, and I need to aim it away.
My left arm that was steering is now resting on the armrest while the right arm takes a stint, and the left hand vent that was providing nice indirect cooling is now chilling my arm into an icicle. The dash vent that was cooling my lap now is needed by my uncomfortable daughter in the back seat. I take a turn and the sun that was in my face is now roasting my lap, needing another vent moved.
Driving conditions are way too dynamic to make me have to use a touchscreen for something so simple.
Did you mean that the average driving conditions are too eVENTful?
…I’ll see myself out.
Just tell the car where to point the vent. (/me runs and ducks for cover.)
I often reposition my vents, especially while driving, and the touchscreen controls sound like an absolute nightmare. As does rarely adjusting them, quite frankly. Sometimes I want direct air, sometimes indirect. It really depends on the current temperature and how long I’ve been in the car and/or how long the a/c or heat has been on. What kind of maniac doesn’t need to adjust HVAC airflow direction?
To adjust the HVAC direction (which I also rarely do, but sometimes need to while driving) is different from adjusting the individual vents. My car has a special control for this (defrost, heads, feet, both) — I think most cars do. That should indeed be physical. But it’s on defrost practically the whole time. What needs adjusting more often is the blower speed, so that should be a physical control. But the vents themselves? Set when car purchased. (I am the only person regularly driving it, and my wife is the only person regularly riding in it as a passenger.)
Never touching the directionality of a vent outlet in a car takes a kind of mental stamina I just don’t possess….Like hey my knuckles are getting a bit chilly because the A/C is blowing right on them, just direct the vent 3 inches to the side/up/down/whatever, now its perfect. This action is NEVER done?
I don’t remember ever doing it, no.
The whole concept of touch screen contols is idiotic, hear me out.
What happens when the car is more than 4 years old and the touch screen wears out? $4500 to fix?
When instead you could have just had manual controls that last 35 years or longer, and if they break cost less than $100 to fix?
Well, I think that ship has well and truly sailed. It’s not only the touchscreen. It’s everything from the ECU to the digital instrument cluster to just about everything.
Aye, valid point. Even our 20 year old Mini Cooper has shown us this; the tachometer module went bad, which threw the CAN bus into a tizzy. Error codes galore, none of which revealed the root cause, transmission went into limp mode, etc. (even the convertible top controls are on CAN bus in this car)
Never moving the vents just seems crazy to me. When I get into a hot car on a sunny summer afternoon, I like to have the vents blowing on the steering wheel and my hands to cool off the wheel. If it is a longer drive, my hands will get cold, and I want to move the vents to blow indirectly. If the sun is shining on one side of me, I might want the vent blowing on that area to counteract the heat of the sun, but then the road turns and I’m in the shade, and I don’t want the vent blowing on me.
I can achieve all that using the controls for which vents the air comes out of, and how much of it, and how warm/cold I want it to be. Three rotary controls on the centre console. I just never feel the urge to adjust the vents themselves. I just don’t.
When I was a kid, I was convinced that if cars had a qwerty keyboard instead of a steering wheel, I could simply OPQA-space my way around traffic.
I guess I was almost as dumb and clueless about what makes sense in a car as the people who sign off on moving all sorts physical controls to touchscreen interfaces.
Imagine the epic drifts when you rent an AZERTY or a QUERTZ one in France or Germany though?!?
I’m pretty sure I’d have more control with the keyboard that swiping on a screen
Even though such changes would make our current dystopian nightmare even worse, the presence of the Gordon Keeble logo always buoys my spirits a bit.
Hey, thanks for that, learned something new today