jont- wrote:Strangely Brown wrote:Not just a distraction; actually bloody dangerous to use unless stationary. The extra cognitive effort required to touch accurately the correct spot on the display is tremendous. It is an unfortunate trend that so many manufacturers are going down the touch screen route, presumably on grounds of cost, and none more so than Tesla.
It's not cost, they're bloody expensive. It's because consumers want "shiny" and buy on the strength of IVI these days given the rest of the cars are much of a muchness.
Interestingly someone was telling me trucks can't use them because the drivers bounce around too much to accurately hit the screen. Clearly they haven't driven a modern car on "sports" suspension down a fen road either
The Yeti has a built in touch screen to control the radio functions etc, and I have a touch screen portable thing that mounts on to the dashboard with a special mount that allows it to display trip computer information etc. While in theory, the wee thing in my car should be safer to operate, as it's positioned high up on the dashboard, so thus is much closer to your natural line of sight (as it is used for satnav purposes too), while the Yeti has its multimedia screen down in the centre of the console. I actually prefer the Yeti implementation as it has steering wheel controls, AND the radio information etc is also displayed in the little screen between the speedometer and rev counter, meaning you never need look down at the actual touch screen, and you can use tactile feedback to remember what the buttons and scroll wheels do on the steering wheel, meaning it's vastly safer than what the Citigo has, where you do actually have to look at the screen and prod at it 400 times because it's rather dim-witted.
Touch screens shouldn't be too much of a problem when they're used mainly for the 'multimedia' functions, and are linked with steering wheel controls. The problem with them arises when they are also used for the climate controls, and heated seat functions etc, much like how it's done in the latest Range Rover Velar!