Posted by teleforce 5/3/2026
It feels great. The touch screen is there for finer control when I’m stopped or for the passenger. But I can do everything in memorable ways using the knobs and buttons.
Other manufacturers tried to copy it, and when any normal person had to interact with touch everything - the real opinions of how absolute garbage it was came out.
Having a big screen to display navigation and audio is awesome. Removing things like physical vents, volume control, gear selection, turn signal stalk - those are all idiotic decisions made to maximize margin on every car sold and COMPLETELY user hostile.
I'm just pleasantly surprised the germans listened to their customers.
It is ridiculous that an Android potato can be more responsive than many cars screens and UI.
I do enjoy physical controls for things that are constantly being used while driving for safety purposes and all of that exists for my model. Dropping stalks was too far imo, but for a car maker that wants to remove the driver it's not surprising. Mine has two stalks and I think that's the Goldilocks version. The auto shifter is surprisingly good though.
Everything else in the Tesla is completely fine where it is. Even if I do need to reach for something there's always voice. Saying I'm hot/cold or take me to X or play my playlist or whatever works completely fine. If it's not, just adjust it when you stop like you should be doing anyway.
Plenty of things to dislike about my car but this isn't one of them. The only button, or a thing a button replaced, that is missing on my car is the manual door release in the back which is a pretty egregious omission that does make me a tad angry. I'm going to have to drill a hole in my door for that one.
I really struggle to understand what's so damned difficult about this. They've admitted touchscreens annoy the hell out of drivers and capacitive touch buttons are even worse. Is it really going to take yet another lifecycle before they actually do something about it?
Or dashes that are fully lit at night even if the headlights aren’t on, so the driver doesn’t have an obvious visual indicator that their tail lights aren’t lit.
So many rules I’d enforce were I king of the automakers.
They are not.
Removing indicator stalks without steer by wire was a mistake. They fixed that by bringing back the stalks.
Touch screen for great shifting works better than you think. It actually works better than traditional gear shifters especially when you enable auto shift. It changes gears as needed. It's ok to want to stick to the past; but don't drag others back who want to move towards the future.
Did you read the article about how Mercedes-Benz is bringing back physical controls? So in your opinion are they dragging their customers back to the past? Or are they correcting a mistake?
They saw less buttons on Tesla and tried to adopt it as a cost cutting measure instead of thinking of designing a better UX. Result is, laggy/buggy/buttonless bad ux that customers hated. So they are going back with a bad excuse. The mistake is thinking software+UX as second class in a modern car. But now they are correcting "touch screen bad" mistake. lmao.
I mean, it is no surprise. Germans in general don't know how to develop good software because to them everything is a design by committee (see CARAID).
Or maybe they understand from experience that physical buttons are better? When you can't take your eyes off the road, buttons you can feel with your fingers are better. That's easy to understand, is it not?
> They saw less buttons on Tesla and tried to adopt it as a cost cutting measure
Tesla is doing it as a cost cutting measure too. Elon Musk's philosophy is "the best part is no part".
They are doing it for both, cost cutting WHILE improving UX. Only Rivian and some Chinese companies understand that.
Others did it JUST for cost cutting and result was obvious.
I don’t need buttons for the rear view mirrors or lights, I need them to do the right thing for me instead. VW not saving the position of the rear view mirrors on my profile is stupid. Having a hardware button for the seat position “profile” is stupid. Having walk away lock locking and unlocking the bus in a loop in you stay within range with the fob is stupid. Having a fob is stupid.
Those are the software issues you need to fix VW, if you ever want my business again.
Edit: and since people seem to care about AC buttons: the id.buzz has AC buttons! But they are right under the infotainment screen… and capacitive :) the Tesla’s screen is much easier to manipulate.
I never understand these people with their ac knobs... What are they doing that they need to change AC all the time during driving?
I set it to 21.5 with auto, and it is perfect for the whole car. Why do people need to constantly change ac?!!
EA888 G1 has entered the chat.
Also, you can just use voice control. Works better than physical buttons.
Having to aim at controls on a smooth surface, let alone menu diving and things moving around, being hidden or otherwise depending on state is the problem.
Autopilot regressed in that you can't even turn autosteer on/off without stopping the car.
Model 3 and Y refreshes were lackluster, S and X are gone, Cybertruck which actually had some catching-up stuff (800 V, V2L) is a write-off and Roadster is what, 7 years delayed and nowhere to be seen and there's nothing else announced on the horizon.
Not a car company. All ready and ripe to merge with SpaceX.
Teslas have a mere two buttons and are generally a joy to use. Why? Because the UI/UX was taken seriously, and the cpu hardware wasn't sourced from the dolllar store. This combination resulted in a screen-only experience that is responsive and easy to use (if you disagree with this, I will point you to Tesla's consumer satisfaction ratings, which say otherwise).
Every other car manufacturer followed suit, but made a critical mistake in that they only saw the cost savings in not needing to manufacture and build a bunch of switches. They forgot to do the necessary UI/UX work, and fitted their vehicles with a cpu out of a TI-83.
The reason why consumers are complaining about every other car manufacturer isn't because they have no buttons; it's because the screen-only experience isn't intuitive. Make it intuitive and the complaints go away.
Tesla is the bottom of _top ranking_ by satisfaction.
The map looks like it really wants to be in Star Trek more than than it is meant to be usable software.
Doing simple things takes getting into menus 2-3 layers deep, often while driving.
The only people who got frustrated is people who rented.
Press headlight button on s.wheel, tap the fog light icon on screen.
There's one thing I actually dislike. You can use voice to control all these stuff except foglight. It even understands foglight command, but doesn't do anything. Most likely a bug. I don't know how to report it.
Tesla sw is miles better than the previous two. It is responsive and laid out well. When you get used to it, it is intuitive. Android was not that bad but the visual design was much worse and it was laggy.
The MB software can die in hell. It is the worst piece of shit ever been built by humans. And it is running on hopes and dreams instead of a capable processor. Note that this was an E class so not an entry model. (Even then, there is no excuse)
It's against old fashioned tactile buttons for essentials.