A/C is automatic and I don't need to touch it the vast majority of the time. While driving the most I might want to do is adjust the temperature, and since it's not safety critical I can choose a convenient time. It's at the bottom of the screen so it is easy to do by grabbing behind the bezel and only requires a quick glance to align your thumb. In practice I glance at physical A/C controls when adjusting them too, so I don't see a big difference here.
If you really need to adjust the temperature so often and can't stand the thought of using the touchscreen, you can assign that function to the left scroll wheel.
I drive about a dozen different modern electric cars on a regular basis (carsharing) and all of them have at least a few of the above flaws (if not for AC then for something else that needs adjusting while driving).
This goes for tech in general and not just cars btw :)
It's like those scooters you can hire and leave (almost) anywhere, the benefit with a car is, if you park it idiotically, they can check that you were the last driver and forward the parking ticket to you.
There are also a handful of "peer-peer" carsharing systems where you let other people use your car and I have no idea how insurance would work there.
That is good reasoning, but are you sure a high number of drivers are also waiting with adjustments, instead of fumbling on the screen while continuing to drive?
1. Physical controls that you can interact with without the need to take your eyes off the road
2. Touch screen that you need to look almost every time, much of the time while actually interacting with it. But you can mitigate that by using it more responsibly, waiting until you are at a stop, our out of range of anything you might need to react to (which might not happen for 10 minutes or even longer)
Then #1 is clearly the winner. Because 2 is more dangerous for everyone on the road (not just you with your own behavior, but everyone else that might act irresponsibly and hit you). We specifically craft laws to make people interact with their phones less (hands free only, etc) because "people must act more responsibly" is not a reliable solution.
In my car, I basically never change the A/C. My dad used to have a same-vintage car for a while, but a different make, and it absolutely needed adjustment depending on whether the sun was shining on you or not, and possibly other parameters. They both had "automatic" A/C.
Now these cars are ~20 years old, maybe things have improved. I haven't ridden in my dad's ~2yo car for any long stretch during the summer to compare.
I just want a gentle breeze of slightly warmer or slightly colder air, damn it!
I'm not sure how much I agree that temperature is not safety critical. It's relative for sure, less safety critical than breaks or transmission, but it can still impact safety in certain situations. In the city when you have a lot of red lights and stop signs, it's not a big deal to wait for the next stop. But on a free-way when you've got a ways to go before you can make a stop then uncomfortable temperature can create a distracted or nervous driver situation. I suppose you could pull over on the shoulder if it were that big of a deal, but even that isn't the safest thing to do on freeways and it's recommended to only do that if you're making an emergency stop.
In my opinion this shouldn't even have to be a big deal. The only reason we're even discussing it is because car manufacturers are moving from tactile buttons to touch screens. People are accustomed to working these types of auxiliary systems without stopping and historically have been able to do so without taking their eyes off of the road. People aren't going to stop doing those things because now they have to use a touch-screen.
Can you imagine actually pulling over off the interstate to change your AC? Absurd. Totally absurd and disconnected from reality. Nobody would do it, they would take their eyes off the road and then it doesn't matter AT ALL whether the function they're trying to perform has to do with safety or even operating the vehicle -- it's a distraction, and that's sufficiently bad.
Can we stop putting distractions in front of drivers, in general? Please?
I'll forgive Android Auto and Apple's thing because people won't stop looking at their phones otherwise but the driver should be able to control the vehicle and everything they might want to do in it without looking away from the road.
And quick changes of T or RH needing the user to crank up the heat, turn on the AC and direct the air to the windshield at full speed are very possible depending on where you are.
Imagine crossing a miles long tunnel under a mountain separating two weather zones.
Hands off my HVAC controls.
so, physical control.
Yes, they can reassign buttons. But the core problem is distraction, which causes users to go to the touchscreen, which creates even further distraction by capturing their visual attention.
And it's different if I drive with the top down depending on weather. I don't need to look at the buttons to do that now.
