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@thomasfuchs physical controls for key driving functions like fog lights are much nicer than touch only. But for modern cars to introduce manual AC-controls is return to 80's where car couldn't hold the temperature.

In my car I adjust temperature couple of times in a year and when I do I use speech control.

Maybe EU boffin is just talking about Tesla.

@nemeciii @thomasfuchs as a Canadian Prairie Dweller who has tried to use touchscreen controls for climate functions in -30C I would consider nice chonky knobs as essential for these functions.

In these parts we adjust the climate settings a couple times *a day* for a good part of the year too, because it is somewhat common to experience "all season days" (just recently a 15C change in temperature within an hour, from partly cloudy to blizzard)

@msh @thomasfuchs as a Finnish city dweller the coldest we had here in the south was -29 C. Still I had no problems starting the car nor need to adjust the heater in any way, thermostat handles that stuff.

I even drove to a meeting 170 km away without jacket in that weather. No preheating, no warm garage, no external help.

The key difference here might be that I drive an EV with 6 kW cabin heater if you have a sauna you might get the scale. The car is warm +20 C in 5 minutes or even less.

@nemeciii
So what I'm hearing you say is that your use case is very different from that of most other people.
@msh @thomasfuchs

Matti Järvinen

@FeralRobots @msh @thomasfuchs not that different from future cars in any way.

Speech recognition will come to all cars at some point in time and thus will require hardly no knobs of any kind.

The benefit of limited speech command set is that the driver can fully concentrate on the driving no distractions whatsoever.

@FeralRobots @msh @thomasfuchs well I have speech recognition in my car now. It will be more common in the future thus demanding physical knobs is an echo from a bygone era.

@nemeciii
OK I think I didn't understand your claim before, but now that I do: No. Absolutely not.
Ambient noise exists. People lose hearing. People aren't always able to speak. People carry on conversations in cars. Disability exists.
You can say machine learning systems will handle a lot of these use cases, & maybe they can - sometimes. But what should our tolerance for failure be in a one or two ton vehicle moving at high speeds in varied conditions?
@msh @thomasfuchs

@nemeciii
There's just no way that voice control as a primary method of control holds up to ordinary day to day use across the population.
If you want to suggest that disabled folks should get knobs, then think about transitory disabilities: illness, fatigue, injury. Think about circumstances: passengers, loud music, software failures.
So, no. Hard pass.
@msh @thomasfuchs

@nemeciii @FeralRobots @thomasfuchs in my opinion there is a lot of distance between where voice control is now and where it needs to be for practical automotive use.

Furthermore voice control will always be highly unsuitable for vehicle control beyond maybe controlling the radio and climate settings. Physical controls will always be required as a backup for safety and/or accessibility.