Item — HN Reader

Having owned a Tesla for over ten years now, I’ve lived the real pain of being at the mercy of the manufacturer who can completely change how your car works overnight. Annoying in Figma, dangerous in a Tesla.

Some comments dismiss this author as a new driver with a learning curve but Tesla has impacted muscle memory several times now. Why did they change this row of icons anyway? I don’t think they take the responsibility seriously.

5 comments

Agreed. I was (barely) willing to tolerate a touchscreen interface for my car, as long as the UI didn't change ever. Without tactile feedback, I need the buttons to be in the exact same place every time so that I can develop the muscle memory to hit them without looking. When Tesla changed the UI layout as part of a software update, they eliminated themselves as a manufacturer I'm going to buy from. As the author of the linked piece says, "move fast and break things" is simply not acceptable for the controls of machinery that can easily kill someone if you make mistakes.

This is why my next car won’t be a Tesla (after driving one for the past 8 years). It’s sad, they get so many things right but they are dangerously irresponsible.

Yep, agreed. I'm on my third Tesla, and probably my last. The cars are still very structurally safe, but operationally they're getting more dangerous because of changes like the UI, FSD feeling actually worse than it used to (I had it on my Model 3, but I couldn't transfer it to my Model X, and it wasn't good enough on the 3, why would it be good enough on the X which actually had FEWER sensors?) and the absolute insistence than vision-only is safer than vision plus radar and ultrasonic. I understand that the radar they had was limited, but you improve the radar, don't drop it entirely.

Also, I haven't been an Elon fan since 2018 or so, but I was still able to look past his shenanigans when I bought this a few years ago, but he's gone straight over the cliff since then and keep falling, so this is almost definitely the last one I'm getting.

You have a different reaction than most Tesla owners [1].

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-has-the-most-loyal-b...

Tesla owners that bought a car last year is a very different number than all Tesla owners.

Manufacturing cars with “cut everything possible and add stuff back in if it doesn’t work” mentality seems risky

Brought to you by the folks who took out a critical piece of the break and shipped it by accident

It continues to boggle my mind that this behavior of unpredictably changing controls on a dangerous piece of equipment is accepted. Does anyone wish that the manufacturer could unexpectedly change the controls and safety features of their table saw, hunting rifle, or home fuse box? Of course not, that would be stupid and dangerous. But somehow Tesla's marketing has convinced a lot of people that it's fine or even a bonus when it happens with their vehicle.

It's not an idle worry either, many people have talked about the dangerous episodes they've had driving when basic controls were suddenly hidden from them. I've personally experienced it as well, riding with a relative in their Tesla. It started raining on the freeway, the auto wipers weren't turning on, and neither of us could quickly find the manual controls while hurtling down the freeway because they had moved since the car owner had last used them.

> Some comments dismiss this author as a new driver with a learning curve

Which is a faulty way to think about it to begin with because good UX patterns should aim to be as idiot-proof as possible, especially for a CAR of all things. The KISS principle should apply here.

I've had my '23 Model Y for almost a year now and I still find the UX very severely lacking. For example if you want to change the speedometer display from kmh to mph - for crossing the Canada/US border - it's located in a weird part of the "Display" menu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbqibzYjkxE