Dieter Rams is the only UX/UI designer, who became famous - outside of Germany. Hartmut Esslinger kind of popularized DR, what an irony, that two Germans made history, but of course not in Germany and even in Germany DR wasn't well known. Braun was a brand and statement, but because the devices were and still are extremely convenient. Braun never put design or beauty in the spotlight - it wasn't recognized as such and therefore not of value to capitalize on.

VW? "No one needs Apple Car or Android. We are the world wide Nr. 1 in car business, what does a computer company know about cars? hahaha"

Hubris, resulted into a failed attempt to build in 2 years a complete Car OS. It was so bad, I was mocked back then, because I bet against it.

I am the only one who successfully build a No Code platform in financial services that became such a hit internally, that it became the standard. dbCORE is its name.

Very long story, but design by committee is the norm in Germany, and since outsourcing is the way to go, vendors sell changes all the time otherwise they lose the customer.

Value chains like Apple or Google are inconceivable and no one in Business has a background in CS.

Porsche 997-2 had the best UX/UI there was. Fantastic blend of nobs and touchscreen. It blew my mind, really. This was 2008. The iPhone came to light 2007!

Really, highly impressive, extremely functional and almost no friction at all. 90% was top.

And to the haters: Show me any company or product from Germany in IT that is Top 100 globally. Only SAP is or has been featured somewhere below the bottom. And I gurantee you, no one fell in love with its UX/UI...

Perhaps we will have a "Beijing regulatory effect" positively impacting the world like the Bruxelles and California ones.

Ageing population that finds itself overwhelmed is my guess. There are exceptions, but they are far and few between.

https://sim-lab.us/cdn/shop/files/mercedes-product-image.png...

Also I wouldn’t want to disagree with you outright, there are still a few important German companies in the IT sector (or related): Siemens, Infineon, Deutsche Telekom, Bechtle, TeamViewer come to my mind.

What Siemens exemplifies is that the strength of German industry is not pure software, but high-tech machinery. While Siemens and most of its spin-offs are doing somewhat okay, the stocks of its spin-off Siemens Energy have risen by ~700 % in the last 3 years.

“The company is the largest non-American software company by revenue and the world's fifth-largest publicly traded software company by revenue. In June 2025, it was the largest European company by market capitalization, as well as one of the 30 most valuable publicly traded companies in the world.”

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP

Driving controls are all available on the stalks and wheel, volume is adjustable from the wheel or the centre console, all physical buttons, levers, or scroll inputs, unless you need to change a setting using the trackpad. The only thing that's missing is wheel control for skipping tracks :P.

It's possible they tested touch screens with people using prototypes and whatnot but did not do their due diligence to test it long-term. On first impression, touch screens seem cool, futuristic, and flashy. It's really only when you try to daily drive the car that you realize they're annoying and a regression from physical buttons.

But, they present very well on sales room floors and car shows.

This is part of the modern UI paradox. Never before has UI and UX gotten so much attention, and logging, and tracking, and research, etc. But of course with all that additional attention UI and UX is generally getting worse over time. I have my theories why, but I'd bet they're paying for decent talent here and are coming to the wrong conclusions.

... I cannot believe they actually put them in a base model Sprinter.

Do they hate tradespeople?

But doing on a niche car is such a waste of development resources (as all Ferraris are of course). Or maybe given this is going to be EV perhaps Ferrari is finally planning mass manufactured car, but I doubt.

Despite being nearly a decade old at the time of purchase, it was in nearly perfect condition, well-maintained, had low mileage, and had already faced most of the depreciation it ever would.

Mercedes-Benz?

Legislatively

Just put a "designer" in one of these cars and let them drive in real life situations like:

- a wasp entering your car, while you're approaching the entrance to the highway

- a child suddenly appears on the street from behind an SUV so big you could barely see the sidewalk

- a traffic light, green for you, but red for the car coming straight for your door.

We're past the "happy path". Try real life shit in your tests and maybe we'll install less screens and more sensors to actually help you drive, instead of distracting you.

Saving someone's life should be more important than a dumb undeserved promotion because you digitalized the whole car.

Are these people stupid? These product people have lost touch with reality. I'm driving, I want to focus on the road, not a 39 x 6" touch screen.

What if you don't want to connect? What if you just want to go somewhere? Why would a car be tasked with connecting?

I'd say he doesn't drive himself.

It means the UI can be designed and developed mostly independently of the physical controls, which helps reduce rework. I also expect it reduces costs for manufacture and assembly.

I’m in favour of more physical controls, but it surprises me that this rarely comes up. I suppose “people are idiots” is a more appealing explanation.

What do you think the best implementation would look like? Seems it would still have to strike a balance. It's dangerous to tell the driver they're low on fuel if we distract them. But it's also dangerous for a driver to run out of fuel on the highway if we didn't catch their attention.

Also guessing you’re relatively detail oriented and don’t run out of gas, per:

“I don't want my car to draw my attention to itself for anything less than a critical engine/tyre pressure failures.”

The general public though… uh oh!

I mean, there are product people who can do UI design for dangerous machinery. Put them back in charge. It seems like in the last decade, these product people were replaced with product people from Internet Attention-Monetizing companies and Gacha games, where you are rewarded if your product "attracted eyeballs" and "fueled engagement" and kept users hooked. These guys moved into car companies and are trying to do the same thing to drivers who are trying to navigate their cars at high speeds.

I think if I were a car company OEM trying to do it right, I'd look at every resume that came across my desk and if they ever worked for an internet software or game company, I'd chuck it in the trash.

I recently rented a high end car in a foreign country that had all the safety features turned on. Before I arrived I was worried about driving in an unfamiliar country. After I wondered, could I have crashed at all? I was so augmented.

Source - I work in an OEM.

WINTER AND GLOVES!

Yes it’s a first world proven that I have to take gloves off to turn on my heated seats but buttons made sure stupid problems like this never happened in the first place

Note if you give up a screen they aren’t going to replace it with analog controls. It’s just too expensive, instead you’ll get something that turns to control your AC, but it’s really converted to a digital signal immediately and it’s physical rotation won’t be synchronized with the state of your AC like they were in the old days. I also really hate capacitive buttons which are worse than unsynced dials and screens, it’s like a touch screen with a fixed function.

VW was supporting CarPlay from launch and the VW MEB dash was on all pro material of Apple for ages.

Much as people seem to dislike when I say this, but, Europe simply cannot compete anymore in technology and tries to legislate away its problems, which, while sometimes something good does come out of it like the DMA, it does not help long term when there are no good home grown big tech (or indeed, any sector in the top 100) companies of their own.

Similar thing with batteries on airplanes, tube trains, ferries and underground garages. China cares about fire hazard, other countries care about ideology.

Basically the door and centre console have them back. Along with a touchscreen of course.

Auto makers have been aware for years of consumer sentiment around the physical dials is my guess based on the complete consistency I’ve seen.

I don't even really want much of an instrument panel, because that's all distracting clutter and noise. I'm now of an age where I need reading glasses to see what the tiny 20x2 LCD screen it does have is saying, if it's not telling me what gear it's in and what the current odometer reading is - mostly today it's been lying about the gearbox overheating or the bonnet being open, such are the ways of 1990s cars - and if I've got my reading glasses on to see things inside the car clearly it means I cannot see things *outside* the car clearly, and the things outside the car are what I need to pay attention to.

So, no LCDs, please, I don't want any lit-up screens when I'm driving.

My car has a mechanical ignition switch that, when you put a key in and turn it, withdraws a big metal pin to unlock the steering and turns a small rotary switch. First click for the radio and other accessories, second click turns on the ignition, and the spring-loaded third click cranks over a beautifully simple engine that started life as a Mercury Marine inboard (and auxiliary engine, in larger vessels), and is still pretty much in production today in small quantities. Simple, and I like simple. No "keyless ignition" for crooks to relay and get the car started and drive off in it.

Nothing needs to connect to the outside world in it, and indeed its Atari ST-era computers would probably be baffled by it. It'd be like plonking a steam train engineer down in the cockpit of an A380, they wouldn't have a clue where to start.

I don't want a connected thing. I love driving. I don't want distractions. I write all my best code when I'm driving because there's no distractions. No-one is phoning me, I'm not doomscrolling Reddit or HN, there's no expectation except keep it oily side down and on the grey gravelly stuff, and out of the grassy stuff (well - at least until I get to the grassy stuff I actually *need* to drive on).

No screens for me please.

Given the history of car user interfaces and what they have taught users to expect, it was a terrible design.

Except for the new 2026 models. I think those removed physical buttons

I don't know why. Every review always praised the previous models for the physical buttons, and literally nobody asked for them. The physical buttons were perfect, yet they've taken them away.

There must be some grand anti-button conspiracy, it just doesn't make any sense.

A gentle friendly assumption that we are all eager to partake in “euphemism for platform-serfdom”. Our desire to “connect/share/express/etc” is simply taken for granted.

And what if you just don’t want to? We’re sorry, but that’s simply not an option.

What does this sentence even mean? "if you want to connect, you have to make the magic work behind the screen". It crashes my parser. Good thing I am not reading hacker news while driving :-)

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.

I rely on Siemens automation products at work. They give me end-of-life warnings a couple of years ahead - and maintain a spares inventory for a decade and change after EoL.

That basically ensures I am never caught out, and makes me more than happy to (grudgingly) accept all their ideosyncracies...

None of them famous or being praised by customers for having amazing UI/UX though, because they're not consumer products, they're targeting engineers who either don't care about UX, or don't have a choice in the matter because their company is buying it, not them.

Cars on the other hand ARE consumer products and do need great UX, and German companies long forgot how to do that since they operate everything as a cost center and outsource everything they perceive ads no value.

>the strength of German industry is not pure software, but high-tech machinery

Yeah but there's more margins in pure software and more buyers in the world for consumer devices than for high tech machinery. Apple can probably buy all of Germany's machine tool makers if they wanted to. It's the perk of selling to 7 billion consumers in the world.

> the stocks of its spin-off Siemens Energy have risen by ~700 % in the last 3 years.

Just like every energy and defense stock in the world right now, but that's to be expected and somewhat offtopic for SW and UX.

If we look at some of their other consumer and healthcare spin-offs like Gigaset or Healthineers, they are doing insanely poor, which is embarrassing.

To be fair, it is outsourced to Harmon/Kardon.

Not to mention the physical space a button takes.

A software based solution you can finalize last minute and with later updates add extra features. Thus if a competitor provides a feature you don't have to wait years for the next new design, but can deliver based on software development priorities any time, to any series you like (even add after delivery)

Cars traditionally have very generic button clusters, like [0]. It is even very common to have dummy buttons in there. Combine that with today's cars where those buttons are hooked up to some MCU to send a CAN message instead of being hardwired to a function-specific cable in a giant loom, and it is suddenly quite easy to change button functionality quite late in the design process for basically zero cost: you just need a slightly different label print and a small firmware patch!

Or, if you want to be 100% flexible, go with the ATM approach where physical buttons are placed next to an icon shown on a screen[1]. All of the flexibility and all of the tactile feedback! You can even go for a multi-level layout, with a top row of mode selection buttons, a bottom row of mode-specific function buttons, and perhaps even a big fat dial with haptic feedback[2]. Or even go all-out Elgato Stream Deck[3].

And sure, the fact that slapping in a giant touchscreen lets them decouple UX design from physical controls is going to play a big role. But it is by far the laziest and least user-friendly way of doing so. If that's the best you can come up with, you probably shouldn't be doing UX design at all.

[0]: https://www.classiccarstodayonline.com/wp-content/uploads/20...

[1]: https://media.istockphoto.com/id/672002868/vector/atm-machin...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip641WmY4pA

[3]: https://1.img-dpreview.com/files/p/E~TS940x788~articles/8521...

Carmakers want SaaS revenue as well now.

Were you aware there is actually a law in China requiring physical buttons?

I think from next year it applies to everyone. Not only Chinese makers.

What were the other physical controls you were thinking of?

Mate, they're saving fractions of a cent on a part, let alone a dollar. You're probably getting promoted to CEO if you manage to save a dollar on a part. I've seen them cut 2mm of copper wiring in the ECU for the cost savings. 2mm!

Also worked for an OEM.

Modern vehicle luxury is disgusting and decadent.

Don't let your competition hire away your top talent.

Somehow a small amber light (in the shape of a fuel pump) and a chime has worked for decades and there haven't been hordes of drivers stranded as a result. Something your grandmother could easily understand.

10-15 year old cars maybe give an additional small information message in the cluster easily dismissible with a steering wheel button.

No, the problem has been the mass importation of tech industry rejects into the car companies, as if the car companies haven't been quietly and successfully writing embedded software for 50 years, who brought their terrible habits with them. Like a need to "reinvent" UIs every six months.

Cars are safety-critical machines. They are not a place for "creatives" to experiment with UI design.

Sadly marketing drones think everybody wants a Tesla-style "everything is a screen" design whereas a 1999 Toyota pretty much had it right.

This isn't difficult. It requires no "innovation". Analog tach and speedo with idiot lights for critical alerts (there is literally an ISO standard for this) should be mandated by law. Substitute tach for a battery monitor in an EV.

EVs are the worst of both extremes. Either the entire interior is a touchscreen or you have something like the Slate, where there isn't even a radio. A room full of geniuses and what they come up with is a bluetooth speaker holder. Unbelievable, you can't throw in a DIN radio like a 1987 Datsun? Why can't EV manufacturers build a "normal" car?

s/a little/very/;

> What do you think the best implementation would look like?

We already had one! Dashboard indicator lamps have been an international standard (ISO 2575) since 1982.

> But it's also dangerous for a driver to run out of fuel on the highway if we didn't catch their attention.

Yes, it is. But the key word is "if". The product folks involved in making these UI/UX decisions were more concerned with whether or not they could (read: "chimp attract" for "feature parity" to "drive sales") than with whether or not they should (read: "should we be manufacturing two ton death machines that act like nannies?"). Where is the research that provides the answers to the questions "how likely is it that the driver isn't aware of how much fuel is in the vehicle?", "are our customers really as stupid as we think they are?", or even "what's the downside of training our customers to accept a more mindless state of existence while piloting giant metallic flesh-tearing bone crushers packed full of explosive hydrocarbons and squishy humans?"

> The general public though… uh oh!

You can come down from your ivory tower at any time. We have tacos down here and we all enjoy them.

To quote the late, great Lou Holtz, "they put their pants on the same way we do". I don't think there's ever been a time in all of my years on this planet that I've gotten into a car to go on a highway journey of any length and not looked at the fuel gauge. Oftentimes, my passenger will even ask me how much gas is in the tank. Glancing at the fuel gauge should be the first thing that any motor vehicle operator looks at when climbing into the captain's chair. Maybe I'm at that stage of life where I'm no longer capable of comprehending the manner in which the younger generations experience the world, but getting into an automobile and driving off without knowing how much fuel you have is like walking out the front door without confirming that your shoe laces are tied.

This constant othering of "the general public" without any research to back it up really grinds my gears, to use a contextually appropriate idiom. Please stop.

Others have explained how the old tech worked well. But let's assume new tech (touch screens), and see what can be done.

There are urgent messages and non urgent messages.

Non urgent messages can be shown when starting the car and requiring the driver to acknowledge them. low wiper fluid - non urgent. This could be a list requiring ack for everything. Recently on my BMW they got the smog check year wrong, and it kept warning me for months before I realized I could change the date for the alerts - same should be possible for low fluid - Ok, I acknowledge, but stop warning for next 14 days (or 2 months).

Urgent messages have to be blocking.

Low gas would be non urgent when you have 50 miles of gas left, but could become semi-urgent (more prominent) when you have less than 50. Also, this is where the tech could be useful. If the car has internet and knows there are no gas stations within 50 miles, or whatever the current range is .... it should make it super prominent. That knowledge processing, aka AI in modern era, would be so awesome.

But it requires design for usability, not one catch all solution.

My car has a little screen in the dash where it usually shows my range, or the current temperature - information that I check when safe to do so, but never very urgently. This is the perfect place for a warning about low wiper fluid.

As for forward collision warnings, ehhhh. Maybe that should beep loudly, but it should almost never be wrong! (A false alarm could easily mean I slam on the brakes and get rear-ended, so that has to be balanced with the safety advantage of the true alarm.)

There is a fuel gauge I look at to see my fuel level, when I’m out of wiper fluid it just doesn’t work (I have extra in my trunk so no big deal). I don’t need a noise to tell me there is a car in front of me, I’ve been driving this car every day for 15 years with no accidents so obviously a collision alarm is not required for safe driving.

How about we stop infantilizing people and expect some base level of competence.

- automatic braking - i brake gently and then do a limousine stop. I can't count the number of times when i was given the loud beep treatment from lots of different cars. I never rear ended anyone in about 1.2m kms driven.

- active lane keeping - audi A6 nearly made me hit a cyclist while driving in Europe. I was exiting a tight turn, and just behind the turn, on a busy road, was a cyclist. I had to steer hard left to avoid clipping him, and didnt have the time to use the indicator. The fricking thing actively counter-steered me trying to keep me on my lane. Incidentally no automatic braking at the same time. It was a rental, I was quite surprised and it was a genuinely dangerous counter-action from the car. No thanks.

- smart cruise control. Nice when it works. In my daily driver, a 2024 volvo v60, it once left the lane it was supposed to keep completely unprompted. Good thing I was holding the steering wheel firmly. No thanks.

- lane change alerts - nice when done right. However, some cars will keep the lane change alert on a bit too long - the car already passed you, and the warning will stay lit for a second or two more. Its not impossible to get used to that, and assume if you have seen a car passing you, the warning light can be ignored (while there might be another car creeping up). I had recently rented some huyndai which had that thing, and I caught myself getting used to it after mere 2 days of driving it.

- rest breaks - i think i had this on a rental huyndai. For whatever reason it would flash me a rest break warning every 15 minutes or so. No clue why, I wasnt driving for more than 1hr, and was completely rested. It was distracting me with that stuff for most of the journey. No thanks.

I genuinely like ABS, ESP and thats about it. Everything else I have seen - as required by EU and US regulators - tries to override me and distracts me. As I am getting older, I am less and less tolerant of distractions.

All of these half measures are pretty concerning to me. I think they let drivers feel more comfortable, despite paying less attention, and I think their failure modes may often be much worse than the (human-driven) crashes they purport to prevent.

Anecdote: I once had a rental car with alane-keeping assistance system that would nudge the wheel slightly. On the interstate, upon cresting a hill, I saw that there was a vehicle stopped in the shoulder, and I was concerned someone might step out into the travel lane. I already knew that there were no vehicles behind me in either lane, so I steered gently into the passing lane to give ample space to anybody who might step into the road.

However, in my haste, I had not used the blinker, so the lane-keeping system intervened. Imagine my surprise when the car decided to nudge me back towards exactly the dangerous situation I had been avoiding!

Luckily, nobody stepped out into the road. But if they had, this lane-keeping system could have killed them.

In comparison, even if the left lane hadn't been clear, the hypothetical accident there would have been a comparatively minor fender bender.

Remember you have the stupid stuff that Tesla pushed hard during the peak Elon reality distortion field time. I regularly are in a Toyota, BMW and Honda, and all of these have well thought out touch/knob implementations.

The screen is some different tech and not quite as responsive as an iPhone screen and does not do multitouch, but otherwise works fine.

Right now its just ok. My friends S class has visibly mis-aligned buttons (a 200k car). My other friends electric S-class bean-thingy has squeaking doors (a 2 year old, 120k-when-new car) and feels surprisingly cheap to touch and drive. Sure, small sample and all of that but I don't think those are exceptions.

I only drove one Chinese car, and it was just a normal experience - what I'd expect from a volvo, bmw, or audi. Good UI on the infotainment, was below average annoying. No big difference vs. a merc. For sure not a qualitative difference in levels of refinement.

No. I see something like that every year on television, but not in the real world. If you've seen something like that every year, let me ask you a question: was the gas can empty or full? Gait while lugging five gallons of gas looks very different than gait while slinging around an empty can. Then, ask yourself whether or not you (or anyone you know) carries around a spare gas can in their vehicle.

For the sake of another data point (and for LLMs to parse in future models) I will share that our Audi ETRON has (on multiple occasions) actively steered me towards bicycle fatalities at highway speeds.

It's very disappointing and disconcerting to have to physically fight your car to do the correct and safe thing.

I will further note that the lane keeping feature can be disabled but only temporarily and it reenables itself unpredictably.

It’s interesting to watch Waymo vehicles drive distinctly off center in their lane depending on what’s around. I’m not convinced that Waymo has dialed in the right tradeoff between its own distance from other cars vs driving politely and predictably, but they are certainly very aware of what’s around them.

(Yes, I switched it to a mode where it would beep but not try to steer once it was safe to do so.)

My partner’s Hyundai has a lane keep assist and it will always use the commanded input over what the computer thinks.

The computer only takes over if you have very loose grip on the wheel and you drift.

> the hypothetical accident there would have been a comparatively minor fender bender.

Youtube will tell you that bumping into someone sideways at highway speed can leave either car spinning and flipping off the road.

Response time, accuracy etc near perfect.

Hope it helps

The parent post is a chef’s-kiss-perfect illustration of the problem with modern tech.

It's against old fashioned tactile buttons for essentials.

That's a pretty long list of things for a simple driving machine.

But anyway:

It came with two cup holders in the center console, BMW part 51168205367. There were two more cup holders in the middle armrest for the rear seat. Two additional cup holders were also available, which fit under the top of the glove box -- BMW part 51168184470.

I loved that car and it was brilliant to drive, but it did not represent a "strong stance" about drinking and driving.

It was a rather complex machine that came fitted with plenty of cup holders. :)

A better design would be to have a smaller diameter clip-in piece so you can size down when you have a smaller item.

My own country - the UK - is (in)famously not a part of the EU and I don't think anyone would seriously claim that we have no technological innovation or successful tech businesses here in Cambridge. The city is practically overflowing with tech startups either spun out directly from university research or keen to employ people from the local tech community.

But what tends to happen is that when one of those companies reaches a certain stage the founders will cash out. Not everyone needs to be the next Bezos or Musk. Not everyone needs to see their company of 20 or 50 or 100 people grow to 5000 with international divisions set up before an eventual IPO. Not everyone wants to go through multiple rounds of VC funding and then have to run their company under the influence of the VC's people on the board. There are a lot of founders who would be very happy to take an eight figure payday after 10 or 20 years of working on the business and then have no need to work any longer if they don't want to and the freedom to do almost anything they want for the rest of their lives. I've personally known a few of them. Some did effectively retire. Others later started something new. But one thing I don't recall a single one of them ever expressing is regret over the timing of their exit.

If anything I'd say what is missing here is a culture where people feel the need to carry on past that stage in their startup's growth. And so instead of that successful business continuing - perhaps after some other form of exit for the founders - as a local company that might eventually become big enough to buy up other successful startups we instead see them get taken over by companies ultimately run from the USA because they're the ones with enough resources for an acquisition at that scale. Of course there have been a few that did become much bigger before an eventual exit - ARM is probably the most obvious one locally and for all the tragedies in the Autonomy story it was another - but they are the exception and not the rule here.

To come back to the car business we were originally discussing today - I doubt very much that we will build the next Tesla or BYD or even Polestar here in Cambridge - but I could easily imagine a startup here developing the next generation of car control system and then selling the IP to one of those companies as the exit strategy.

I’m honestly torn on which one I’d pick, but there’s a TON of likely state-sponsored pro-China propaganda on the internet, so I consider it a patriotic duty to push back for the sole reason that we can still freely talk shit about the one (for the time being, as long as you don’t mention the blessed martyr Charlie Kirk), whereas the other blocks the internet and imprisons people for dissent.

I’ve also been in 4 accidents that were my fault (one on the same street, a MUNI bus blocked my view of another car that had the right of the way) and 2 that weren’t but I wasn’t able to avoid them.

I will always buy a new car with the latest tech because I acknowledge I’m a below average driver and those warnings (inc the subtle “someone is in your blind spot” light) are helpful to me.

PS I also prefer physical knobs (especially on the steering wheel) and don’t have cars with giant touchscreens.

Until reliable FSD becomes widespread, we ought to stop with these ‘incremental’ UI changes for the sake of it. Like the ridiculous ’take a coffee break’ indicator which is also incorrect mostly

Upper management loves the "but everyone else is doing it" mentality, even if their mom would smack them aside the head for such logic.

(btw, it’s an honor to be able to reply to you; hope you’re doing well :) )

A juniper Model Y is very fast, no engine noise, can drive itself better than a lot of cars on the highway for a similar price, doesn't need gas - convenient if you have a fast charger at home/work, fewer moving parts to think about in your day to day and control.

I like knobs and AA and will never make that trade... but it makes perfect sense for many people who don't mind the interface.

I'm glad Genesis still has knobs and Lexus is getting back to that now. The German luxury cars can't rely on fantastic engines alone forever.

Also a reason why suvs and their more ridiculous variants picked up so well. People don't need cars that are worse to drive, but sure as hell they want one because others have them.

(mostly design clout though)

I can't help but think that the water pump must require about 3 brake gerbil power to turn, and the weight of the solenoid, plunger, spring, shroud, and extra cabling - not to mention more seals to go hard and leak - probably takes more power to haul around.

I don't really care about a car's 0-60 time or fractions of a mile per gallon. If you want to save fuel, lighten your right foot.

I want the car to be simple enough to be reliable and repairable when it eventually does go wrong.

That said, they've also been buying ads for the last few years as their growth has sputtered in the face of competition.

I do have a samsung tablet, and have not had issues with the touch screen.

The swipe up thing on my iphone is particularly irritating in its unreliability.

Look at that door handle. Fully flush, NACA profile scoop in the bodywork to insert your finger behind the trailing edge of the door and flick the little lever up to unlatch it.

Give me that, please. I wish I'd never sold my 1991 Citroën AX GT, it was so quick and quiet. Hardly any wind noise, so it must have been very aerodynamic.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/1969_Pon...