German: No touching Touchscreen allowed

Luffie

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Woeo

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The German Court has decided that nobody is allowed to touch the touchscreen while driving...

This will be an interesting case as many BEV & ICE have those screens!
Even only adjusting the wipers is illegal.

https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de...en-touchscreenbedienung-fuer-scheibenwischer/
You are overstating the prohibition.

The court stated: "The setting of the functions required to operate the motor vehicle via the touchscreen (here: setting the wiping interval of the windshield wiper) is therefore only permitted if the view is only briefly adjusted to the screen for road, traffic, visibility and weather conditions and at the same time a corresponding turn away from the traffic is connected ".

The issue with Tesla's implementation is that it requires the driver to access the touch screen, then activate a submenu, and finally select the intermittent speed from 5 choices.

According to the judge, this requires significantly more attention than the operation of the windshield wiper with the "conventional fittings".
 

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I think what is more important than the ruling in the case is the details of the story.

The driver got in a wreck because of being distracted to adjust the wipers and got a ticket. If it wasn't so difficult to control the wipers, no wreck no ticket no issue.
 

dbsb3233

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Glad to see pushback on the "move everything onto the center screen menus" at the expense of actual cockpit buttons/dials.

The Mach-e shouldn't have any problem. They smartly retained all the important buttons/dials.
 

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Glad to see pushback on the "move everything onto the center screen menus" at the expense of actual cockpit buttons/dials.

The Mach-e shouldn't have any problem. They smartly retained all the important buttons/dials.
The crux of the issue raised by the german court remains: if you're doing anything with the touchscreen while driving it constitutes an unauthorized use. That includes changing the temp, turning on the defrosters, or anything else on the mach-e screen.
 
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Woeo

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The crux of the issue raised by the german court remains: if you're doing anything with the touchscreen while driving it constitutes an unauthorized use. That includes changing the temp, turning on the defrosters, or anything else on the mach-e screen.
You over state the prohibition.

The court stated: "The setting of the functions required to operate the motor vehicle via the touchscreen (here: setting the wiping interval of the windshield wiper) is therefore only permitted if the view is only briefly adjusted to the screen for road, traffic, visibility and weather conditions and at the same time a corresponding turn away from the traffic is connected ".

The issue with Tesla's implementation is that it requires the driver to access the touch screen, then activate a submenu, and finally select the intermittent speed from 5 choices.

According to the judge, this requires significantly more attention than the operation of the windshield wiper with the "conventional fittings".

Adjustments that require a brief view are permitted.
 

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You over state the prohibition.

The court stated: "The setting of the functions required to operate the motor vehicle via the touchscreen (here: setting the wiping interval of the windshield wiper) is therefore only permitted if the view is only briefly adjusted to the screen for road, traffic, visibility and weather conditions and at the same time a corresponding turn away from the traffic is connected ".

The issue with Tesla's implementation is that it requires the driver to access the touch screen, then activate a submenu, and finally select the intermittent speed from 5 choices.

According to the judge, this requires significantly more attention than the operation of the windshield wiper with the "conventional fittings".

Adjustments that require a brief view are permitted.
Just means you should do it in steps, activate the screen, look at the road, choose the sub-menu, look at the road, select the speed and back to the road. I agree a "stalk" on the steering column of some kind is much better.
 

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This is a B.S. move because BMW and VW have had their lunch eaten by Tesla. If you don't believe me, there are several high profile articles with leaked internal German automotive documents stating as such.

I think is more political than anything. German automotive companies are terrified because they are years behind American EV tech.
 

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I think is more political than anything. German automotive companies are terrified because they are years behind American EV tech.
I am constantly perplexed where this notion that legacy manufactures are years behind comes from maybe software is behind, but the premium manufactures interfaces are just as good if not better that anything tesla has managed to come up with.

Like wise if there EV tech was years ahead it wouldn't have broken down on the nurbergring while the supposed legacy from the dark ages ev tech drove past. If I look at who holders the pikes peak record to the top I don't see some American EV tech. Legacy auto makers know everyhing is global and make use of global tier 1 suppliers and have little time for flag waving.

Pushing everything to a screen is nothing more than a bean counting cost saving measure passed off as tech improvement to the hoards of kool aid drinkers, if screen only options where the be all and end manufactures wouldn't need to disable functionality of certain features while you are on the move.

Having clean minimalist design looks nice and leaves plenty of open space in the cabin, but you can do that and still have physical buttons for key functionalty
 

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The issue with Tesla's implementation is that it requires the driver to access the touch screen, then activate a submenu, and finally select the intermittent speed from 5 choices.
There is a button always present on the home screen for the wipers. Assuming you don't use Auto (which is what is used 99% of the time), then it's two taps in the same region to turn it on to a specific speed. If you just want to run the wipers once, you can tap on the stalk like you do on every other car.

Total time to turn the wipers on to a specific speed is probably 2 seconds.


I am constantly perplexed where this notion that legacy manufactures are years behind comes from maybe software is behind, but the premium manufactures interfaces are just as good if not better that anything tesla has managed to come up with.
I'm curious which interfaces you think are as good or better than Tesla. I'm assuming you mean interfaces as the overall touch screen interface? The only one I've seen that comes close is the Polestar and it's new Android interface. Most every other one I've seen/used is significantly behind in speed/display quality/overall usefulness.
 

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The person got in a wreck, got a ticket and decided to fight the ticket. I also fail to we how this is political unless the guy purposefully wrecked his car to get the ticket to then appeal the ticket so that he could lose and setup Tesla, genius!
 

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There is a button always present on the home screen for the wipers. Assuming you don't use Auto (which is what is used 99% of the time), then it's two taps in the same region to turn it on to a specific speed. If you just want to run the wipers once, you can tap on the stalk like you do on every other car.

Total time to turn the wipers on to a specific speed is probably 2 seconds.




I'm curious which interfaces you think are as good or better than Tesla. I'm assuming you mean interfaces as the overall touch screen interface? The only one I've seen that comes close is the Polestar and it's new Android interface. Most every other one I've seen/used is significantly behind in speed/display quality/overall usefulness.
I think the mechanical/tactile interfaces in a Ford are superior than what Tesla provides. 2 seconds to change wiper speed is unacceptable to me. It doesn't rain that often here but when it does, I have to adjust the wiper speed quite often because the severity of the precipitation varies. I admire Tesla for what they are doing and hope they continue to bring ground breaking EVs to market. The world needs this.

However, I am not ready to buy any of their vehicles because I have different expectations from my vehicles. Our test drive was probably the worst experience I have ever had test driving a vehicle. Before we even left the garage, we had to change vehicles because the first car was performing an update and it wasn't ready to drive. A second vehicle became available moments later so we headed off in that one only to be unable to adjust the radio, work the navigation or adjust the climate control. We could see the controls on the screen across the bottom but there was some other dialog box open in the foreground that rendered those touch buttons inoperative. We could not find any way to 'close' that window so we were forced to drive the car without the ability to use those other controls. At the end of our ordeal, the Tesla employee showed us how to deal with that issue.....you have to touch and swipe it down out of the way. Probably something our kids could have figured out but we weren't that smart apparently......

My wife drove first and got about 2 blocks away and pulled over because she didn't feel safe. Her visibility from the driver's seat was poor and the blind spots made her uncomfortable. We sat parked for several minutes trying to locate the controls to adjust the side view mirrors. Never did figure it out. Looked for an owner's manual in the glove box but the glove box doesn't exist or there isn't an obvious way to open it. She decided she wanted me to drive back and it took us a while to figure out how to open the doors. Eventually we found the door latches. Turns out the door latches are for emergency use only and when used, can tear the sealing rubber around the window.....something that was pointed out to us after we walked back to the Tesla Store. Yes, we had to walk back. Apparently the vehicle shuts off when you get out of the driver's seat and then it wouldn't restart because we didn't have the phone key or card key. They don't give that out to people when they test drive these things so we couldn't get the vehicle restarted. If there is a start button....we couldn't find it. There are interior buttons to open the doors.....those didn't work.

I suppose if I were to purchase the vehicle I could learn how to operate all the various controls and be on my happy way. But I would never feel comfortable loaning it to a friend or family because they could have the same experience as our test drive. No thank you. I expect to be able to operate and adjust certain things without having to take my eyes off the road or use the voice activated feature. Things like electric mirrors, intermittent wipers, temp controls, fan speed, radio volume etc. At a minimum....those need to be mechanical tactile controls for me or I won't purchase the car. I like tech as much as the next guy.....but some things are still old school for me.
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