I don’t really consider myself to be an obsessive person, with one small, almost trivial, exception: I can get pretty obsessed with things. Recently, one of the things I’ve been sort of obsessed with has been the very concept of controlling a car’s HVAC vent flow and direction from touch-screen controls. This started when I wrote an article about Rivian’s refusal to support systems like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and I went off on a little tangent about touch screen HVAC vent controls. Now I can’t stop thinking about it.
The reason I can’t stop thinking about it is that even among the pantheon of controls that don’t belong on a touchscreen, adjusting airflow vents via touchscreen controls feels uniquely bad, something that, despite all of my ruminating and thinking, I can not come up with a single solitary good, rational reason why this system exists. As far as I can tell, all these systems manage to do is introduce complexity, more and more complex hardware, a less intuitive user interface, more dangerous operation when driving, and the loss of the ability to adjust airflow at any time.
On the plus side, they’re… more complex? Some people think they’re cool and high-tech? I guess? Honestly, I don’t know. I really don’t.
I suppose I really should show you one of these systems in action, so you understand what I’m talking about. They’re hardly an industry standard just yet, but their numbers are growing, which is why it’s so important to nip this shit in the bud.
Here, this is Rivian’s touch screen-based vent airflow system in action; it’s a good representative of these types of systems:
See how that works? Right there, on the screen on the dashboard, is a picture of the very same dashboard you’re looking at, and to control the direction of the air vents, you use your finger to slide the little icons on the screen in the direction you want the air to flow. Small motors take the signals sent from your finger moving across the touchscreen and then move the vanes in the air vents to direct the flow of air, which is visually represented on that screen.
Pretty straightforward, right?
Well, sort of, if you’re willing to overlook one of the most confounding and baffling leaps of idiocy in the whole of modern technology. Let’s just look at what’s going on here:
Okay, so on the dash itself we have the touchscreen, and on that touchscreen we have a drawing of the dashboard. The HVAC vents on the actual dashboard are represented on the touchscreen, in four locations, corresponding to where the physical vents are on the actual dash: left side, right side, and two in the middle. At least in the case of the middle two vents, the actual vents are mere inches away from the smaller on-screen representation.
To adjust the vents, the driver or passenger uses their finger to touch the little icon and slide their finger in the direction they would like air to flow. A motor then moves the HVAC vent vanes accordingly.
Now, the act of using fingers to move vents is almost the exact same as the physical act of just using a finger to move the vanes themselves, except in the case of touchscreen controls you’re sliding your finger over a smooth glass surface and actively watching that the collection of pixels that forms the vent icon moves the way you want it to. A real, physical vent control would have a little plastic tab you’d just move with a finger or two and you’d be able to feel the motion of the vanes and the airflow itself.
Again, the real vents are just a few inches below the touchscreen.
You’re effectively doing the same thing as just using your hand to move the vent vanes, only it requires much more visual attention, lacks direct feedback, requires software and motors and wiring and electricity, and provides the exact same end result, provided everything went fine.
Please, some automotive UX designer who has worked with these systems, explain this to me. Make it make sense! Why would a carmaker make this decision? Is the act of seeing something move indirectly because of actions on a touchscreen really that cool? We’ve had remote controls for TVs since the, what, 1950s, and, yeah, that’s pretty cool, especially because you’re across a room from the device you’re controlling, not, let’s see, inches away like you are when you sit in a car in front of HVAC vents.
I can’t fathom this. Is it because not having little tabs to control vent direction somehow looks cooler? Does it? Here’s a modern, high-tech car dashboard that has tons of screens but retains physical vent controls, the Lucid Air:
Is that really that bad? Are those little tabs so abominable? If you actually think so, then I’m not sure there is enough grass for you to touch in all of the British Isles or Kansas or wherever.
Let’s look at how Tesla does this, because they use a slightly different approach for their vent directing system. First, here’s the interface:
Tesla uses a pinching mechanic, which is somehow even more fussy and annoying than Rivian’s finger-slide system. Imagine trying to use this while driving, when you want to get air to stop blowing on your face or start blowing on your crotch – it would be hell. There’s no way you could adjust this while you were driving, at least not safely.
Maybe these systems allow you to reach vents on the other side of the dash that you ordinarily couldn’t? That’s something, right? I mean, I guess, but who gives a shit? If you’re not by the vents at the other side of the car, who cares where they’re blowing, and if another person is there, they can just adjust them however they want, whenever they want! So I’m not so sure that’s a real advantage.
Now, Tesla’s vent system doesn’t use physical vanes; it uses multiple streams of air that interact via something called the Coandă effect, which some have described as being “genius”:
Is it a “genuis” system, though? Or is it a shocking amount of useless complexity to achieve something that a 1979 Oldsmobile Delta 88 had already managed to do just fine with little plastic vanes? Again, what’s the advantage here?
Let’s walk through my big issues with touchscreen vent controls, just so whatever brave automotive UX designer that decides to defend this inane system can easily craft their argument. Sound good? Let’s go!
1. The user experience is significantly worse.
Yeah, it is! With physical vent controls you can actually feel the airflow, you can move your hand right to the vent itself, and move it physically to re-direct that air wherever you want. Often, there’s a little knob or wheel to adjust the volume of air coming out. All of these controls are immediately and physically understandable, and all can be operated without looking at them, instantly.
Touch screen-based vent systems are fussy and require a significant amount of focus on the screen to make work, and are just inches away from the actual vents, reminding you that you could just be moving the damn vents themselves. It’s slower, less precise, and requires more focus.
There are no user experience benefits to the touch screen system.
2. It’s modal
You know what I mean by modal? I mean with touch screen-controlled vents, your vent controls can just, you know, go away. Since the visual re-creation of the dash on the screen on the dash takes up so much room, it can’t be shown all the time, so to access the controls to adjust your vents, you must go through some layers of on-screen interface to make the controls appear.
Imagine if you had a car with physical vent controls that just blipped out of existence if you, say adjusted the radio or looked at your navigation or went into reverse or anything like that? You’d think that was some bullshit. A physical vent system lets you adjust airflow at any time at all, no matter what else the car is doing. Touch screen systems can not do this.
3. It requires more hardware, more software, more power, and introduces new points of failure.
Old-school physical HVAC vent air direction systems have one basic point of failure: the little plastic vanes or control doohickies could break. If they do, it’s obvious and generally pretty easy and cheap to fix. You can even usually still use the vent by shoving a finger in there and moving it around.
A touch screen-controlled, remotely-operated HVAC directional vent has code in the system software to make it work, a potential point of failure, one that could happen via an over-the-air update, even. There’s also motors to drive the vents (or drive the airflow to the vents, in the Tesla system), another point of failure, wiring to bring power and control signals to those motors, another point of failure, and all of this isn’t free energy-wise, as those motors do use some amount of electricity, which is something I’d think you’d want to conserve on an EV.
That’s a lot more hardware and possible failure points. For what?
4. It’s dangerous
Anything that requires this much focus on a touchscreen has potential to distract a driver, which can result in some dangerous driving situations. Cooled or heated air blowing at you is also often the sort of thing you’d like to change on short notice, in situations, say, where you came in a car all hot and sweaty and enjoyed the arctic blast of the A/C right at your face, but soon it gets just too damn cold and you want it off your face.
In a conventional physical vent setup, you just move your hand and move the vent. It’s instinctive and takes seconds. In a touchscreen system, you have to direct your attention to the center screen, navigate to the climate controls, find the controls for airflow adjustment, pay attention to where they are on the represented dash, target them with your finger, move them, feel for the result, and then hopefully after all this you’re more comfortable and not in a ditch or through the outer wall of a Bojangles’.
Please, automotive UX people, I beg of you, help me understand this! As David is fond of reminding me, the professionals who do the jobs of designing car user interfaces and controls are significantly smarter than me, and, let’s be honest, likely have better hygiene as well. I’m not ruling out the fact that I may be missing some very big, very obvious advantage to touch screen HVAC airflow controls that make it all make sense.
If you know what this is, again, please, reach out and tell me.
Because as it stands now, I see more and more cars succumbing to a trend that is actively making the experience of being in a car worse, and I do not want to see that happen. I can’t think of any trend in automotive controls that feels as woefully and painfully misguided as this, and I either need to try and make it stop, or, if I’m wrong, understand it. But I can’t just sit idly by.
So, please, smarter-than-me automotive UX designers, make this make sense to me. Help. And, if you can’t, then, please, help all of automotive-using humanity and let’s put a stop to this madness before it infects every new car on the road.
This is dire. Let’s do our part.
Alright I’m on vacation in Mexico and slightly drunk but I have an idea for reasonable touchscreen HVAC controls:
A Cartesian system, with horizontal as a temperature gradient and vertical as fan speed gradient – want it hotter? Just touch the upper right. Colder? The bottom left. Nobody thinks of numeric temps so just make it like scrolling on a laptop touchpad – no need to look for anything specific, just specify the direction you want to go
It saves dollars per dashboard, and since the they don’t need to design anything behind the bezel saves even more money. Physical controls may be dirt cheap, but compared to a touchscreen they’re expensive per unit. This is why everything is moving to a touchscreen. And why I fucking curse Apple upon waking up every single day. You spend 7¢ per potentiometer, there’s four potentiometers, that’s 28¢. Spend another 70¢ per control board with an eight-bit CPU (or a dollar for an ARM v7). Add another 50¢ for the various transistors, resistors, and logic gates required for steady state controls that save energy and allow things like LED backlighting of the dials and buttons. The LEDs, on average there’s twenty four of them, are 3¢, so that’s 72¢. Plus the plastic moulding for the buttons, faceplate, and brackets to hold everything together, let’s say $2 for each.
So just for one set of controls for the basic temperature and airflow functions you’re looking at $8.20 to $8.50. Now duplicate the cost that for the radio controls, and add in the cost of having a separate and higher level CPU that costs $6 over the 68000/Z80 derivative’s $1, so that’s $8.20 plus $13.20 for a total of $21.40. That’s not including the cost of connectors or wiring, and each dashboard’s going to require a different mould set and component size, so if you sell six different models you’re spending $21.40 x 6 because you have six different component sets.
Versus, according to Digikey, you can get a 8.5″ touch screen overlay that uses the existing bus on your BCU/BCS with no additional boards for about $30 with bulk shipping of one hundred or more. No need for additional connectors, no need for extra CPUs or microcontrollers, and the screen and interface can be shared across every dashboard in your lineup driving per unit cost down even further since you’re only spending $30 x 1 since you only have one component set.
Shit like this is why laptops are being built with tablet screens turned sideways that wreak havoc with the display drivers and why your stove has a Bluetooth. The introduction of the slab style smartphone still kicks us in the teeth even sixteen years on.
Wait….I get why buttons on a dashboard cost more than throwing them on the touchscreen.
But doesn’t this change require more servos, connections, etc.?
Electronics are usually cheaper (materials, assembly, testing) than a mechanical assembly in large quantities. Warranty costs are another issue though, as you’re now dealing with larger assemblies.
Nope. You get one board instead of three, and one bus instead of two. Since power’s traveling along the same lines as the data, the only thing you need to worry about is the length of cable, and making six power connections each with their own terminal end (amplifier, fan, two vent actuators, two sets of lights) requires more cable than four combination power/data connections (fan, two vent actuators, BCU/BCM to screen) with just two terminal ends. Cheaper to make, very modular, but require far money more effort than they’re worth to modify or fix.
The economics of modern large scale manufacturing min-maxing simplicity:quality sucks for everyone but those who own the facilities to produce the components. Assemblers get squeezed into ever more restricting engineering tolerances, end customers get more homogenous products, repairmen get unsalvageable waste, and tinkerers get nothing to toy with.
okay, but still…. two servo’s for each vent opening (8 for the width of the dash?) still sounds more costly than just adding a protrusion to the plastic vents you still need.
I get it that fan speed and temperature sitting on the same controlboard and touchscreen is cheaper than separate controls plus wiring, and is has been standard for ages. But manual vents don’t need that wiring+motors to start with… so…(still baffled like Jason).
These servos and wires are additional compared to manual vents. They are not replacing the mechanics (they still operate the vents, like your hand would).
Yeah, I’d want to see a BOM to understand how mechanical bits + servos + software + wiring are cheaper than just the mechanical bits.
I despise apple with no shame, but I do have to say they didn’t invent the slab-style smartphone (and tablet, by extension) they did popularize it (how I don’t know).
Oh no, they didn’t. Sony and Nokia came up with that about seven years earlier. But Apple did make it popular by using Sweaterboy McNevertookabath’s cult of personality to make the design into a fashion statement. How people believed the hype of a man who poured sand on himself instead of taking showers and believed eating dragonfruit could cure his cancer I’ll never know.
Fun fact: Sweaterboy McNevertookabath would wash his feet at work IN THE TOILETS.
He also wasted a liver transplant, effectively killing someone else, because he refused to treat his easily treatable cancer.
He parked his car in disabled spots and dgaf.
You save in not having $$ motors/linkages/software/wiring/etc vs the basically free cost of a nub of plastic to direct each vent.
You forgot another detail- if the screen freezes up, say, in backup camera mode for several minutes, then you lose all control over this. I’m guessing though that Rivian and Tesla don’t have this problem as much as Chevy. It’s rare, but sucks when I can’t turn on heated seats or even the heat for several minutes in well below freezing temps because the screen in the Bolt froze up.
With a touchscreen, you can’t even turn the heater on when the computer freezes!
In a Cybertruck, you can’t put it in Drive!
The only sorta rational benefit I can draw from touchscreen vent controls is it lets the driver more easily control the passenger side vents.
My wife has a bad habit of closing off the passenger vents and/or moving them to all kinds of crazy angles. A lot of my customers ride in my car to lunches and such, and it would be nice if there was “reset” for the vents that brought them all back to a neutral position and fully opened them. That seems like something that could be done with a screen-based control, but that very minor convenience is not at all worth the increased complexity in my mind.
That said, the screen-based controls was one of the reasons I did NOT choose a Tesla, and I stand by that decision.
Though I’m not a fan of motors to control these things, if they were motorized this could pretty readily be set to happen when starting the car, inserting a particular key, etc. Because we’re really shooting for the moon here, we could even have an option to “Reset HVAC vents on vehicle start Yes/No”
“Is that really that bad? Are those little tabs so abominable? If you actually think so, then I’m not sure there is enough grass for you to touch in all of the British Isles or Kansas or wherever.”
Yeah, the tabs aren’t the most ascetically pleasing. I say this standing barefoot in the green Wisconsin grass.
All of this stuff comes from software engineers who despise having a driver in the vehicle, and is eaten up by customers who want to be as isolated as possible from the experience of being in a car. Just like the Model 3 eliminating control stalks for turn signals, or using the touch screen for drive modes.
I’ve always stood by my assessment that Tesla’s are the best car like appliance for people who don’t like cars and take an “I don’t want to think about it, it should just work.” approach to technology.
I wouldn’t say that about a lot of Tesla decisions. It’s just good old fashioned cost cutting. Every control on the touchscreen is a control you don’t have to build. The (completely asinine) touch signals are because Tesla doesn’t want to pay the turn signal stalk guys.
That said not wanting to think about things isn’t a bad thing at all. I’m driving, I don’t want to think about how minor controls work – thinking about them means I’m not thinking about the important part of driving. Too many touchscreen systems require way too much thinking.
I wonder if we will reach a day where the touchscreen controls are standard and physical buttons are an additional cost optional feature.
You know what was cool in BMW’s until they killed it off a few years ago? There are physical buttons below the radio that look like radio presets, but can can be programmed to any screen within the infotainment center. Want a button to take you to the audio settings page? Go to that screen and then press and hold the preset button to set it. They can be radio presets too. You can hover over them with your finger and they show what the preset is on the screen too.
It is incomprehensible to me that BMW went essentially pure touchscreen – the physical buttons were one of their differentiators – and the NRE was paid off years (decades?) ago, so their production costs are probably very low. Trying to (probably not) save a few pennies on the handful of buttons they had just doesn’t make sense – if I wanted no buttons (or weird almost buttons) I would buy a Porsche, Lucid, or Rivian.
That Lucid picture makes the cockpit look awesome – now I need to stop myself from looking up the current lease deal on the Lucid Air – they had been getting better, and it is really tempting, although my “Elise” pays the electric bill, so we would have to work something out – my plan was to go (PHEV) electric when our solar panels age out of the SRECs and I can get my installer to install some more panels.
I like to think that one day legislation will catch up and require certain physical controls. Probably only safety-related ones like the gear selector, indicators, wiper/washer, door latches, window controls, mirrors, seats, exterior/interior lighting and cruise control. Maybe sound on/off, defroster and interior storage, if we’re lucky.
My expectation is that, without regulation, economy cars will be all-touch soon to save cost and, in a decade or so, buyers of luxury cars will start to demand physical controls for the “tactile experience” and “timeless design” after seeing how horribly dated their touch screens got. Novelty only lasts so long, eventually actual functionality and value prevail in markets that can afford it.
About that Lucid Air picture:
There’s a picture of the car itself on US 163 between Kayenta and Mexican Hat Utah in the middle of the dashboard. It brings up so many questions.
Is that some weird option for the nav system, a third person view of where you are? Awesome! Kind of useless, but still, Awesome!
What’s the nearest charging station when you are US 163 between Kayenta and Mexican Hat Utah?
If you’re not on US 163 between Kayenta and Mexican Hat Utah, why that picture?
If it is to remind people the car looks like in case they forget and can’t find it, it’s not going to do much good there on the dashboard. That is sort of like locking the combination to the safe inside the safe. If the car is parked on US 163 bla bla bla, its’s probably the only one there making it doubly useless.
Nearest charging station to Kayenta/Mexican Hat would be Bluff, UT, with an L3 charger, and a (good) restaurant with free L2. Next closest might be an L2 in Tuba City, then stuff in Flagstaff, but I haven’t used those since the furthest I’ve taken the Bolt is the Moki dugway and valley of the gods loop in that area. I would think the Lucid with the extra range would probably be able to make it through that area just fine though.
The next question would be, has a Lucid ever traveled between Kayenta and Mexican Hat? Or could that be a first?
Jason, There is a simple answer. The manufacturers want to collect data on the HVAC preferences of their customers so they can sell it to the highest bidder. To paraphrase one tech bro: You’re a pedo just for asking.
Probably because they come from a software background and not ergonomics or automotive background and are designing from the standpoint of novelty as innovation, and not from a ‘what’s best for the driver’ standpoint.
I will not buy a car that requires me to do this. Or makes me open the glove box with a screen.
At this point, with infotainment and CAN, you’re mostly just asking your car to provide you something. Can you please redirect the airflow to my face? Can you please play music? Can you please turn on the heated seats? Can you please start the engine?
My Grand Cherokee has the automatic “dual zone” climate control. It stays either set all the way on low or all the way on high. It does not get set in the middle. Tried using the automatic control (think of it kind of as a house thermostat) once and it was absolutely terrible. Just let me freeze my butt off in peace…
Also, I fiddle with my vents often. Think I’ll stick with my 13 year old car…
Wait, what?? I was already having a crummy day and learning that touchscreen HVAC vent controls exist has made it substantially worse.
That’s why we chose the Lexus RX 350 with the 12.3″ nav screen. It’s a great balance between a nice sized screen and a gaggle of well-placed buttons in a compact area:
https://weberbrothersauto.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/2022/12/Lexus-RX350-XA139-30-scaled.jpg
The buttons control most HVAC ops, fresh/recirculated air, sound volume, CD track and eject, split AC temp settings, rear, front or mirror defrost, rear seatbelt warnings, fan speed, analog clock, and center vent controls, and no need to touch a screen for any of that.
Just wait until they replace the interface with some half baked AI. An AI that’ll know (err…”know”) where they need to be pointed based on an array of cabin temperature sensors.
That’s the final nail in the usability coffin.
at some point “minimalist” just becomes waaaay to obnoxious. Nobody can agree where that line is but we all agree that it exists..
It’s also a 2D interface controlling a 3D mechanic and vents are often difficult to nail the exact proper angle first time if you’re trying to hit a specific part of yourself, so now add in the negative effect of repeated adjustments with the screen. There is no defense. I’m convinced these people aren’t human or they’re such a mutated evolution thanks to the large defeat of the rules of Darwinian survival that would have seen them die out in a world where they weren’t completely protected from the dangers they present to themselves that they’ve been able to develop and survive in spite of their every single instinct and idea being anathema to survival and in total opposition of the rest of the human population. Perhaps they were all home schooled in some basement closet and inbred over generations as part of some kind of sick experiment or desire to bring back the late Habsburg dynasty, but that doesn’t fit their particular and industry-standard set of dysfunctions. Now that I think of it, I’m not even sure they’re sentient organisms as any animal aware enough to understand the basics of this system would prefer the simple and obvious mechanical solution and I feel completely safe in speaking for them here. This might be an idea generated by some AI to distract us and keep us frustrated while it works behind the scenes to seize control of us. That would explain so many other BS features on modern cars and electronics, too.
when you are an “expert” in a system it is harder to see the friction to learn and get familiar with a system. It is important to take feedback from “civilians” and LISTEN TO WHAT THEY SAY. I’m sure a lot of complaints are solved by “well just become more familiar with the system.” But many people do NOT want to have to get used to a whole new thing. they just want to drive the damned car.
Exactly. The regular people I talk to hate all this overcomplicated junk. They don’t want to read a 600 page book to learn how to operate something that had been long figured out decades ago and pretty much standardized or had an obvious mode of operation. People remember when you bought a new car and just drove off, knowing where everything was and how to operate it without needing to be shown. Nor are they unaware that this crap is not only more likely to fail, but is not a simple fix, but they buy them anyway because most of the cars are doing it and those are problems for people who have the car after they turn in their lease. I hate anything that is designed to be disposable and unserviceable, bad reimagining of perfected solutions, and head-smackingly stupid design, so this kind of thing splits multiple arrows in the bullseye of annoyance for me. I suppose Robin Hood would be impressed.
The Rayman problem: When the only testing is internal you run the risk of creating something that is near impossible for anyone else.
Having played Rayman Origins to the bitter end, including the death challenges or whatever at the end, I can say that *tearing up* I’m sorry it’s still just so hard to talk about *sobs*
Well, if only have the left arm and drives a LHD car and wants to move passenger side vents…
It won’t be ideal, but a bit better maybe? But I am considering that vent at the edge of the dashboard.
“Well, if only have the left arm and drives a LHD car and wants to move passenger side vents…”
Then you’re still going to crash, but you’ll be looking at a screen instead.
Ha jokes on them, i wont ever have enough money to buy a 2024 car. I will be buying shit from the 90s and early 2000’s for the rest of my life
…And loving it!
Twiddly handle that opens the windscreen if you are driving a posh car. or a lever that opens the flappy vents if you are driving a Land Rover. I still think that AC in cars is dark magic.
Looking at this demo is like a foreign world to me with my 15 year old F150 & 20 year of Mustang. And I’m pretty content living in the past based on this
I’m in the same bracket, and you know, I’m just fine with not knowing the exact temperature in my car (much less on different sides) or having to slide a vent closed with my fingers.
I can see once cars routinely drive themselves that touchscreens will make sense, but until then, I’m literally using my hands to operate things, so its not exactly that big an effort on the margin.
yeah, I have a car with a temp control. I end up adjusting it more than I did with the previous cars cold -> slider.
When I drive what I want is vents blowing cool air or warm air. I don’t care about a specific temperature, I want it cooler than ambient or warmer than ambient. With a set temp I have to nudge the temp up or down as ambient changes.
I can see once it’s all EVs all the time, electricity consumption will have to be scrutinized for optimal usage (like we do with our homes now), so the precision will make sense then, but in a hybrid or ICE car, it’s just not that critical.
PHEV here. I hadn’t thought about it this way before, but yeah I get your point. There is a noticeable hit to range with both AC and heat. So I can see how my usage is counterproductive to range.
Huh. Gonna have to change habits at some point
On the topic of failure modes, my car had a broken vent when I purchased it. After pulling it out (a few screws and clips to remove the whole panel it was mounted to), I quickly spotted the broken plastic vane and fixed it using my wife’s gel nail polish (the real strong UV-cure stuff) and a few inches of sewing thread for reinforcement. Works like a charm now, and saved me like $50. The trouble-shooting process for a touch-screen-controlled vent alone sounds unbearable.
Oooooh I love it. I just used a few bristles from a steel wire brush in some JB weld on a small steel tab recently myself. I was feeling pretty clever, you bet your sweet bippy
I love fixing anything and everything with Duroplast. It’s an East German invention composed of cotton fabric soaked in resin, most famous for composing the entire body of the Trabant. I keep T-shirts that don’t fit anymore around as repair patches, it’s even better because I can color-match. I keep old guitar strings around just in case I need a super-strong version, but haven’t gotten to use them yet.
My headphones, a high-pressure power steering line (that one I also tightly lashed in JB-weld-soaked paracord to add some pre-tension), and in the near future, a fender well liner, all made stronger than factory with some JB-weld and some fabric and/or rope.
I should add wire-brush bristles to my repertoire, the wavy metal should hold better than the plain guitar strings and be more compact than the wound ones.
We really need a happy cry emoji in here. Amazing.
Duroplast + guitar strings = instant rebar
Its more of a gimmick to show to family and friends but in reality I would be pissed that if I am driving and need to adjust the air vents that I have to go to a different menu on the screen and be all distracted to find the perfect adjustment when the vent is just right there.
In the Rivian, it’s almost like the vents could be better located to cool or heat or dehumidify you if there wasn’t A GIANT SLAB OF TOUCHSCREEN TAKING UP THAT REAL ESTATE ON THE DASH.
You’re preaching to the choir, Jason.