[AT] [External] Re: driver convenience systems

[Gunnells, Brad R]

I was going to respond in a similar way. I have a few Toyota’s in the fleet between my wife and I, and the kids. Following a Toyota forum there’s talk about specialty software for configuring things such as security features and operational behavior (door chimes, auto locking doors, etc).

All a manufacturer has to do is to code into software some of those changes via onboard touch screen and voila! Now we have a new “feature” (that’s always been there) that we can sell to the consumer at added cost. So I can understand the desire from a manufacturers standpoint to put some of those things in a menu on the touch screen vs a switch. One assembly line at the plant can use the same wiring harness for the base model and the deluxe. My daily driver (Camry LE) has the fog light wiring and plugs behind the bumper even though it was never equipped with them. It was probably cheaper for Toyota to put the same harness of the XLE model in vs having multiple on the assembly line.

Now from a consumer standpoint this seems silly. Why encourage drivers to take their eyes off the road navigating a touch screen menu when they can use tactile feel to find a switch to make a control change………..

Brad

From: AT <at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com> on behalf of Stephen Offiler <soffiler at gmail.com>
Reply-To: Antique group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Date: Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 4:39 AM
To: Antique group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Subject: [External] Re: [AT] driver convenience systems

Hey Cecil - let me just take that WAYYYY off topic.  Touch screen.  I work with CNC machines.  We found a niche where we purchase older machines and refurbish them to make our parts, and we still wind up at a small fraction of the cost of new.  Three machines that date to 1989-1991 have control panels that look a bit like an airplane cockpit, just a sea of knobs and switches.  Once you get used to it, they all make sense. We recently got a "new" machine, a 1997 model.  Very sparse control panel relatively speaking.  All the functions are in there, but I have to call up menus to make the changes that are a flip of a switch on the other machines.  I decided it must be a cost thing.  A couple lines of code in the operating system versus the cost of a toggle switch, the cost of drilling the hole, and the cost of running the wires.  That's quite a few dollars cost to the machine mfg per switch, and there's a lot of switches.  My actual problem with this is training the employees.  We have a lot of "old dog, new trick" problems at my workplace and the guys are pretty used to the toggle switches.

SO


On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 11:18 PM Cecil Bearden <crbearden at copper.net<mailto:crbearden at copper.net>> wrote:

Spencer:

The ridiculous ting is that the setting is on a touch screen instead of a switch.
Cecil
On 1/22/2020 2:43 PM, Spencer Yost wrote:
You can toggle a setting that allows the lighting stalk to be “normal” brights on/off or be auto dim on/off.  But it’s a touch screen setting and 3 menus down....

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