Ford, in their infinite wisdom, decided to make the touchscreen pressure-sensitive, but the flat physical buttons capacitive. Which means that it’s super easy to accidentally turn on the driver’s seat heater if you dare use the volume knob, impossible to use any of the physical buttons if you have normal gloves on, and very inaccurate to use the touchscreen with those same gloves on.
They know it, too, because when I had a 2013 Fusion, the overhead console with the dome light buttons was the same capacitive bullshit, and my 2015 Fusion has a regular button. (Apart from these design flaws, I love the car, which is why I replaced one with the other.)
At least you had a volume knob. Last week I drove a new Renault Clio via local carsharing, and it had a touchscreen, where you had to click a button on the screen to pop up a slider next to it, where you could change the volume. It had like 5 buttons on the steering wheel, some of them even looked like they could be used for controlling the volume, but no, they were for cruise control or whatever, the only way to change the volume was via the touchscreen with two taps.
We had a Civic with that kind of weird slidy up/down volume control, total garbage.
A knob for volume control has been the standard for car audio since there was car audio. If you’re going to change that, why not put the clutch pedal all the way on the right?
Ford, in their infinite wisdom, decided to make the touchscreen pressure-sensitive, but the flat physical buttons capacitive. Which means that it’s super easy to accidentally turn on the driver’s seat heater if you dare use the volume knob, impossible to use any of the physical buttons if you have normal gloves on, and very inaccurate to use the touchscreen with those same gloves on.
They know it, too, because when I had a 2013 Fusion, the overhead console with the dome light buttons was the same capacitive bullshit, and my 2015 Fusion has a regular button. (Apart from these design flaws, I love the car, which is why I replaced one with the other.)
At least you had a volume knob. Last week I drove a new Renault Clio via local carsharing, and it had a touchscreen, where you had to click a button on the screen to pop up a slider next to it, where you could change the volume. It had like 5 buttons on the steering wheel, some of them even looked like they could be used for controlling the volume, but no, they were for cruise control or whatever, the only way to change the volume was via the touchscreen with two taps.
We had a Civic with that kind of weird slidy up/down volume control, total garbage.
A knob for volume control has been the standard for car audio since there was car audio. If you’re going to change that, why not put the clutch pedal all the way on the right?