Efficiency feedback

@retmil91 This generation uses fully-tactile controls for video games, to prevent premature death.

Same goes for motorbikes.

I have an android built into my cars dash and the single physical button push for voice commands such as, direction to xyz, take me home, play music xyz, gets used daily. Voice integration when done well is really useful. I could use my phone for this as well but the direction connection to my cars sound system and large easy to use display makes a difference.

Having a android in my dash has given me a strong appreciation of physical buttons. It takes a lot more effort to anchor some fingers on the dash while trying to navigate touch screen menus while driving. Programmable knobs would be the dream, especially if they can be sexified with oled tops that show their allocation and have Audi knob click quality. The default allocation should make sense, so most users will leave it alone.

I think the efficiency feedback when driving should be three meters. Active, passive and overall. Passive will take account for drag, bearings, tire pressure, ambient temp, wind speed, vehicle weight and can be shown as a % bar. Active will account for acceleration, auxiliary equipment, hard braking, and can be shown as a % bar. The product of the two will create a third % bar that shows overall efficiency. When not moving or when the car is in Park, the breakdown of contributing factors can be interrogated. The bars will calculate efficiency for each trip so at the end of the trip the user can be made aware of how driving a dirty aptera with bricks in the boot, flat tyres and a lead foot affected their efficiency.

Boeing was very good at Human Factors, you could find everything by feel, and a Dark Cockpit with no indicator lights if everything was normal. Even there, we had 2 pilots, and one was outside whenever the other was inside. We had Autopilot and in cruise we had time to play with navigation reroute programming and such. At low altitude when busy, there was very little inside time required unless in the clouds. I much prefer tactile knobs to a touchscreen where you have to look to find something. At the very least, have major functions in large icon boxes along the edge in consistent locations so easy to find and activate.

Much as I hate voice search, Voice Commands may suffice for some functions like Wipers On, Temperature warmer 2 degrees, Cruise Control to speed limit, and such, rather than looking inside for a couple seconds, (and half a football field) in order to do these functions on the touchscreen.

On another thread here, someone had the brilliant idea of an optional clip-on strip of user-programmable tactile knobs for those of us who appreciate their advantages. I'd pay a couple hundred bucks for that, especially if it was offered by Aptera instead of aftermarket.

I agree! Flat screens are “cool” looking, but are really a horrible interface for most interactive things in a car, like radio volume control or heating controls, and I especially don’t like them blasting light at me while I’m driving. I also don’t like the idea of my speed and power in and out being displayed to the right rather than right below my usual direction of vision where speedometers have been for decade. Just because Tesla has a big obnoxious screen to the right of the driver doesn’t make it the best choice for user interface.

Gamification: simple live feedback of good/bad driving but when you stop moving that is when you show a summary score. Many people will want to get high scores simply from that... and it means customers get greater distances; especially if estimated ranges are for a D-level driver; then most people feel great.

Some will want to tap on the thing for all the picky details. It's mostly software updates so the details can come later on.

Seat-belt usage; if you have an internal cam, even head tracking would "nudge" proper behavior. Even more so if you present scores in a relative context; comparing to other people has a huge impact. I certainly want an internal cam... to catch a thief; or make sure the driver is not falling asleep... don't even have to use the camera right now; but having a cheap one now makes ideas possible later.

Right, & it's not even "just" a matter of vision. Even as a passenger with no need to see anything else, I reach to touch a screen control, there's a slight dip in the road & I hit the wrong place.

Back to driving, in my car & most others I've driven, I can, for example, clear mist from the windshield in a split-second, without looking at anything. In my friend's Tesla 3, I feel for the stalk which doesn't do it, look at the screen, hit something like "car", then "wipers", then "on", then "off". Granted, they're supposed to come on by themselves, but they didn't, I suppose because mist had covered it while parked.

Now back to the subject line, my preferred efficiency feedback while driving is to have the option of displaying a power use number right on the speedo. Others may prefer a graphic &/or sound, so those would be nice options to have available.

More data should be made available while stopped, however Aptera has SO much efficiency & long range that I have a feeling I wouldn't care about most of it as much as I do with my current EV. It would be like switching from a gas-guzzler to a car that got 100mpg, & keeping track of when I got 101, or "only" 99.

I often say you should pick a UI primary target demographic but it could be a counter intuitive one like BLIND people! Design primarily for them on cars! Blind can not drive; however, the user's vision has things to do most the time so that sense should be considered missing. Touch, sound, spacial and avoid modes/complexity because IQ divides when multitasking. Buttons, Knobs, Switches, Sliders with different shapes / sizes in various locations.

THANK YOU!! Smooth, flat User Interfaces suck for driving. The subsequent update of my car intelligently replaced its nearly-flush dashboard volume buttons with a knob you can grab without looking.

Critics mentioned "outdated" REAL tactile knobs/switches in the Ford GT, which is made primarily for actually racing on a track. Duh! It's safer/easier to be able to feel a control without even glancing away from the road. That's why the horn is on the steering wheel! & why they moved many other switches there, or on nearby stalks (lights, wipers, volume, etc.)

Touch screens are horrible UI while operating a car but they are cheap. If the car is doing more of the driving then it's not so bad.

They should have some REAL buttons to pause music; skip song/radio; cruise control/autopilot. You should never need to touch the screen while driving.

Seriously though, if you want to be safe, you'd not allow access to most controls while moving, avoid animations. If we could trust drivers to be competent we'd not need car insurance.

I still see people driving and playing with their handheld cell phone pretty often and it's actually against the law here. Drivers should be but are often not being responsible. I'd feel better about all that data being available when the car is parked (Not at a stop light!) and not real time driving. Some of it is useful real time, but let's not tempt too much distraction from the main task.

All good points except for "CV" joints mentioned in the 1st post since Aptera has none due to hub motors.

Even though my Fiat EV always shows an efficiency graphic on the edge of the speedo, personally I prefer its real-time kW number display, showing negative during regen, & jumping to zero when the friction brakes kick in (below 6mph). A few clicks & it can show my current drive's average, & the overall average since the last time I reset it.

I have a phone app that shows a rather intimidating amount of data, including things like the temperature of each battery cell. However after monitoring & discovering that everything I've seen stays well within ideal operating range, the only thing I use it for daily is battery voltage, so that I can keep it at around it's ideal level when parked, because the car's own % display is not as accurate for that. Ideally, Aptera would allow setting the daily & "road-trip" max charge voltage. Teslas have a setting, although I think it only goes by the less accurate % reading.

Yes, very nice if the car itself stored data for you, for future access, in case for example you suddenly wonder if the vehicle has become less efficient than when you bought it several years ago.

I'm a former test engineer. My reaction is most will have no interest in much more than basic data like range, tire pressure warnings, and power consumption overall and maybe HVAC and entertainment separately. My next reaction is much of this data might be interesting to more with technical interests, but is potentially a dangerous distraction from the task of driving.

I would like to see lots of data and info available to display while driving, it would be cool to have gauges or something for Regen/Power use, Solar power, Aux power use, Regen efficiency, Wh/mile over time graph, graphs for energy produced by solar, battery temp? stuff like that would be cool, even better if we could customize the display with widgets to choose what we want to display

Leaf has some visual display feedback while driving but I found it somewhat distracting.

I think something subtle and simple to encourage better driving should be done.

1) an optional tiny color changing LED

2) optional SOUND that is off when doing well and gradually increases the sound of a fake engine working harder and harder. including over any music being played.

3) optional sound for regen vs brake use.

Aptera should make transparent the equivalent CO2 costs for their vehicle production and individual parts. This should include the CO2 cost of the production facilities as an overhead aggregated across their produced vehicles. On their website I think they should show the best estimates of per-capita CO2 targets required to avert climate disaster and demonstrate how their mode of transport fits into this puzzle. This would create meaningful segregation from vehicles like Tesla. Their design choices should also follow this philosophy, repair-ability and upgrade-ability being two big ones.