I would like to expose the stupidity of the electronic climate control in cars. This has been a standard feature in luxury cars for some time, and is quickly becoming a standard feature in every other segment.
Ideally, the way that electronic climate control would work is you would set it to 75
o or so, and then leave it there. But that's not how it works. At best, you have to constantly fiddle around with it to maintain a comfortable temperature in the interior of your car. At worse, it takes far longer to fiddle around with it, because it takes several button presses every time you want to adjust the temperature.
How could the car manufacturers think that you will just want to maintain one temperature in the car at all times? The temperature that you will want it at is going to depend on how much sun is coming through the windows, the humidity, how much clothing you are wearing, etc.
Remember the old style A/C controls?

There used to be a knob for the fan control and a knob for temperature control. Adjusting the temperature was quick and easy, because you just had to turn a knob -- something you could easily do while driving without even having to look down from the road.
Here are the A/C controls from my car:

This is actually the best case scenario, because the settings are similar to the older style controls. In the morning, when it's cold, I can easily flip the temperature control to one end of the dial... and in the afternoon, when it's hot, I can flip it to the other end of the dial.
In many cars nowadays, instead of the temperature control being a knob, it is a set of buttons. So, if you want to go from 78
o to 68
o when you get in your car in the afternoon, it takes 10 button presses. And let's not forget that those buttons are harder to find when driving...
And don't forget about the automatic fan control. We have three different cars, all of different makes, and the first thing that I do whenever I turn on the A/C in any of them is turn off the automatic fan control. Why do the car makers think that they will know how to control the fan better than I could? The desired fan speed is going to depend on whether you have passengers in the back, or whether you're wearing sunglasses (higher fan speeds bother my eyes if I'm not wearing sunglasses), etc.
Just give me the old style A/C controls, please...
Picture of older style A/C controls from phoenixdailyphoto's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].Labels: cars, electronics, peeves