Good- and I;d support a move to real buttons for things like demisters and heaters as well. Having to look down and wibble e a fingertip distracts from looking at the road.

Yesterday my car decided to speak Spanish and to use kilometres rather than miles, random things can happen on both the touchscreen and dashboard.

The auto dipping headlights stopped dipping a few weeks ago as well, so I’m back to using the stalk switches for that function, as the technology isn’t 100% reliable, hopefully it will remain as minor issues and not escalate.

My ten year old car has buttons for the heating controls and I have to look down to see which of a row of buttons, which have no sensory indicators, I need to press and look at the display to see what direction I have selected for the airflow as the one button cycles them. Buttons are not the answer.

I read that BMW have made their controls easier to use in the new cars. One has to ask why they made them difficult in the first place.

My old Saab 9000 claimed to have ergonomic controls and I have to say they were intelligently grouped and easy to use without looking. 

Being an old fogy I do despair at the success of design over function in most aspects of modern life.

Yesterday my car decided to speak Spanish and to use kilometres rather than miles

Just be thankful it didn't decide to start driving on the right hand side of the road for you!

   - Andy.

The lease on my car has just run out and lots of small things have just stopped working. No warning, just stopped. You can go and pay for them back again and one (which I didn't know about or use) is auto dipping headlights. There was some publicity a little while ago when BMW started offering features (e.g. heated seats) by rental - they got quite a lot of kickback. Personally I think it is very poor engineering to provide a feature that people come to rely on then suddenly yank it without warning. It also seems unethical to try to force them to pay by encouraging use for 3 years first!

Mine is an Audi so it's not just BMW playing tricks with things that are installed and working, but stop by design not faults.

I agree Roger! I think the current process of 'subscribing' to certain functions in your vehicle is a stretch too far. 'Oh you haven't paid for your heated seats subscription this month so we're switching it off' 'Oh you want to use the headlights? That'll be an extra £2.99 a month thank you'. 

My usual car is a 23 year old Audi TT with all the basic functions that I need to get me from A to B. Unfortunately I've just taken it off the road as I'm having issues with the alignment of the cam belt (long story I won't go into it). As a temporary run around (until my pride and joy is fixed) I've got myself another second hand 20 year old car, again with just basic controls that can get me from A to B just fine. I don't need automatic lights as I can switch my lights on and off just fine by myself and I certainly don't need a touch screen to distract me from driving. I know where all the buttons and switches are in the car by touch alone. I don't have to take my eyes of the road

But then if you look at how dashboards went before the invention of touchscreens, it's not a lot better.  My 13 year-old Land Rover has a sea of buttons, many no bigger than a thumbnail.  It's impossible to find the right one without looking down and studying the cryptic symbols on them.

Nissan are no longer fully supporting the technology in their Nissan leaf cars after eight years.

Nissan accused of dumping its electric car pioneers (msn.com)

Sorry for expanding the discussion, but it is not just cars.  I have a digital radio.  It has buttons, and a rotary control.  You press a button to switch it on - for about ¾ second, and it switches on to a digital channel.  Any longer, then it does a scan, longer than that it switches to fm but as there is no signal it just makes a noise.  The same button is used to switch off – if you press it for the right length of time.

I have an induction hob (an expensive one).  This has touch controls.  I can usually switch it on, but my wife has great difficulty because it just doesn’t detect her finger.  It has automatic detection of a pan on a heated area, except when it decides the pan is somewhere different in the middle of cooking.

It is not just about buttons or touch controls, but design and engineering.  At least my radio or hob does not crash when they misbehave.

I have the thing with touch controls not detecting my fingers too - I think it is to do with dry skin. In fact I remember breaking the first touch screen photocopier at the university of york electronics dept because as I tried to get it to start, nothing happened, and the advice was to push a bit to make a larger contact area. The chap from the copier hire place was not very impressed either, as we both discovered the hard way that even a pressure that exceeded the failure of the glass did not register as a press....

Now I lick the finger tips, which works, but does not feel very hygienic.

Mike.