Oh, there is. I love having a set of controls separate from the passenger side.
If you truly believe this, replace your home thermostat with the same controls. Live with that shit for awhile.
Yeah, just make them more robust and maybe add more steps between settings.
Oh Look at Mr fancy pants here with his working heater in his reasonable priced car!
Por que no los dos?
I’ve got an old car and it’s still like this. I don’t look forward to the day I have to get a new car.
Yeah like, all I wish my car had was Bluetooth capabilities but besides that I love my older car.
Swap the radio its pretty easy and only costs like $50. I got an old Japanese import that has Bluetooth that connects to my phone as I enter the car. Its also got USB to play music from and charge from.
Good call, I definitely had the thought but never pulled the trigger on it because I never found a specific replacement that I liked. I’ll have to look into it again when I can afford it!
I was considering upgrading to something with a screen and maybe gps, but couldn’t lock a model down.
We had to buy a new (used 2022) car after we ran out old car into the ground. The touch screen controls temperatures. There wasn’t a single variant of the car that didn’t have a giant ass touch screen. It makes me really uncomfortable when the screen no longer works.
There’s also some other things that piss me off.
But Some of the pros (and why we accepted that trade off):
- all wheel drive
- fancy sensors when someone is in my blindside
- it opens when it senses the key is nearby.
- heated seats with controls. (Used to bring hot packs because it gets cold here)
- cameras for the rear
- it does that cool thing where it breaks if it senses you might collide. I hated it at first but I’m old now and it saved me once from collision.
Either way, fuck cars and if public transportation was better here, id use that.
Kia doing static controls for entertainment and HVAC is a big part of why I bought one.
I would be really uncomfortable with a car where I had to touch a giant’s ass to make it go.
I almost agree with this, but I prefer just one more advancement over this: the thermostat kind. I like to just set the temperature so I don’t have to keep adjusting it.
Nothing fancy, no touchscreen bs, just simple knobs. I was perfectly happy with the thermostat feature in my old 1997 Pontiac Grand Prix GT.
My new car is a 2025 model, but it’s an Indian made Japanese Kei car so the interior is super basic. and it has large, infinitely spinning knobs for temperature and fan strength, and a digital temperature readout. I really like them.
When the temp was cold in the morning but now it’s hot, I spin those dials like wheel of fortune to the left and immediately set the AC to cold and fast. No repeated button presses.
The only downside is that it doesn’t have one of those knobs for music volume.
It’s really interesting that I agree with you, but so many people insist that they’re new and fancy tools are somehow making their lives significantly better. And obviously it’s an opinion question, it’s not like they’re lying, but I just don’t see the value that many of them do.
My car has climate control. I set it to 72 degrees once a long time ago and rarely have touched it since.
The fascination with dumb controls in a car is odd to me. It seems like people overshoot the “I want physical controls I can feel my way around without looking” and get into “give me the Flintstones car” lately.
I long for the days it was two horizontal sliders. Cold to left, slide to the right the warmer you wanted. Low to the left, slight to the right for high fan. Now it’s all this digital horse shit and it takes years of me being bored at red lights to be motivated to explore all the menu drudgery on the console. Now it all has fucking wifi and tracker nonsense too.
Only missing a night picture with the red LED backlight on
Yes the temp sensor is a worthy addition to the formula. Imagine fiddling with your 80s/90s A/C running on ye olde R-12 to get the temperature right lol.
Agree with the addition of a low and high setting. I don’t care what the target cabin temp is, if I just got into my car after braving some crazy wind chill I want to be air fried for a bit.
achkually your title is wrong because it was never improved upon.
Honestly. I prefer my current EVs AC. I have set it to 2q degrees when I first got it and I haven’t touched it since.
I don’t like “more cold” or “more hot” dials. I know what I like, 21 degrees and if the car can keep exactly that? I’m happy.
One of my older minivans had a digital thermostat and it was just about the only digital control in a car I can tolerate. Though, I am still doubtful if it was actually the temp I set it to. It’s not like I had a thermometer inside the car.
One of my knobs broke and to this day, I can’t work out how to replace it. Where do you even buy them from??? 🙃
Used parts! Junkyards, eBay, whatever. Odds are you’ll be able to find a replacement unless the factory knob was super fragile or your vehicle is exceedingly rare.
If your vehicle is vaguely popular it’ll probably have a stl (think exported 3D shape) available. In that case I’ll print/mail you one assuming you’re in the US. If you’re not in the US hop over to !3DPrinting@lemmy.world and I’m sure someone will help you out.
Amazon, parts store, junkyard, find someone to 3D print one for you
Wreckers?
Yeah, there’s a pick-n-pull in Lakewood that I have recommended to people, even though I’ve never needed it myself.
I have that heater/AC unit
Was it?
I love auto settings, it means much less fiddling/interaction (which is safer).
My last manual AC car was from the “previous millennium”. Why wouldn’t you want to set the temperature?
(Physical buttons tho, tho it’s hard to get it these days. But even touchscreen climate control should be very low interaction.)Also manual AC usually means no HUD, no adaptive high beams, no radar, etc. Those are essentials that do a lot for road safety, and all were available since mid 90s (high end at the time).
