Climate Control: Digital or Manual?

Modern cars these days come with a lot of new technology which revolutionizes their older counterparts, such as automatic headlights, wipers and even the start-stop system. It just keeps on getting more and more high tech. Then there’s the climate control system. Most cars in the market have their own automatic climate control systems which makes the car look and feel more upmarket. But, is it even necessary? In this article, we will help you decide whether or not your next car should be one with automatic climate control or a manual air conditioning system.

To answer that question simply, the answer is no. Bear with me as this is something you’ll want to hear. To put things into perspective, the innovation of the air conditioning system aims at the comfort and convenience of the driver and their occupants. It is meant to be used and accessed extremely easily via a few knobs and switches. However, carmakers these days have gone in a different route when implementing innovative air conditioning controls. 

The Screen

Some cars such as Honda are practicing the idea of touch screen climate control panels on their cars. The idea is as such. The entire dashboard is devoid of buttons, giving a clean look and feel to the entire interior. While that idea may have sounded great, it didn’t really go as well as expected when in use. If you own a Honda that has the touch screen air conditioning controls, you’ll know what I mean. When you’re driving and you want to adjust the fan speed or temperature, you would need to take your eyes off the road in order to locate the right icons. This is both dangerous and also inconvenient.

The Screen(s)

Now Honda’s idea might be bad to an extent, it can’t be as bad or as unusable as a French car company. Peugeot’s latest models have gone in an almost complete dashboard wipe with the omission of any buttons on the dashboard. By buttons, I’m referring to the lack of controls for the climate control system. How Peugeot does it is by moving the controls to a separate menu located within the central touch screen. Again, the idea sounds great especially since the screens themselves are located within view. But not everything is perfect as the screen is both laggy and the icons are hard to locate.

Lack Of Design

When the word “design” comes to mind, you won’t think about touch screens. Usually in cars, the designers will come up with various looks to integrate the air conditioning systems into the dashboard of the car. Usually, cars with actual knobs and physical switches tend to stand out more as compared to a black screen with limited functionality.

Innovative Implementation

As for the good points for touch screen air conditioning controls, there’s no arguing the fact that it is an innovative change. The fact that you can control the air flow with nothing more than just a touch, is quite amazing if you ask me.

Verdict

To reiterate my earlier point, having a touch screen air conditioning system isn’t a logical solution in today’s world. There are still too many kinks and niggles that for some people, it becomes very off putting. But, if you can overlook these niggles and embrace the touch screen beauty, then all is good.