New Honda Jazz comes with conventional air-conditioning dials

KUALA LUMPUR: In the era of hi-fi tech features and displays, the Japanese car brand, Honda is highlighted for bringing back the conventional air-conditioning dial controls. Honda recently launched the 2020 Jazz model in Japan in which the touch panel configuration of air conditioning is replaced by the ordinary dial setup. 

Upon asking about this u-turn in the area of ergonomics, Jazz project leader Takeki Tanaka stated, “The reason is quite simple – we wanted to minimize driver disruption for operation, in particular for the heater and air-conditioning.”

He also added that it had been changed from touchscreen to dial operation, as the firm received customer feedback that it was difficult to operate intuitively. The driver had to look at the screen to change the heater seating, therefore, the firm has decided to change it. Now one can operate it without looking, which will give more confidence while driving.

On the other side, most of the automakers are taking inspiration from smartphones and trying to replace the physical control buttons/dials with the touchscreen panels. The same has been observed in the latest Audi A3. For this context, the head of electronics of Audi A3, Melanie Limmer said that the decision to remove some physical buttons was made as more and more people were getting into touch functions with smartphones, so the touchscreen system is more user friendly.

Coming to the Honda decision of revert technology, it would be popular among the people, especially in the case of aged customers. However, the experts suggest that voice-controlled actions could end the argument between analog and touchscreen control.

Also read: 2020 Honda City unveil event cancelled due to Coronavirus (Covid-19), might impact Malaysian launch too!