Probably unpopular here, but good riddance to the rotary knob. We have a 2025 CX-90 PHEV and if it didn't have the touch screen and wireless AA/Carplay we wouldn't have bought it. The built in infotainment is hot garbage, it is laggy, convoluted, and whoever came up with the rotary keyboard to enter an address into the nav was nuts.
But the capacitive buttons on the steering wheel is a step in the wrong direction.
If it's anything like my 2023 Ford, literally EVERYTHING runs thorugh the Touchscreen interface, and if that glitches or craps out, it takes a ton of vehcile functionality with it, effectively bricking your vehicle.
I wouldn't be confident that our CX-90 that has buttons wouldn't have the same issue. Just because the buttons are separate doesn't mean that the controls don't depend on a shared system with the infotainment. Modern buttons on cars aren't like switches that manually control those functions, they go to a control module which does the control which has an equal opportunity to lock up and cause issues.
But in general on our CX-90 I welcome the shift to android automotive because the charging control is the built in infotainment, you have to deal with Mazda's existing laggy garbage software to adjust anything related to the PHEV functionality.
Congratulations on driving in a nice stable apparently not very humid or cold environment- do you also keep the car in a garage?
For others, like me, who have to deal with ice on the inside of the wind screen at first, there’s a fairly high degree of knob twiddling in the first few miles of driving - though I suppose it could sit on the drive with the heater running for 20 minutes before setting off. But if the weather turns cold, rain starts, and the car fogs up…
You do realize that modern cars has fog sensor to automatically defrost the windshield when necessary? I live in the New Hampshire and have never had to switch my HVAC off of auto in my 22 Ford Maverick. Sometimes I will change the auto fan speed if I want more air blowing or not.
In general modern HVAC in cars works significantly worse if you keep messing with them versus just letting them do their job.
No, I didn’t know that - it’s not on my 2016 model Audi, nor anything I’ve hired. I look forward to a future when it’s standard on all cars at all spec levels and can cope with starting with ice on the inside of the car.
They have been standard for a decent amount of time now. My 2016 Hyundai Ioniq (a pretty bare bones model) had it, and at this point it is fairly old at 10 years old (No matter how much that pains me to say). And both our 25 CX-90 PHEV and 22 Ford Maverick have no issues automatically defrosting even with ice buildup on the inside of the windshield after being parked outside, they even enable the AC automatically to assist in dehumidifying in the winter.
In general though I am for people not messing with unnecessary things while driving whether it is physical buttons or touch screens.
