I really want this to work. I love screens. I think this will be a great interaction model when Autopilot lives up to its name. In the meantime, though, I worry that this is worse than using a phone while driving. Essential functions like windshield wipers require eye contact to locate, engage, and receive feedback.

Furthermore, there are lots of opportunities to execute this better. Small problems with touchscreen responsiveness (present in the video) require more eyeball time and attention. Some of the A/C controls are confusing even from the comfort of my office chair. Music controls get more touch target space than they deserve relative to driving-essential functions.

Overall I think this is really cool, but I worry what it will mean for safety.

I had a chance to drive in one, and I really didn't care for the UI. Nothing felt intuitive. None of the unlabeled(why?) icons could pass the "sniff test." For simple functions like popping the hood or turning on the led headlights, I didn't know where to look. Though I'm sure this would be learned over time, it's disconcerting as a first-time driver (I would never feel comfortable lending this to a friend or family member). Also the lack of tactile feedback and the need to take your eyes off the road made me feel very uncomfortable.

The worst part though was something that no other reviewer seems to have touched on yet. I was a passenger in the Model 3 at night, and the big, glowing screen in the front of the car was a huge distraction that I kept wanting to wish away. It's like having a television in your bedroom when you're trying to sleep at night. It's this big, bright screen (it dims but it doesn't dim too low, I never tried but I can't imagine that Tesla lets you turn it off). It needs blue-light (flux) to deal with the eye strain. Regardless of where in the car I was sitting (passenger seat or back seats) my attention was fixed to the screen and I couldn't look away. There's just so much going on on it (from Sirius XM cover art to fancy rendered tesla models and popping icons) that it's hard to look away.

Honestly I stare at a computer screen all day long and my screen-less commute to work is some sweet respite. This may not be an issue during the day, but it certainly affected me at night. If you're trying to imagine what it's like, think about long road-trips or taxi drives you've taken at night where there's a screen staring in your face you can't turn off (whether it's mounted on the seatback or a GPS maps app mounted on the windshield/dashboard). At night, I greatly prefer subtle, blue or red glowing accented buttons, switches and knobs with proper tactile feedback.

There were some other things about the car that bothered me (the door handles were unnervingly difficult to open with one hand and the lack of foot space in the rear seats (not because the seats were too close but because to accommodate the battery the floor is so high it feels like you're sitting in the third row of an SUV where your knees are in your chest). There was also lots of road noise on the highway (whether that's because there was no engine noise to mitigate it, I'm not certain). Also when the car accelerates, the inverter emits this incredibly off-putting whining sound. I had a preorder but I canceled it. I couldn't justify being an early-adopter for 50k. Sign me up for the 3.1!

Doesn't that touch screen look very unresponsive, or alternatively that the touch areas are way too small? They kept missing the buttons/menu items in the video.

The car should be the interface, not a 20" vizio smart TV glued to the dashboard with wiper controls in a context menu and a digital keyboard to search for my local radio station. This entire projects seems to have been designed in a vacuum. It appears that no thought was put into how humans interact with their vehicles. When are we going to move beyond slapping screens to our wrists and car dashboards and realize that there are more intuitive interfaces that we can leverage to operate systems and applications. I agree with some of the folks here that this is way more dangerous than looking at your phone. This is a full on workstation, not a glance-able assistant that helps me operate a vehicle. I can't even argue for having this screen with self driving vehicles because most of us will want to use our own devices that have been designed better than a giant car tablet.

I feel the opposite of most comments here. I really like the idea and execution. I’ve been in a Model S and Model X, and I liked the interior and touchscreen UI of those, too.

I am not worried about the windshield wiper button — I believe the Model 3 has a rain sensor hardware, and automatic wipers can come in a software update.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to call this the best car infotainment system the world has ever seen. There is a very good chance parts of the Model 3 have gone too far. The spartan interior, and all controls being driven by the touch screen will likely be fine for many things, but not fine for others. I like that Tesla is pushing cars forward, and I think the Model 3 represents the future better than any other car on the market.

If you imagine a future where the driver does less, this makes perfect sense. I know there’s disagreements about when level 5 autonomy will happen, but even if you consider it to be within the next decade, the Model 3 makes sense.

This reminds me of the discussion around hardware keyboards, when the iPhone was launched. Yes, there’s trade-offs, but maybe the positives outweigh them.

I find it very concerning that the windshield wiper controls are hidden behind menu options on the touchscreen.

That can't be the only way to turn them on, right?

Sleek UI for a web app. Really, really shit UI for a car.

I'm just adding to Daniel's comment but more harshly: I think this is terrible car design.

Why not build really basic functions into the sleek interior, and provide users the option to plop in their phone or their own tablet, then offer this UI in that screen as an option? Why is the UI so clearly not designed for a driver?

Touch screens are great and everything but it's just like using a phone! When you're driving you know exactly where the little knob is for turning on the wipers or headlights but if you have to use a screen with menus then the user has to look away from the road in order to do so.

I think this way will cause accidents. Sat Navs and maybe even radio fair enough but for basic car functions it's better to keep it the way it is.

Would be nice if they didn't mix 'tabs' (or I guess more accurately pop-over windows) in the bottom with state buttons and adjustable temperature controls. There's a lot to be said for having all the major features in one bar across the bottom however, and it seems like you'd get used to it fairly quickly.

I don't really care about automatic windshield wipers at all, but for something that is software-controlled, two settings of slow and fast really sucks. Even my 1993 Camry has like five different intermittent wiper settings. Most of the time when it's light rain I like to keep it at the slowest setting possible because wipers are really annoying for me, and I'll adjust it based on the speed of the rain. Plus, the "fast" setting shown in this video isn't even that fast, it's not fast enough to get rid of mud where you need a much faster setting with windshield wiper fluid spraying at the same time.

• John from InsurancePanda.com

As with any car that comes with a new button layout or a shift towards touch screens Tesla has just cut out the middle man and gone straight to a completely touch based system.

I echo the safety concerns however much like using any touch based digital product the controls and layout will become second nature within a short space of time. If my one and a half year boy can figure out how to browse an iPad, going between folders and the different apps he wants to open then finding the videos he wants on YouTube/BBC iPlayer etc then I can't see this being much of a hassle - the issue is that we're all too used to switches, knobs, sliders and we all hate change.

The people who do buy the car and who are interested in buying the car won't be put off by a slight learning curve in how to use it.

I don't think the screen is big enough....

Has somebody experience how this compares to the S an X? I mean they all have huge screens for interacting with the system and tesla is around since a while... I would expect they have learned smtg when it comes to HCI in cars

Multiple taps to access any features while in a car on a screen that requires someone to look, sounds like a bad highway idea.