Voice recognition is an interesting technology. It’s been around for a long time, and it mostly keeps getting better. But does it ever get good? As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t, particularly when it comes to cars.
Automakers have always been great at giving us futuristic features we don’t want. Talking cars were the new hotness in the 1980s, whispering jagged digital phrases like “OIL PRESSURE LOW” and telling us that a door was a jar. Nobody liked them, and they died a quick and quiet death. Did automakers learn from this? Of course not. Heck, just this past week, we heard Rivian’s chief software officer telling us “Ideally, You would want to interact with your car by voice.”
It’s a grand idea, and one that’s been floating around the auto industry for decades now. In theory, you should be able to tell your car what to do and everything would be wonderful. Except that’s not the case, and it never will be.
Slow, Annoying, Bad
These days, there are lots of shiny high-tech ways to interact with our vehicles. Touchscreens rule the roost; in some cars, they control almost everything. Meanwhile, voice commands are available in a great deal of cars these days, too. These let you control your car in a fancy modern way, and for some reason, that’s supposed to be better.
The problem is that it just isn’t. For most things, voice controls are much worse than doing things the old fashioned way. They’re slow, for one thing. First, you have to say a whole command or sentence out loud. Then the computer has to process it, potentially even using off-board cloud resources to do so. Then, after a painstaking delay, you get to find out if the computer even understood you and did what you wanted.
Compare this godawful experience with the magic of buttons. Press it, and whatever you want to happen just happened. Instantly. Done.
Buttons just work. For most tasks in a car, they do the job better than any other technology that has come along since. For that matter, so do old-school knobs, which are the best volume controls ever invented. They will not be bested before I leave this mortal coil.
For your consideration, another example. Give me a classic three-dial HVAC system and I can set it to whatever I want in a couple of seconds without even looking. I can set temperature, change the fan speed and set the vents in a snap. Even if I’ve never driven the car before, I can figure it out with a split-second glance.
Compare that to a voice control, which would have me blathering and guessing and just generally faffing about. Is the command “Temperature Up,” or do I have to say “Hello Mitsubishi, set temperature to 25 degrees.” What about vents? “Hey Mercedes, I want cold air on my face,” probably won’t work. It feels kind of demanding, too. It’s all too awkward.
You can read the manual and try and learn all the commands, but you’re still tangling with other problems. There’s no escaping the processing delay, which can be excruciating at times. Even worse is when the system doesn’t understand you. You get some annoying little beep noise prompting you to repeat yourself, or worse, a full explanation from a robot lady telling you to rephrase your request. My 2007 BMW was an absolute demon for this and all it could do was dial the phone for you.
Automakers can make voice controls faster, smarter, and more capable. It doesn’t matter. They’re never going to beat the instant response of my finger on a single button. Push-click-done will always be faster than “Hey Car Susan, can you please activate the combobulator?” whichever way you cut it.
An Exception
There is a limited use case where voice controls have some value. Consider, for example, entering an address into a GPS navigation system. It’s easy enough to type it in on your phone, but doing so on a car’s touch screen is usually an exercise in frustration. Being able to simply read out the address you’re looking for is far easier.
Even this use case comes with a caveat, though, and that’s accuracy. If you’re looking for Bone Street in Gainsville, Texas, you don’t want to accidentally end up navigating to Bone Street in Arlington, Tennessee. Or Boon Street, or Bong Street, or any other similar variation. You can end up fussing around quite a lot if your voice recognition system doesn’t get you the first time.
This also applies to music. I’ll never forgive Weezer for self-titling the vast majority of their albums. You can ask your car to play you the Blue Album, but you have to hope that the great minds at Gracenote programmed that colloquial title in, because officially, that album is just called Weezer. I know, I hate it too. I actually penned a lengthy explainer on how Gracenote tackled this annoying problem earlier this year, if you care to learn more.
Indeed, our own Peter Vieira sums it up perfectly:
And he’s perfectly right.
Former Fan
Funnily enough, I used to be a lot more positive about voice recognition. In fact, I used to use voice controls all the time. Back in 2017, I had a Google Pixel smartphone and it worked great. Back then, I could rattle off voice commands and, nine times out of ten, get a decent result. “Hey Google, add peas to my shopping list,” I’d say, and it would work. Five or six times a day, I’d say “Hey Google, and a reminder Monday to do that work thing” and again, it would work, no problem. For a time, I could even say “Hey, Googz” like a true Australian, and it worked like a charm.
Somehow, around 2020 or so, that just… stopped working for me. I’ve had a number of other Google and Samsung smartphones and they’re… kind of okay. They only respond to my voice 60-70% of the time. That’s bad enough that I went from using these things every day to using them once or twice a week at most. I hate repeating myself, and I hate dealing with misinterpreted commands, so it stopped being worthwhile for me. I had an iPhone for a while, and Siri was pretty good. On the Android side, though, voice assistants are dead to me. Plus, talking to “Bixby” makes me sound like a tool. Fix it, Samsung.
Free Us
Ultimately, voice controls aren’t going away any time soon. They’re an increasingly common feature on modern cars. Meanwhile, the AI craze has seen automakers rush to integrate more advanced voice assistants to make sure they stay ahead of the curve.
Things can get better. Automakers can reduce processing delays and maybe even make systems that can reliably understand most people in most conditions. Regardless, it’s important to remember the basic truth. In the vast majority of scenarios, a simple button beats every other technology out there. Even asking my girlfriend to adjust the stereo takes longer than just tapping a few buttons myself, and she’s really smart! No voice control system will ever beat the button.
To that end, I wish we could just build cars with the best interfaces. End this flavor of the month crap, and just do what works. That’s all I ask. Stop trying to give us fancy voice controls, because the last three decades have shown they’re just not that bloody good.
Image credits: Lewin Day, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Google, Mitsubishi
I know the topic is voice control – which other than phone interactions is just not something I will bother with – but I want to vent about bad volume knobs. What is wrong with a knob that has a position? My older cars had knobs that had a little dot that showed where the volume was – and could be adjusted at any time and speed, car on or off. Not a single knob I have used that just measures the amount of rotation has been acceptable to me. They can’t keep up when I need to change the volume quickly – which happens when the last time I drove the volume was loud and couldn’t change the volume while it was off. I had a Prius V at work and the climate control was in a knob that was suuuuuuuuper slow when it was cold out, you know, when you need to interact with it.
I get what you’re saying, but I do prefer buttons or encoders for volume control just because potentiometers have a bad knack for wearing out.
Although now that I say that they could always use a hall effect sensor for rotation detection, but let’s be honest: it’ll always be a pot.
For cheap GM cars it’s a catch 22 – wear out the knob or dissolve the text from the buttons.
The problem is remote controls- or in cars it would be voice or steering wheel controls. I’ve seen high end stereo equipment that would rotate the knob on the amplifier when you changed the volume with the remote – really cool and really expensive stuff. When all you have is a single knob it’s easy to have it relate to a physical scale on the surround. But when you have multiple controls for the same function it’s a lot harder.
Weren’t there some older GM vehicles that could rotate the knob on the head unit when you adjusted the volume from the steering wheel? I’m sure I saw that somewhere!
I too have noticed voice commands on my phone seem to be worse than a couple of years ago. It never recognises my wife’s name anymore, to the point I had to program the ability to say “call my wife” into the phone. Then the other day I was trying to send her a text and it was completely shitting itself, correctly transcribing the message but then saying “what’s the message?” instead of sending it. I gave up after several tries in a huff and just picked up the phone hoping there were no police/phone detection cameras around.
That said I still use it for GPS nav (when I’m driving a car with Android Auto) and sometimes for music selection, though it’s pretty bad at understanding when I want it to play one of my playlists. Otherwise, yeah, I’m pushing a button or (*sigh*) tapping a touchscreen to adjust the temperature, thanks.
Not just voice, but I also hate it how some screens (Hyundai) really don’t have a scroll bar, or a blank space you can tap to scroll down without clicking something. Like, you know the address you need is in your history, the voice recognition keeps screwing it up, and you can’t scroll down and tap it without selecting the wrong thing. And you can’t type it in, because you can’t do that with the car in drive and there’s no place to pull over on the turnpike
Not only that but I had recent bad experience with an Opel Mokka. I was stopped and typing an address into the satnav, while hovering over the keyboard to find the correct letter (because the letters were arranged alphabetically and I couldn’t find anything, but that’s another story) I mistyped the incorrect letter several times. That got on my nerves.
Oh an whenever the satnav gave you directions… the obscured the rev counter on the digital display. Who thought that was a good idea???
Even if you give me the most perfect voice recognition system, I wouldn’t use it. I don’t like talking out loud to myself in my car. It feels unnatural. I don’t use it on my TV or phone either.
Silence is infinitely better than talking to a fake assistant.
If I want a good conversation, I’ll talk to myself. Talking to my cars is just an exercise in frustration. The BMW is hopeless, even using the built in satnav, if you don’t have the address to input (the iDrive knob is superior to a touchscreen keyboard) but just hav it search for Costco or anything else, it can’t find the one a mile away. When I ask it to call any name in my phone book, it will come up w/ the right one about one time in 10. The. VW is worse. Its head unit will not find any address, because, apparently I couldn’t do it. The Ford is the best of a bad lot, but still wants a street address for most things.
There’s a button on the steering wheel of my jeep Wrangler that I bump when I’m offloading. It activates the menu for what you want to voice command the vehicle to do but pushing the button again doesn’t turn it off and neither does the saying “cancel” it just keeps going and asking for what you wanted to say until you ignore it long enough that it turns off on its own. It’s a horrible thing in that vehicle.
Sounds like hell…that is completely useless
The logical next step would be for someone to come up with level 4.5 autonomy, where there are no physical controls, but any of the passengers in the car can take over driving with voice commands. “Forwards, faster, no no no, slower, left, more left, no back right, ahhhhh brakes, brakes brakes, oh @#$% eject, eject, eject”
What you just described is a rallying codriver.
Can confirm.
My wife the co-driver.
Ignore HER at your own peril.
It’s not just voice control in cars that sucks, it’s the expectation that everyone will use voice commands to interact with their AI powered devices, and that it will somehow be better than voice recognition is now. Just look at how Google presents their AI interactions on their phone ads. You hear the voiceover of the actor telling her phone to show restaurants on a map, the phone AI does it, and the actor replies, “Huh”.
What they gloss over is that the woman, who is sitting on an airplane or a bus or some other mass transportation, had enough of a conversation with her phone for it to look for some filtered list of restaurants in the area, then told the phone loudly enough and slowly enough that the phone can understand to show the restaurants on a map. All things she could have quietly done with the same phone and her thumbs, but we can’t do that anymore because apparently typing is for Neanderthals.
I still remember my uncle trying to give commands to OnStar in his 2005 Chevrolet TrailBlazer when I was around 15 or so and he got the SUV new. He ended up telling it to “F-off” several times and it continued saying “Pardon?”
I agree, I have used the voice feature on our Mazda once. I find it easier to use the iDrive dial to pull up a contact, and I use the knob for radio volume. Physical tactile controls are the right way.
This is *totally* the reason I keep ending up at the Gothic Castle. Yep.
A few additional problems with voice controls
Strong yes to all 3 points, with an additional note that I don’t want to interrupt my music or podcasts to talk to my car
I know the old Ford Sync system got a lot of flack, but the only car I’ve ever had where the voice recognition worked almost all the time was our 2012 (or maybe 2013?) Focus. It would pick the correct songs and artists to play from my phone over bluetooth almost all the time, and always called the right person. It was incredible.
Whatever is in my 2013 Hyundai Veloster sucks balls so bad that I never use it. I tried to use voice commands to call like 50 times, and literally every time it called the wrong person or gave me a list I had to pick from. Trash.
Ditto for my wife’s now retired 2011 Forester. Unusable.
My wife now has a Tuscon plug-in hybrid with carplay. Apparently carplay just uses Siri for all voice commands, so it works about as well as Siri normally does, with a slightly increased error rate due, I assume, to the microphone the car is using. So it’s fine, not great.
I remember a friend’s Flex having surprisingly good voice controls back in 2008 or so.
Re: your BMW, any chance it was looking for “zed” instead of “zero?”
A few years back I was in Georgia and the navigation kept telling me to turn on Gawsecks. It turns out it was Georgia State Route 6. The highway sign said GA 6, Gawsecks. I used that for a password for a few years.
The only real use I’ve ever had for voice commands in a vehicle are the Voice-to-text & vise-versa. Google is actually pretty good at getting it right (for my voice, anyways) and it’s helped immensely on long drives because typing isn’t a thing I can do on the move.
The rest of it? If I can blindly do the task within seconds with one hand, why in the world do I need that voice controlled? Voice control is for tasks that would divert my attention from the road for extended periods of time.
The other day I asked The Googs to add “Shake ‘n Bake” to the shopping list and its response was, “Ok, I added those two things.” Sure enough, there was Shake on the the list and right below it, Bake.
Thanks googs.
I’d be afraid to say Shake n bake to a car voice interface. All you would hear is “Slingshot engaged” and then you would be in a massive crash
Well if it isn’t Mike Honcho himself!
In 2008 I fitted a Nokia hands-free kit to my E61 (£100 vs £500 for BMW Bluetooth) with a single voice control button to press for ‘call [contact]’. It worked perfectly every time. All OEM systems I’ve experienced to this date are useless and even CarPlay doesn’t have the same hit rate. What magic did the Finns discover and not pass to future generations? Incidentally I found my Nokia 6310 in a drawer when moving house recently, switched it on for the first time in over 15 years and it had three bars of charge….
… and 500 texts reminding you to vote, 700 voice mails about your car’s warranty, and at least 5 messages from the kids’ school wondering why you’re 2 hours late picking them up.
I get those messages about picking up my kid from time to time. The thing is, I don’t have a kid. Sorry little Timmy, you’re going to be waiting for your parents to pick you up for quite a while.
Luckily without a SIM! But I did enjoy a game of Snake.
I have no accent really. Trying to use the voice control to call someone while driving only works 20% of the time. One that NEVER works, is trying to call Lauren or Lorne via voice control LOL
“Got it, now playing LORN on Spotify”
Daylight…
Bad dreams.
You have an accent. You just happen to be where everyone has the same accent as you.
Nope, I live where everyone does have and accent 🙂
Grew up in AZ, so we don’t really have an accent compared to other parts of the country. I can hardly understand people where I live now. Thick accents/slang
See, that’s the thing. To them, you have an accent that sounds like the generic American accent. Ask any brit, generic American accent is totally a thing. And I live in AZ, can attest it is pretty close to generic American accent. I used to have a tex accent, but lost it living here
I’ll give the system on my 2013 Toyota credit. It actually does do a pretty good job with voice navigating an iPod. I still have my iPod Touch in the center console and occasionally use it.
I can ask for a band, and it will display all the albums from that band on the screen and I can voice the album to play or just press the screen.
Or it actually is pretty good and recognizing the band/song when I ask for something specific.
Our 2023 Volvo XC40 with an integrated Google OS can’t understand shit and even when it does, outside of changing HVAC settings it won’t control anything else like windows, panoramic roof, seat adjustment etc. It seems these voice features have no more use than “call X person” or “go to next song” and that’s been the case for ages now.
Funnily enough, we also own a BMW 5 Series with the gimmicky gestures and I find myself using that more often than any voice commands.
My first encounter with a decent voice recognition system was in a BMW F21 about five years ago. It wasn’t very sofisticated but for simple phone and satnav commands it worked well enough. The BMW had another party trick, which is that you could send an address from your phone (for example a location someone had shared with you on WhatsApp) via its native BMW mobile app. For everything else, the physical controls in the car were good (it was a very analog car, this).
My second encounted with a good voice recognition system was with a Mercedes-Benz W206. This one was much more sophisticated and allowed you to set up climate control temperature, lowering and raising windows, set radio stations, raising and lowering volume and of course sat nav and phone comands. It worked at lot better than the BMW but wasn’t perfect. The thing is tinkering with the buttons and screens in the Merc is lot more difficult than in the BMW (how the hell cars got so complex?) so you rely in the voice recognition a lot more, making it more annoying when it doesn’t work than in the BMW.
(As an anecdote, one day after trying several times to lower the radio volume unsuccessfully I insulted it. The car responded saying something along the lines “we should work on amending our relationship”. That scared the crap out of me…)
My current French car has a cack infotainment system. Not only compared to cars of its price, but period.
I’ve got Google’s native AAOS (not the phone’s Android Auto app) in my Volvo C40 and voice commands work well for most common actions. I can control the temp (even with generic terms like ‘I’m cold’), fan speed, music, heated seats/wheel, directions etc.
But what if someone in the car is like, “I’m cold.” And you’re like, “Sorry, I can’t warm it up anymore in here or I’ll have a sweaty panic attack.” And in the meantime, the car is like, “Increasing temperature to 84 degrees.”
“I’m cold.”
Okay, re-routing to Arizona.
“No! Cancel!”
Playing Okay Go
“Stop”
Emergency stop engaged, reducing speed and entering shoulder
“Turn off voice controls”
Turning up climate control temperature and heated seats
I wish I could be this wrong about a major portion of my job and still pull a massive paycheck.
Right? I mean…. who is this person talking to?
Is it his one friend Bill who happens to be the one human on the planet that wants it, and that’s his sample size?
Apple car play and android auto (or whatever the android phone connection is called) solved it. Had car play in my last 2 cars and will not go to anything else. It works great – it’s accurate and it responds instantly to your inputs.
Car companies will try as hard as they possibly can to ruin this if it gives them even $1 of subscription revenue. Frankly, fuck them.
From my old car:
“Call work.”
“I do not understand.”
“Call WORK.”
“I do not understand.”
“Oh fuck off.”
“Calling Mary-Anne…”
I laughed so hard I nearly crashed.
It’s worse when at the last comand the car says “we should amend our relationship”, which happened to me in a W206. I almost crashed to stop the raise of the machines…
Not generally an angry guy, but that would make me want to borrow a gun to shoot the dash with.
It was the car, not you. You had just drifted apart.