Car touchscreens are cheap, not good • Hacker News Board

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#61

Post by scottyah » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

aftbit wrote: post #37

They're getting better though. The first gen touchscreens were tiny and unreliable. The one in my 2024 Ioniq 5 is pretty decent. I am really glad I still have physical AC controls though, even if they're capacitive. Touchscreens are modal. If I want to control the climate, I first have to press the Climate capacitive button or scroll through the screen to find climate. That takes my hands off the wheel and my eyes of…

Do you not have muscle memory for screens too? I find my brain has an easier time visualizing all the touchscreen controls I use semi-often over buttons. Perhaps it's a generational thing.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#62

Post by SoftTalker » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:02 PM UTC

iamdamian wrote: post #31

There has been more pushback on car screens over the past couple of years, and the optimist in me hopes this leads to change. With enough pushback, manufacturers will have to listen to the market, cost savings be damned. A concrete step I take to push this along: I mention physical buttons as a dealbreaker to car dealerships when I shop. Of course, I'm only speaking to dealer reps and not the decision makers at $CAR_…

That works as long as you actually stick to your guns and keep them as deal-breakers. If you accept them with some grumbling, that's still a sale and that provides no backpressure to the manufacturer.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#63

Post by cs702 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:02 PM UTC

shapefrog wrote: post #58

cs702 wrote: post #55

Sure, touchscreens are cheap, but high-quality touchscreen software is most def NOT CHEAP! Apple and Google have spent untold amounts of money developing iOS and Android. CarPlay and Android Auto are really nice. Tesla has spent gobs of money on its touchscreen software too. It's the only native car touchscreen UI I've tried that feels smooth, snappy, responsive, simple. I've tried the native touchscreen UI of quite…

I think the reality is that it is harder to sell a subscription to a button than it is to software.

Yeah, that's true. Sigh.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#64

Post by citelao » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

jmward01 wrote: post #51

I realize the article is pro buttons. I think a huge thing missing from the button discussion (well, maybe lightly touched on in the article) is that physical buttons and controls help guide without looking. Other buttons give feedback that your hand is in the right place. Sure, at first contact that (very bad) reference radio is worse than the touch screen but within a few days of using that I would not need to look…

Totally agree; I had to cut a few sentences about that :). (I also tried to steel-man the paper as much as possible).

Oddly enough, it seems like, although the value of "blind operation" is well-understood, it's not super well researched. As one of the papers I cite puts it:

> Little research deals with the optimal design of haptic features and how haptic feedback can support the user in searching for control elements.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6676796/

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#65

Post by MostlyStable » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #52

aftbit wrote: post #37

They're getting better though. The first gen touchscreens were tiny and unreliable. The one in my 2024 Ioniq 5 is pretty decent. I am really glad I still have physical AC controls though, even if they're capacitive. Touchscreens are modal. If I want to control the climate, I first have to press the Climate capacitive button or scroll through the screen to find climate. That takes my hands off the wheel and my eyes of…

> I will _happily_ pay the $100 more to have a more premium and tuned interior I'm guessing the cost difference is greater than this. Which means the end-user price difference would be north of $1k. Would be interesting to see if customers would pay $2 to 5k extra for a mostly-tactile interior. (I think back-up camera requirements make some screen unavoidable.)

I'm somewhat skeptical that the cost difference would really be that high, but honestly...yeah I probably would. If what I was getting was fully physical (not capacitive) media and AC controls, including pause/play, skip/tune, volume control, temp control, fan speed control, zone selection, etc? I interact with those systems multiple times every single time I get into a vehicle, which is essentially multiple times every day, for years. Improving the quality of those interactions even a little bit (and in my opinion the difference between good physical buttons and even a very good touchscreen, let alone a shitty one, is massive), is worth thousands of dollars.

While I was not presented with the option on a given model to go with buttons or touchscreens, when I was shopping for cars, I did eliminate models based on their interface options. The models I was willing to consider were probably cut in half because I wouldn't get anything that was entirely touch screen or capacitive for both AC and media.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#66

Post by SoftTalker » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

agloe_dreams wrote: post #59

sedatk wrote: post #34

More importantly, car touchscreens are dangerous. It’s impossible to operate a touchscreen without moving your attention from the road to the touchscreen itself. That’s why I think it must be a legal requirement for any car with touchscreen controls to operate car functions must have driver assistance features enabled, no exceptions.

> It’s impossible to operate a touchscreen without moving your attention from the road to the touchscreen itself. The article directly links to a study that shows this is also true of physical buttons. Regardless of the fact that buttons are tactile, people don't go feeling up their radio without looking, even if they can. Furthermore, the vast majority of infotainment input today is into phone mirroring systems like…

You're right in that with a physical control you still probably glance at it as you're reaching for it, but you don't have to keep your eyes on it the whole time unlike a touch screen. With a touch-screen there's no feedback that your finger is on the button and that you have actually pressed it. With a physical control, button, knob, or slider once you have your hand on it you can manipulate it without looking. They demand momentary glances, not seconds of constant focus.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#67

Post by bs7280 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

jmward01 wrote: post #51

I realize the article is pro buttons. I think a huge thing missing from the button discussion (well, maybe lightly touched on in the article) is that physical buttons and controls help guide without looking. Other buttons give feedback that your hand is in the right place. Sure, at first contact that (very bad) reference radio is worse than the touch screen but within a few days of using that I would not need to look…

A while ago I was driving a loaner car - a brand new top tier Accura rdx and the infotainment system was truly the worst and most dangerously designed I had ever witnessed. It was essentially a lenovo thinkpad type touchpad by the cup holder, and the screen was far away. The first time I tried to use it, it was so distracting that I would of crashed the car if it weren't for the safety features.

My car is a 2018 with car play and physical scroll knobs and buttons, while awkward, I can operate it with my eyes on the road (realistically I can do everything I need from the steering wheel). This weird middle ground carplay was somehow the worst combo of buttons and touchscreen.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#68

Post by PunchyHamster » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:09 PM UTC

agloe_dreams wrote: post #59

sedatk wrote: post #34

More importantly, car touchscreens are dangerous. It’s impossible to operate a touchscreen without moving your attention from the road to the touchscreen itself. That’s why I think it must be a legal requirement for any car with touchscreen controls to operate car functions must have driver assistance features enabled, no exceptions.

> It’s impossible to operate a touchscreen without moving your attention from the road to the touchscreen itself. The article directly links to a study that shows this is also true of physical buttons. Regardless of the fact that buttons are tactile, people don't go feeling up their radio without looking, even if they can. Furthermore, the vast majority of infotainment input today is into phone mirroring systems like…

Well, it depends on button and function. Rarely used functions will require looking, common ones (assuming button placement is sensible) will not, but even ones that require looking are still better because you skip going thru the menu to find it.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#69

Post by citelao » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

nicce wrote: post #9

citelao wrote: post #2

OP here: I always disliked touchscreens in cars, so I didn't understand why automakers kept shoving them in. I always assumed I was weird in some way, and that most consumers preferred touchscreens or something (Reddit seems to argue this in circles all the time). I planned to keep buying Mazdas, with their lovely buttons and stuff. But when Mazda unveiled their button-lite 2026 CX-5 about a year ago, I started inves…

> I'm pretty convinced that touchscreens today are primarily a cost-saving measure, and every other justification is secondary. I hope I can convince you, too! I thought this is a pretty well-known thing already? For almost decade.

OP: Perhaps it is, but this article honestly took me 12 months to research & write. I really struggled to find trustworthy sources. Do you know of any others I should look at?

Also, I rather like the idea that blogging can simply be stating the obvious: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/blogging-stating-the-obvio.... Hopefully my argument is helpful to someone!

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#70

Post by scottyah » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

iamdamian wrote: post #31

There has been more pushback on car screens over the past couple of years, and the optimist in me hopes this leads to change. With enough pushback, manufacturers will have to listen to the market, cost savings be damned. A concrete step I take to push this along: I mention physical buttons as a dealbreaker to car dealerships when I shop. Of course, I'm only speaking to dealer reps and not the decision makers at $CAR_…

I could not imagine having to go back to buttons for anything I actually want to control. Once you get used to a well-designed touchscreen, buttons are just so clunky and unintuitive for most functions. Dials are probably my most favorite physical control, but other than volume there's not much it's useful for in a well-designed, modern car anymore. It was great for radio stations, but is terrible for Spotify.

Setting temperature manually by dial doesn't make sense anymore either- most cars have too many things to change and an expanding menu is great. There's hot cold, faster fan lower fan, feet vs head-height (we're already looking at more than three separate controls). Now there's seat heating and cooling (with varying power), steering wheel, defrost, controls of vent direction, etc.

I'll admit the touchscreen might be daunting if it's a rental but it takes like one week to get everything mapped out mentally (and going back to physical controls on rentals sucks).