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Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

ben.stolovitz.com

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Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#31

Post by iamdamian »

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_CO, but if enough people do this, it does get back to the them and will make a difference.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#32

Post by dieselgate »

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.

I figured it was the most reasonable conclusion via Occam's Razor. Economical and the illusion of futurism

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#33

Post by MisterTea »

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!

It amuses me that back in the 90's LCD color screens were magical fairy dust that cost about the same as what magical fairy dust would cost. Laptops with color LCD screens were like $6000 in the 90's, I think $3k over a greyscale. That's like $13k today.

Whereas the little plastic buttons and knobs were cheaper to pump out of an injection molding machine and assembled. Now screens are cheaper to make than little plastic baubles.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#34

Post by sedatk »

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.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#35

Post by gumby271 »

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 love the click-wheel on my Mazda3 and I love that it allows the screen to sit out of arms length up on the dashboard. Its a very nice interior. What I don't love is how Android Auto is slowly breaking since it assumes more and more that you have a touchscreen.

It used to be that it would focus buttons in notifications, making it easy to interact with. Now the focus doesn't seem to change at all (or only sometimes) making it a nightmare to do simple things. I dare not use the new Gemini assistant since the last time I was completely unable to navigate to the buttons in its panel at all.

I really hope they don't phase out the wheel just because Google sucks at supporting it. I know they have both touch and the wheel in newer models now.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#36

Post by nkozyra »

birdostrich wrote: post #19
pwg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so I didn't understand why automakers kept shoving them in. The article explained why. Since 2018 in the US, due to the proliferation of giant trucks being used as passenger vehicles (SUV's) backup cameras have been mandatory safety equipment. A backup camera requires a screen. So the automakers have to install a screen in the dashboard. It is only a few dollars more to install a "touch screen" vs. a "basic display…

They're aware. You're replying to the OP of the article, lol.

Obviously they read it, but it's 2026 and entirely possible to publish an article without having read a word of it :)

All that said, I think initially it was a mix of a few things coming together.

Yes, auto mfgs always want to reduce parts for cost and supply chain control. But there was also this moment of New Wow where the impractical nature of touchscreens was overshadowed by the holy crap I've got a tablet in my car. It implied a break with the last generation of cars, where you might have gotten a 4-inch screen (touch or not), and it became desirable at a surface level to users.

Although I greatly dislike touchscreens for the obvious usability issues in a motor vehicle, I still kind of widen my eyes when I'm in a car with some new, ridiculous multi-screen dashboard setup.

Mazda was mentioned in this thread, and I think they do a great job of separating the concerns here; you've got a big buttons of various sizes that do different things that can be memorized without sight.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#37

Post by aftbit »

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 off the road for longer than just tapping the fan-up button.

As for the cost, I will _happily_ pay the $100 more to have a more premium and tuned interior. Heck, I chose to step up an entire trim model to the top of the line trim just for the fancy LCD screen mirror. I'd happily pay extra for better buttons.

IMO touch screens are great for rarely used features, but anything that gets clicked on most drives should be a dedicated touch point (capacitive button, physical button, steering wheel control, whatever).

Give me multifunction displays from aviation. Touch screen in the middle, rows of modal buttons along the bottom and left side. You can use muscle memory to find the button.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#38

Post by nkozyra »

prmoustache wrote: post #24
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…

The reality is they want to serve us ads in the future. But they first need adoption.

> But they first need adoption.

I think they've got that. Short of budget stuff or the Slate truck, most new cars have some big dumb screen in them at all times.

But advertising poses a new problem for both advertisers and mfgs not unlike the mid-90s ad sale issue. There was no consolidated ad server, so everyone was trying to build their own agency and advertisers had to navigate that.

Which probably means some sort of Google or Google-like player in the space.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#39

Post by oblio »

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_…

In Europe it's done through EuroNCAP: https://etsc.eu/cars-will-need-buttons-not-just-touchscreens...

It has already started asking for physical buttons for key functions to give manufacturers the top safety rating, and it's working. Buttons are coming back.

Re: Car touchscreens are cheap, not good

#40

Post by recursive »

_flux wrote: post #17
drakythe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lordy I hope not. Cannot imagine having to childproof my car's entertainment system, or make sure I don't sing a trigger word, or try to turn on the defroster to dehumidify the windshield during an intense rain storm where I can barely hear myself think. Also: I don't want a microphone in my car at all times. Thank you.

It could use array microphone to detect that the sound originates from the driver's seat (in addition to using it for filtering out not-from-driver's-seat sounds).

I mean that's cool, if it actually works reliably. Automation tech enthusiasts are willing to be impressed by 99% reliability. To get buy-in from regular people, it needs to just work better. To be clear, I don't know how reliable this actually is now, but I'd be willing to bet that it's not reliable enough.
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