By ATN
Author: Ming Kong, CEO of the technology company TG0
New safety directives mean OEMs will soon need to abandon their reliance on touchscreen technology and embrace tactile controls but this turning point represents an opportunity for the sector.
There’s a quiet reckoning happening in automotive design. Touchscreens – once seen as the pinnacle of modern car interiors – are starting to feel like a liability. They’re everywhere, but they’re not necessarily making driving better.
Research suggests 97% of new cars released after 2023 have a touchscreen on the central dash area. They’re crammed with features and controls, which distracts drivers. One 2023 study from Sweden’s Vi Bilägare found drivers using touchscreen controls take up to four times longer to complete basic tasks than those using traditional buttons. A more recent Auto Express experiment revealed drivers can take more than 22 seconds to turn off a feature like lane assist, for example, using a touchscreen.
Regulators agree that’s a long time for a driver’s eyes to be off the road. In March 2024, the European New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) announced that from January 2026, car manufacturers would lose their five-star safety rating if they didn’t include physical controls.
It’s clear that we’ve hit a turning point. But rather than mourning the end of touchscreen dominance, this shift represents an opportunity for OEMs to change how they think about the future of driving experiences.
An unimaginative centrepiece
Automotive manufacturers first began to experiment with touchscreens in the 1980s. Back then, they were expensive and limited in their capability but it was seen as a way to make the driver experience more interactive. It was an idea that soon took off, thanks to falling costs and advances in the technology’s capabilities. By the late 1990s and into the 2000s, more brands were incorporating touchscreens into their car designs.
As the costs of the components have continued to fall, touchscreens have become a real cost saver for OEMs The more controls that can be loaded onto the touchscreen the simpler (and cheaper), a car cabin is to make. But many automotive OEMs have started to realise that customers (in the west at least) like the functionality provided by tactile controls. When it comes to driving a car, placing key functions such as fan control or heated seats deep in the screen menu is at best annoying and at worst distracting.
That’s not such a consideration in Eastern markets such as China and Japan. There, screen-based UI innovations have become something of a competitive advantage. Drivers are less interested in the driving experience – most spend their driving time sitting in traffic – and more about the in-car entertainment potential. The car has become a futuristic third space (after work and home), and the touchscreen is the centrepiece that provides a proliferation of added software interactions that can be updated overnight.
For western drivers, screens are seen as a secondary accessory – a tool to do a job such as sat nav or playing music. But increasingly they’ve become so much more. When OEMs put screens at the centre of their design philosophy, they rule out so many other possibilities for interaction: from tactility and smell, to craft and the connection with how a car drives. Luxury OEMs have always understood this. They know their differentiation lies in how the senses – feel, smell, touch – contribute to the overall driving experience.
Creating a more intuitive driving experience
Moving away from touchscreen technology may feel like a wrench for some OEMs. But it represents an opportunity to return back to a driving experience that’s more intuitive, more personalised, and more impactful. The future of connected vehicles and automotive controls don’t lie in touchscreens. Instead, it’s about embedding AI-powered touch points throughout the car – from suspension, seat adjustment, heating, windows, and more – that can anticipate a driver’s needs even before they reach for the controls. It’s an altogether more personalised, intuitive experience.
With pressure map seating, for example, the car can sense when a driver is becoming drowsy, and encourage them to shift their position or take a break. A touch-sensitive steering wheel can sense when a driver is becoming stressed, and play calming music. Or an entire window frame could be responsive to a driver’s touch, moving a window down or up without the need to push a specific button.
At TG0, we’ve seen the potential of this first hand. We believe AI-driven materials innovation will break traditional design constraints. Our technology turns everyday materials into intelligent software-driven surfaces, which unlocks limitless possibilities across a variety of use cases. By incorporating functional materials, OEMs will be able to effortlessly enhance the user experience, streamline manufacturing workflows, and minimise the environmental impact of their designs. There’s also the potential for them to collect more data than ever before, which opens the doors to more personalisation and safety enhancements in the future.
The automotive sector is on the precipice of a new paradigm, which will elevate how drivers interact with their cars. OEMs need to move away from an overreliance on touchscreens, and imagine a more integrated future for their car interiors. Perhaps we’ll see a middle ground whereby touchscreens continue to exist but they’re controlled by tactile controls rather than touch. One thing’s for sure, the future of driving is an entirely more personalised, intuitive experience that will be about the people behind the wheel, rather than the technology itself.
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