Good to see that at least some manufactures have a sense for safety.I miss the days I could reach for a button blindly to adjust my aircon or work the radio.

This is absolutely the right way to go. I&#x27;m on the market for a new car for the first time in a long time and the terrible UX decisions car makers are implementing is quite shocking.

I wonder what some analysis on driver focus, concentration and eye movement would reveal when comparing Tesla, especially Model 3, drivers vs. drivers of cars with physical buttons and blind operations.

Tesla should really take some notes here.

Hopefully, but not all over, only in spots.

They&#x27;re very easy to reach with you right hand while holding the wheel with your left hand.

I can&#x27;t imagine reaching those without &quot;applying torque to the steering wheel&quot; (or straight blocking it which is much worse).

Look at the controls behind the gear shift stick - not much but still similar to what Mazda does with the audio controls.BTW, I have never used the hazard button while the car is in motion or at least driving very slowly.

Aren&#x27;t most of the controls on your picture not on the center console? The bloody hazards button is behind the driving wheel and inaccessible to the passenger.For what it&#x27;s worth I&#x27;ve pretty much always known the controls to be over the center console.And the instruments being there as well has been happening for some time, at least for some vehicle classes e.g. on the C3 picasso anything but the purely driving-related controls is on the center console: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.autoexpress.co.uk&#x2F;citroen&#x2F;c3-picasso&#x2F;61746&#x2F;used-buyers-guide-citroen-c3-picasso-pictures" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.autoexpress.co.uk&#x2F;citroen&#x2F;c3-picasso&#x2F;61746&#x2F;used-...</a>

Finally we are back to Citroen CX design putting controls on the center console:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;photos.smugmug.com&#x2F;Other&#x2F;86-Citroen-DX-Prestige&#x2F;i-Cv5pmk5&#x2F;0&#x2F;ae557449&#x2F;X3&#x2F;109-X3.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;photos.smugmug.com&#x2F;Other&#x2F;86-Citroen-DX-Prestige&#x2F;i-Cv...</a>

I have a 2017 GTI and it has a dial you can use to cycle through things but it’s not ideal. Certain things are useless though, like the keyboard for maps, but you can use voice control there.I do like the VW implementation. There’s still lots of buttons and steering wheel control, and the screen is small enough and UI actions defined enough that I don’t have to look at the screen much to interact.

I have recently bought a 1 year old Seat Leon with their newer touch screen setup. I find it pretty well made - you still have all the dials and buttons you need for climate control and audio volume, but if you want to set up navigation you have the touch screen in a well reachable location, which is much more convenient than a dial. Best of both worlds IMO. The only thing I do on touch screen while driving is to play&#x2F;pause bluetooth audio and zooming in&#x2F;out of navigation.

The only reason the A3 still has a non-touchscreen is due to the fact that it&#x27;s still running a rather old platform, which is outdated compared to the Golf, Leon -- the new A3 landing this year won&#x27;t have dials.

And yet the article cites Audi to be giving in to pressure from the fearless (and from Tesla?), moving from the established rotary to touchscreens in future models.I guess that when you already had touchscreens, it&#x27;s much easier to sell haptic interfaces as an improvement than when you avoided touchscreen from the beginning. &quot;Still no touchscreens&quot; vs &quot;already beyond touchscreens&quot;, even when they have the exact same controls.

Exactly ; I had a similar experience sometime back when I was lent a 2010 Audi A4 for a few months, there was a quite natural control knob placed much like in the article&#x27;s pics. It really is night and day compared to my brand new Peugeot where you have to look at the screen -and wait for the interface to update on each action- to do basically anything that is not taking a call &#x2F; moving the volume &#x2F; changing the track or station which you can do from the wheel.

It must be said that the Captur on board software is hilariously bad. (I have a 2018 captur) it&#x27;s not that it&#x27;s entirely dysfunctional, it&#x27;s kludgey and painful.It&#x27;s not only the superiority of physical buttons, carmakers seem to be bad at simple, distraction-free UI.- A single UI task (cancel navigation, switch radio station) takes 4-6 screen presses through some dialogs&#x2F;menus that have only one option- the thing responds too slow, there are some superfluous animations and in general there&#x27;s long delays between presses and feedback on the screen that you touched something.- Random crashes when not doing anything besides driving- Random crashes (more frequently) when using android auto or making phone calls- Updating the software takes 30 minutes, during which no information is shown besides a randomly resetting progress bar.

I&#x27;ve had the Audi for around 1.5 weeks now, and I&#x27;ve already learned how to navigate the system without looking. Can easily go from navigation to Spotify in Android Auto without paying attention to where the radial is or what&#x27;s showing on the screen.Compare with the Renault Captur which I could never learn to use without having to look at where I have to tap on the screen.Edit: while driving, I&#x27;m not doing things in the onboard system that I haven&#x27;t done before, like browsing through settings and other things. I&#x27;m only interested in doing modifications to already running things or turning on&#x2F;off certain systems while driving, and those were much easier to get learned under muscle control when having a radial than using touch controls (which with touch I never managed to actually learn).I guess an easy way to compare them would be to say, going from navigation to Spotify would require me to:(radial): drag radial down, three clicks to the right, and click(touchscreen): find button about 10cms from the left without looking or any tactic feedback

You don&#x27;t need to look at the button to use it. I forgot exactly how the Audi one works but once you&#x27;re used to it, it&#x27;s like: Press, Turn right twice: Map. Press turn left once: Audio player. Press: Play. You don&#x27;t need to look at the controller and, when you&#x27;re used to it, you don&#x27;t even need to look at the screen. With touch screen, you&#x27;ll never get used to it to the point of doing anything without looking at it.

Can you expand on this? I really don&#x27;t get it... I understand why people would prefer &quot;fixed-function&quot; buttons like temperature up or lock doors, but I don&#x27;t understand how radial button (which is just switching focus on the display) is any better than touchscreen... To me, it looks strictly worse, you need to focus on the button and the screen (to see what&#x27;s selected), instead of just focusing on the screen and touching what you want directly.

Recently switched from a Renault Captur (with touchscreen) to an Audi A3 (without touchscreen) and the amount of focus the touchscreen requires compared to a non-touchscreen with a radial button is amazingly scary. How did anyone thought it was a good idea in the first place? Can&#x27;t imagine going back to having a touchscreen now, and hope they slowly disappear from everything cars.

All &quot;how to use tablet as development machines&quot; I saw were just &quot;how to connect keyboard to tablet and connect to remote computer&quot;.

Well the choice is less obvious when your two options are an iPad or a throttlebook with jam-happy butterfly switches.In all seriousness, too many of my Mac-loving friends and coworkers are using laptops that&#x27;re 4+ years old because Apple decided shaving a millimeter off the thickness was worth cutting key travel by 60% and having display hinges crack off the frame. Considering how long most of them have been buying Apple they deserve better treatment.

We already have popular IDEs guiding text input onto one of the few plausible symbols at a cursor; how long before a touchscreen app that gives your suggestions and snippets as touch targets, instead of a keyboard?

&gt; why you don&#x27;t program on a tabletI dare you to go tell that to &#x2F;r&#x2F;apple :)

\dejectedly goes back to coding on termux on a phone with a bluetooth keyboard

I&#x27;m pretty sure [1] none of those are touch screens.However, there are aircraft avionics with touch screens, for example:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.avidyne.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;ifd&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.avidyne.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;ifd&#x2F;index.html</a>[1] I&#x27;m a private pilot so I&#x27;m pretty familiar with the state of the art in aircraft avionics, but I don&#x27;t fly a 737.

The solution is a combination of tablet screens and accessible controls on the steering wheel or on the centre console.I absolutely love my touch screen in my Honda and never felt unsafe because of it. All the controls for changing songs, volume, voice, etc are on the steering wheel via touch dials or a few buttons.It’s not like the car (or airplane) companies aren’t aware of this.

&gt; There is a reason you don&#x27;t see apple like designed plane cockpit.Have you seen photos of a 737 Max cockpit...<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=737+max+cockpit&amp;tbm=isch" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=737+max+cockpit&amp;tbm=isch</a>Compare it with a737-200 cockpit:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=737-200+cockpit&amp;tbm=isch" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=737-200+cockpit&amp;tbm=isch</a>

Once something has been sold to nearly half the population of the planet for a decade or more, you can&#x27;t sensibly call it a &quot;fashion&quot;.Apple were the first people to deploy high quality capacitive multi touch screens to the general public, with a gesture UI underneath for things like pinch zoom. This was an amazing improvement over previous handheld systems.

Touchscreens became fashionable due to the iPhone and iPad hype. Welcome to IT, have a look at the upcoming fashions in the summer catalog.

Most of Apple and android auto and Honda built in system is voice and dial controlled while driving in my experience.I only touch the screen when not driving. It’s not hard.

In air planes you have touch buttons and physical rotational dials on sides of the screen. Cars might eventually evolve into a voice controlled system to complement the dials.It is interesting that you may in certain countries not operate a cell phone while driving, yet you can operate a car touch screen.Air plane systems are for example Garmin GPS 430

The Orion control panel looks like it would be much easier to use in a heavily vibrating, high-G rocket. It&#x27;s a lot harder to fat-finger a tactile, physical button&#x2F;switch than a touchscreen. Notice that the switches even have cages so that they can&#x27;t get accidentally toggled.

I think this conflict in ideas is very well captured by the differences in flight control instrument panels in the Orion Spacecraft as compared to SpaceX&#x27;s Dragon v2.Here is an image of what I&#x27;m referring to:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rocketry.files.wordpress.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;08&#x2F;orion-capsule.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rocketry.files.wordpress.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;08&#x2F;orion-capsule.j...</a>

Note that plans are a less apt comparison as the cockpit of a plane under most circumstances safely permits looking away from the windscreen for 5-10 seconds at a time (or more) while under no circumstances can cars tolerate more than 1-2 seconds without risk of catastrophe (crash, loss of life and limb, etc).

The proper way to do this is by voice input.

Your argument doesn’t make sense to me. Why would you do any of that WHILE DRIVING?? That’s both dangerous and foolish.As for key presses to navigate a menu you would be surprised how quickly a human memorized exactly how many times to press what buttons to get to where they want to go. In my current car I know that if I press Home, down x3, and OK I will end up in the Media menu. I can do all this without taking mu eyes off the road (or even thinking about it much after a year+ with this vehicle.

Most touchscreen varients are actually worse than this, and it&#x27;s nessecary for their displays to be within arm&#x27;s reach, increasing refocus time too.I think this just proves there are no safe manual interfaces for setting a navigation destination. Drivers should use a voice interface or stop the vehicle in a safe location.

Check out the control panel on a BMW X3. There are dedicated buttons for navigation, media, menu etc next to the big scrollwheel. Navigation even has two buttons. One for showing the map, one for launching a new location.The screen is touch enabled but I cannot remember the last time I actually touched it.

Doing that with a touchscreen or physical controls while driving would be illegal in most jurisdictions, no?

You shouldn&#x27;t be doing anything like that while driving. Also if it&#x27;s physical in any way you can build accurate muscle memory and know without looking that you have gone to the right spot. This is almost never the case with touch screens interfaces.There is no safe way to interface with a screen while driving. You are taking your eyes off the road, and your focus goes with it necessarily. The safest option is no screens. It&#x27;s the only reason I would never get a Tesla. If it&#x27;s mission critical it needs to be physical.It&#x27;s different in a plane, because you can safely take your eyes off the sky. In fact flying by instruments only is routinely the only choice; night time, weather. So a glass cockpit&#x2F;touch screen controls make sense there. But even then the key controls are still physical.

Did they change this on the new Mazda3? I had a CX-5 and you have buttons that took you to those places (audio, gps, and two more I don&#x27;t remember) around the wheel thingy.I am thinking on their new (soon) CX-30 as a possible new car as I loved the CX-5 and was told it would be mostly be based on the Mazda3.

Maybe, the point is not to make it easy. Maybe the point is to make you think &quot;Hey, there&#x27;s no safe way for me to navigate through 10 different screens to get to my GPS while I&#x27;m driving. Maybe I should pull over and do that instead?&quot;

To be fair, navigating with carplay is also highly distracting because the voice controls are so basic and it forces you to pull over and deal with one of the two touchscreens to deal with route changes, adding a stop, evaluating express lanes, dismissing modals, looking at upcoming directions, etc etc. Navigation is highly distracting period.

If you want GPS navigation, you press the &quot;road&quot; button:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;images.hgmsites.net&#x2F;lrg&#x2F;2019-mazda-mazda3_100689497_l.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;images.hgmsites.net&#x2F;lrg&#x2F;2019-mazda-mazda3_100689497_...</a>You don&#x27;t even need to look down to do it, because after 10 minutes of driving in your car, you&#x27;ve memorized the buttons.

&gt; But if you want for example turn on GPS navigation, you need to use this wheel near the gearbox to: - leave a radio interface (you must look at screen and turn the wheel at the same time)Did you miss the part where they said they will be projecting an HUD onto the windshield so drivers won&#x27;t have to look down? Your comment is arguing against a solution Mazda did not propose.Curiously, most of the people who are defending touchscreens in this thread are not addressing the 2 safety issues brought up - inadvertent torque applied by drivers and inattention to the road ahead.

&gt; Good. There is a reason you don&#x27;t see apple like designed plane cockpit.But Mazda&#x27;s cockpit isn&#x27;t plane cockpit either. Please go for a test drive with new Mazda 3 and you will be surpised how stupid is this decision.If you want to volume up, change a song, yes, it is easy.But if you want for example turn on GPS navigation, you need to use this wheel near the gearbox to:
- leave a radio interface (you must look at screen and turn the wheel at the same time)
- find where is a navi (by turning the wheel and pressing it, still looking at the screen)
- choose, again with the wheel, to start typing your destination
- and what most: again with wheel (turning it and pressing) type the address simultaneously looking on an onscreen keyboard.All that while not looking on the road and holding your steering wheel with one hand and another on navigation wheel on central canal.How come this is safer by tapping on the screen?!

No, i hate large modern touch screens in cars and prefer proper buttons, and controls that I can memorize, like the controller in my BMW. I can do most things with minimal eyes off road.I would argue its not a best in class feature, its a liability.

I&#x27;m a tech guy, and a car guy. I love cars. Keep the &quot;features&quot; the hell away from my cars. I don&#x27;t want to sit about in a mobile cinema. I want a car I can drive.The big touch-screen is a reason why I would not buy a Tesla. The reasons to buy one are economy and performance. Hell, the Prius might have actually been a decent car if it didn&#x27;t look like a shoe, sound like an overburdened vacuum cleaner, and handle like a beluga whale.

I mean, Tesla&#x27;s marketing department claims that the big touchscreen thing is a best in class feature. In reality, that&#x27;s at best subjective.

I find it fascinating to hear tech people hate on touch screens, when this is the best-in-class feature about Tesla. Can HN be consistent?The reality is that people prefer more features than less, and buttons are not the best way.What you probably hate are old, unresponsive automotive touch screens.The future will use more microphones, be faster, use AI to predict what you want to do, etc....But this seems like a &quot;pop opinion&quot;, popular on the internet, but little basis in reality.

&gt; There is a reason you don&#x27;t see apple like designed plane cockpit.Umm, I guess you haven&#x27;t see the FAA-approved Garmin G3X Touch:* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=A8o0Nk8E0S4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=A8o0Nk8E0S4</a>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=OnuRFAAKdfg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=OnuRFAAKdfg</a>

Good. There is a reason you don&#x27;t see apple like designed plane cockpit. When safety or productivity matters, you need more feedback, more options accessible and faster.That&#x27;s also why you don&#x27;t program on a tablet, even with a bt keyboard. Task switching is way to slow, not enough info directly accessible and multi tasking sucks.

changing to a different album would be easier to a touchscreen.

Why would you use a connected smartphone for HVAC controls and switching songs? The controls on steering wheel and near gear shifter are way more convenient.

At that point, it&#x27;s more the fault of the user rather than the manufacturer.The manufacturer is trying to make driving safer by removing touch screens (which is great, IMO). If the user is sooo inconvenienced by this move, enough to reach for their cellphone while driving, then that&#x27;s their own fault. Hopefully they don&#x27;t crash into someone.

Unintended side effect could be drivers using their connected smartphone which is far more dangerous.This is already the case with Mazda&#x27;s touch-disabled-while-driving screens.Not sure at all about the net effect on safety.

All the new high-trim VWs I&#x27;ve seen have pretty much touch-only controls with some capacitive non-tactile buttons though.

Yes thank you. I’ve been saying this for a long timeMy VW has an amazing UI where the centre console is a small touch screen but it has a bunch of tactile buttons around the edge that also interact with the console. So the only time you need to use the actual console as a touch screen is when entering precise details like an address into the sat nav or phone number to ring. Which, in both scenarios, I am more than happy to do at the start of the journey or pull over to do. Everything else, from the radio to the air con, is controlled via tactile buttons.More over, any important announcements that come up on the centre console can also be displayed on the dashboard as well. Including sat nav. So it means I don’t even need to look at the centre console to glance at stuff if I don’t want want to.VW have gotten a lot of bad press in recent years but when it comes to in car UIs, I’ve driven few vehicles that compare equally well.

I hate glossy monitors with a fiery passion and don&#x27;t understand why anybody thinks glossy is a feature and not a bug.I suppose having smooth glass can make the screen look slightly more crisp, but having a bright reflection of everything in the room erases any gains in clarity.

Same as the glossy monitors that look nice in the store but ruin your eyes and productivity.

Touchscreen are so common because they&#x27;re cheaper.
They also look great when you&#x27;re buying the car, and using the screen while parked in the store.It&#x27;s simply not optimised for usability but for attractiveness (both cost and aesthetic wise)

I can imagine it&#x27;s the combination of looking at the touch screen and reaching out.A button can be reached with sense of touch alone. A touch screen must be looked (or at least glanced) at.

The description of the jog controls sound a lot like those in my 2006 Honda.The description of the torque &quot;“Doing our research, when a driver would reach towards a touch-screen interface in any vehicle, they would unintentionally apply torque to the steering wheel, and the vehicle would drift out of its lane position,&quot;, doesn&#x27;t make any sense. I doesn&#x27;t matter whether you reach for a touchscreen, button, or bugle, it would produce the same effect.

My touch controlled stovetop is a nightmare, I can&#x27;t imagine dealing with a touchscreen in my car.

I think the big issue is in a majority of vehicles, UI&#x2F;UX is nothing short of atrocious. Navigating menus can often be totally unintuitive, even for techie users - now imagine older folks attempting to operate these while driving. In this case, if you can&#x27;t do it right, it&#x27;s better to not do it at all.

Seems like the future is voice control. I&#x27;m pretty used to talking to my phone to do navigation and similar things while driving, but it can be frustrating because it gets confused a lot and often makes me push a button. (vanilla Android) But you have to imagine it will get better.People are used to being able to do sophisticated things that go beyond the sort of controls you can operate by feel. You used to get by if you could adjusting the volume with a knob and pushing one of 5 preset radio stations, and maybe being able to operate most the heater&#x2F;AC controls without looking. That&#x27;s not good enough anymore.Voice seems to be the only real option. Maybe by the time it they work out all the kinks the cars will all be driving themselves.

I am absolutely stunned that it&#x27;s taken people so long to realise this. How the bloody hell could anyone have been so stupid to not realise that we need buttons with tactile feedback so we can keep our eyes on the road.It&#x27;s extraordinary.

Sensible interior design with hardware buttons is one of the main reasons why I opted to get a Mazda over other competition. Most infotainment systems were horribly janky and laggy and some companies even forced me to use them for things like HVAC controls (I&#x27;m looking at you Peugeot). Wasn&#x27;t a great experience.Having said that - I still like the fact that my Mazda has a touchscreen active while stopped. Entering Nav directions is way faster than with the commander knob.

Tom Paris is somewhere squealing with glee.

It&#x27;s probably worth mentioning that screen on 2019 model isn&#x27;t really within comfortable arm reach anymore and it&#x27;s now way higher on the dashboard.

Yes, same for my 2018 model. They turned it off with the new 2019 model.

I have a Mazda 3 (2016). There is a touch screen but the touch mode is active only when the car is not mooving.

This news provides me with the tiniest bit of hope I&#x27;ll ever be able to buy a car again. (Currently driving a 2002 model with no screens and no seatbelt warning bell. Things are great back here in sanity-world.)Edit: the car doesn&#x27;t squawk loudly at me when I hit the lock button when I get home at night, either.

It wouldn&#x27;t take much hardware added to the screen to make it better. Just add a couple pushable rotary dials, few raised buttons with edges, and some audio feedback (even just clicks&#x2F;beeps). Trimming down the software will take more work as it seems to be designed on desktop computers running tablet emulators without testing the UX while driving.

I wonder, is it really the touchscreen that is the problem, or the amount of things a driver is expected to do on it while driving? With the buttons on the steering wheel I never have the need to even reach for the center console and the screen. The only thing that really needs it would be navigation, but that&#x27;s set once at the start of the trip and then isn&#x27;t touched again usually.I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;m missing something here (or I&#x27;m a weird driver), or is it just that without having a multi-function steering wheel touchscreens are more of a hazard than a radio with buttons?(Ok, reading a few more comments here, it seems that some cars use the touchscreen to also control temperature and other things that are still buttons and dials in our car (the touchscreen is pretty much only media, navigation, phone, and a few other functions I&#x27;m forgetting now because I never used them).)

Then MB&#x2F;BMW approach of having a touchpad near your wrist is perfect - you can draw letters with your finger without having to worry about hitting miniscule letters on the screen.

When you need to type a full name. Having a keyboard present could give a huge advantage. This is not equal to having a touch screen.Next to that, my car has a system where you choose 1 letter and only the next possibility pops up. It decreases the need of a full keyboard. It&#x27;s quite likely you only need to choose the first 3 to 4 letters.

Agree, except when you need to type a name.

Touch screens in cars are the equivalent of shiny phones. They persuade people to buy and some of them might love them.Nearly every phone I see has a protector around it, destroying the nice looking design because one drop and it breaks. But you still need to have shiny designed phones or you won&#x27;t sell them.So cudos to Mazda. I wonder if they can keep this policy up when everyone else has shiny large touchscreens.

Should there be an &#x2F;s tag in there somewhere? I can&#x27;t tell.

Last time I was in a cab it had controls in the back for the AC, a light, the windows etc. - just because I&#x27;m not driving doesn&#x27;t mean I don&#x27;t want to interact with the car at all.

All these tactile controls are going to be deleted in the next decade as self driving cars go mainstream.This is a foolish move.

Care to elaborate on your studies? Not many cars have gone full touchscreen. I grant you that it took a bit of getting used to on my Tesla, but now I&#x27;d never want to go back. Curious how you controller for familiarity in your studies.

If we extend this idea, why not do it for airplanes? It seems like a bad idea to be changing the layout of mission-critical systems. I&#x27;m sure it&#x27;d wreak havoc if the cockpit of a 787 was all touch screens, with UI changes pushed at the whim of developers.I drive a car with analog controls. The buttons for controlling the radio, hazard lights, the A&#x2F;C, etc are all static. I wouldn&#x27;t want it to change. It gets the job done; it doesn&#x27;t need iteration, and messing with it would reduce safety. I don&#x27;t have to look at the controls, because the buttons are of various shapes&#x2F;sizes that I know. Tactile feedback is value in keeping eyes on the road.

&gt; having a flexible interface makes a lot more senseFor business, not the user.And honestly I expect the answer is simpler: this enables them to subcontract out the UI part and run it in parallel with the development of the rest of the car, because the UI can no longer affect anything else in the car design.

Because who know  when the volume control might get iterated out of existence

I prefer to think of cars as cars. A dock for a smartphone takes care of entertainment and for everything else discrete knobs switches and levers. Preferably clicking with a loud click.

I agree on the flexibility part. Interesting thought. Although that doesn&#x27;t necessarily mean it has to be a touch screen. There are many non-functional buttons in my car right now, which might be wired but just don&#x27;t perform an action. The car manufacturer could make it more easy to reprogram these.You can see it a bit as a Playstation controller (or whatever platform you like), it has multiple programmable buttons. A car could basically have the same. A touch screen is not required.

&gt; As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user&#x27;s need for touch screens in carsThe flexibility to benefit from rapid product iteration. If you think of cars as mostly software products that receive updates over the air, a flexible interface makes a lot more sense (even though I agree that it makes for a pretty bad user interface).

In my Mazda, above 5MPH the touchscreen doesn&#x27;t respond to touch any more and you need to use the rotary controller (which is good as muscle memory allows you to use it effectively)

They should put screen tactile screen feedback into seat...

In the 2015 Mazda I drive, they allow touch under 5 mph (I think?) But I installed Android Auto using third-party&#x2F;open source software (and touch is always-on.)By default on your phone, plugged into the car, you have to swipe&#x2F;unlock Android Auto, but if you&#x27;re parked, you can do that, and access your apps, including Google Maps. You can set your destination, and it immediately opens on the car screen. I&#x27;m completely fine with this model of interface - when parked, use your phone.However, having said all that, if you still want to use a wheel, it&#x27;s important they hit the right UI. In a BMW I rented, the way it only showed relevant letters while searching for an address (using the wheel) was pretty good and I was able to type in an address surprisingly quickly, even on my first time of using the software. Probably still not quite as quick as using a touch screen, but close enough.I suspect that when you allow touchscreen as your fallback, it&#x27;s harder to be &quot;really good&quot; about making a good wheel + button UI. It&#x27;s too easy to lean on your crutch.

&gt; As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user&#x27;s need for touch screens in cars.For me there is two different scenarii for controlling the car:- while driving quick adjustments: volume up&#x2F;volume down, temperature control, play&#x2F;stop&#x2F;skip music, start&#x2F;stop navigation.All of those should be via easy to understand, direct access physical controls.- while parked (or by a passanger): navigation setting, app switching, playlist adjustments, peripherals setup, air control strategies, anything finicky really.I see a case for these operations to be done by a touchscreen with no physical equivalent. Physical controls for those are juste hell most of the time.In that sense, I feel Mazda is just throwing the towel when a more sensible and best of both world approach could be taken.

Sorry, I badly quoted there. Was meant to quote this:&gt; Many studies I conducted actually told me that people favored analog controls over digital touch screens controls. It gives you tactile feedback, making it accessible for anyone with sense of touch.Given that Force Touch give a form of feedback (haptic though), isn&#x27;t that good enough? How many people believe that the Force Touch gives tactile feedback instead of haptic?

&gt; As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user&#x27;s need for touch screens in cars. For years I have been working on product interfaces (not just apps).How does this relate to Apple Magic Trackpad with Force Touch?

At least in TNG the voice recognition software (more-or-less) reliably understood what the user was saying.

Everyone wanted to be Star Trek The Next Generation and&#x2F;or Minority Report. That is the reality of it. Shiny futurist magic finger-wavy interfaces. Which were designed to look as cool as possible in movies and not on the basis of practical affordance.

Hopefully this is a trend that catches on; I was resolved to never buy a vehicle that had touch screen controls in it, after seeing what a mess Ford had made with the UX in my wife&#x27;s 2019 Edge, compared to what I have in my 2010 F150.I think touchscreens are dangerous as hell to have in vehicles, because you cannot operate them by feel alone, like you can with a buttons and knobs interface. People are distracted enough playing on their phones while they drive, so selfishly for my own safety, I don&#x27;t really want them futzing around with the janky touchscreen display to change the radio or mess with the air conditioning too.

You would reconsider your point of view if you have seen some truly evil UIs using rotary controls.Worst thing is when you need a manual to understand how the thing works, and manual DOES NOT specify all the options.I, as user, would prefer a large touch screen for changing settings and navigating, and several programmable analog buttons for when I&#x27;m driving.Rotary controllers are evil.

nope! touch sscreen UI has safety implications inside a motor vehicle.pocket computer&#x27;s usage scope is way broader than inside a car, and you REQUIRE the infinite UI possibility provided by a pure touch interface

Can&#x27;t wait for pocket computers to follow too.

&gt;It basically means they have given up on developing a good branded interface between the driver and the car.Or, people actually like CarPlay and Android Auto and audi would have to spend a lot of money to keep up. Newer audis already support CarPlay. They&#x27;re only switching from a rotary controller to a touch screen.

I recently bought a new Subaru. It has regular buttons and dials on the dashboard and steering wheel for all the important stuff. The touch screen works fine with Android Auto.

Makes me tempted to buy a Mazda. I like the AWD and reliability of a Suburu, but their touch screens are absolute garbage and going from my analog 6-disc changing Honda Accord to driving the much newer Subaru is painful.

Yup, agree 100%. We bought a 2014 Mazda 6, and while it has a touch screen, I find myself only using the control knob 99% of the time. It&#x27;s vastly superior to any touchscreen interface I&#x27;ve ever used, and also far better than some of the mouse-like joysticks in some cars (think later 201X Lexus vehicles and such).

Mazda (at least my Mazda6 from a few years ago) can do this because they have a great interface to the entertainment&#x2F;info system.  They have a joystick with a few mouse-like buttons on the center console just behind the gear shift.  It&#x27;s very easy to do common tasks like change volume, change station, skip to next in playlist without taking eyes off the road.
My wife actually didn&#x27;t realize for more than a year that the screen was a touch screen.  She had never had to use it.

public reason: safety.Private reason: we want total voice controlled system so we can listen to everything you say &amp; do in car, log it and get into the ad and analytics business. One step at a time well be here.

Yep. I recently spent a day driving an S5 and S6, and the non-touchscreen carplay was terrible. I have a touchscreen version in my 2017 CR-V, and it is a joy to use. I read the comments in this thread, and it makes me laugh. So much &quot;TOUCHSCREENS ARE THE DEVIL, NOBS AND BUTTONS ONLY.&quot; It just doesn&#x27;t jive with my experience at all. Maybe it&#x27;s a generation gap thing? I&#x27;m 30 FWIW.

I have used Audi’s version of CarPlay without a touchscreen and I hated it. Circling through icons that were designed for a touch interface made no sense. Tesla’s interface is not perfect but interacting with the map is so much better with its large touchscreen.

I have an older Sebring from 2010 with only 25k miles on it I was able to snag up for a good deal. Was a nicer &#x27;limited&#x27; one so it still had a newer touch screen console.It is annoying as you touch it once to &#x27;activate&#x27; it and then have to tap the screen a second time to register the press on whatever button&#x2F;input you were trying to touch.No tactile feedback and having to press it twice and visually check to make sure the input you wanted worked.It is much more time consuming&#x2F;distracting than an older vehicle in my personal experience.

You cant wave at it, two hands on the wheel:)

Whole windshield should a screen and we should be able to just wave at it to perform operation or simply talk to it.

people vastly prefer touch screensDo they?A car&#x27;s dashboard doesn&#x27;t have to be small enough to fit in your pocket; it doesn&#x27;t have a screen you want to look at constantly where there&#x27;s a direct trade-off between screen space and physical keyboard space; a car&#x27;s dashboard doesn&#x27;t have limits of where buttons can be because you have to hold it around the edges without pressing the buttons accidentally.I still hate typing with on-screen keyboards, I just grudgingly accept that for a given small phone size, I&#x27;d prefer more of it to be screen than keyboard. That doesn&#x27;t at all mean I want my car to turn into an Android tablet because I prefer a touchscreen in the constraints of a pocket size device.

&quot;Tesla’s can drive themselves a large portion of the time. Etc. Concerns about tactile feedback and such don’t really matter if you don’t have to pay attention to the road anymore. &quot;And Teslas ALMOST never kill their driver or innocent bystanders when the driver is negligently ignoring -- or bored and not paying attention to -- the road. There have been low speed accidents where the operator is tasked with taking over for the vehicle and they couldn&#x27;t respond in time. Real life is neither a video game nor a perfect simulation. Limitations of the technology and the human operator as well as conditions of the road, lighting, and weather will always be a problem.1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;interactive&#x2F;2016&#x2F;07&#x2F;01&#x2F;business&#x2F;inside-tesla-accident.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;interactive&#x2F;2016&#x2F;07&#x2F;01&#x2F;business&#x2F;insi...</a>2. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.citylab.com&#x2F;transportation&#x2F;2018&#x2F;05&#x2F;behind-the-uber-self-driving-car-crash-a-failure-to-communicate&#x2F;561230&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.citylab.com&#x2F;transportation&#x2F;2018&#x2F;05&#x2F;behind-the-ub...</a>

&gt; just another device you interact with in various ways and it also happens to be able to get you from point A to point B.just another device which can kill you and others in a split second if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As a counter point - we’re already seeing the role of the driver fading away from car travel. lane holding tech is readily available in your average car now. Tesla’s can drive themselves a large portion of the time. Etc. Concerns about tactile feedback and such don’t really matter if you don’t have to pay attention to the road anymore. As we’ve seen play out with phones, people vastly prefer touch screens and vastly prefer familiarity. Standardizing cars across a couple of different interfaces vs each car having a brand new layout of analog switches, knobs, and doo-hickeys is a much better rider experience.Much like how a “phone” went from “a device to call someone on” to what an iPhone does today, a “car” is going from “something you drive” to just another device you interact with in various ways and it also happens to be able to get you from point A to point B.

&gt; As a User Experience ProfessionalMay I politely ask - what exactly do you learn to be a UEP (pardon the abbreviation)?

Agreed.I&#x27;ve been using touch car interface for the last 5 years (Chevy). I basically do two things:
- Bluetooth connect
- listen to spotify _from_ my phone &#x2F; listen to map directions _from_ my phone.I rarely use the touch interface - I am switching tracks either using the buttons on the wheel (most of the time), or using the phone.Also, I do not want another yet another &quot;kind of familiar but different&quot; interface like most of the car touch control systems. I want the interface on my phone, that&#x27;s it.

Isn&#x27;t CarPlay exclusive to iOS devices? If so, what you&#x27;re describing might be viable with Lexus. It&#x27;d be somewhat pointless with the Toyota brand, where iOS users are a rather small minority.

&gt; They absolutely should give up. You can&#x27;t compete with an OS and ecosystem into which billions of dollars have been sunk.I agree, but I think the people building these systems are working under basically impossible conditions.I am just speculating here, but in a car company I would think the people are mostly going to be passionate about &quot;car stuff&quot; (engine, driving experience, aesthetics, drive train, etc), and so the infotainment system considerations are going to take a back seat to all the things car enthusiasts care more about. This doesn&#x27;t necessarily mean the people in the infotainment team themselves, but would definitely be whoever they report to, up the chain to whatever the &#x27;product owner&#x27; equivalent is for the entire car (eg: responsible for allocating the budget). I would expect to find an attitude less like &quot;let&#x27;s make sure people buy this car because of the infotainment system&quot; than &quot;infotainment is tolerated as a necessary feature to sell the car to the masses&quot;.On top of that, they have to build software that is going to be around for a couple decades with (ideally) no updates, and that basically doesn&#x27;t ever crash. This means extensive testing -- maybe for over a year. For sake of discussion let&#x27;s say it takes only another year to build the software: this means by the time the car is released, the platform (both hardware and any underlying software&#x2F;frameworks) it&#x27;s built on is basically already two years old -- and there&#x27;s a good chance when the platform was picked it already wasn&#x27;t cutting-edge.This isn&#x27;t meant to be a defense of bad infotainment software -- it&#x27;s still bad. Give up, and focus your time on making a great CarPlay&#x2F;Android Auto experience (at probably a fraction of the time currently spent). Make the FM radio and maybe bluetooth audio work standalone, then just rely on the phone integration for everything else (maps, text messages, phone dialing, contacts, etc).

They have given up, they’re starting to roll out CarPlay across Lexus and Toyota

&gt; It basically means they have given up on developing a good branded interface between the driver and the car.The one piece of feedback I gave Toyota in their post-purchase survey is: please replace the hot mess that is Entune with CarPlay.They absolutely should give up. You can&#x27;t compete with an OS and ecosystem into which billions of dollars have been sunk.I agree, for what it&#x27;s worth, that analog controls are superior to touch controls while driving. I hate that Toyota replaced an audio dial with a touch up&#x2F;down control. But the value of CarPlay is just way too high.

&gt;I&#x27;ve seen implementations without touch, and they&#x27;re much, much less useful.I have this. I never use it. Instead, I mount my phone next to the screen and use Android Auto on my phone. Using the rotary dial and other buttons is a) far more difficult and b) far more distracting while driving. An action that takes 1 second with a touch requires several seconds of fumbling with a knob and buttons w&#x2F;out touch.

I own two cars with CarPlay, one use a touchscreen (VW) and the other a rotary knob&#x2F;button (BMW). I much prefer the knob - with the touchscreen, I have to focus on the screen for a longer period of time to make sure my finger hits the right spot. With the rotary knob, I still have to glance over, but only enough to ensure the correct &quot;button&quot; is highlighted. That feels less distracting to me.All that said, I try to use voice control whenever possible. But, that&#x27;s not yet a complete solution, as Apple keeps Siri from accessing non-Apple apps (can&#x27;t voice control into Pandora or Google Maps).

&gt;CarPlay is amazingly good, and only really works well with a touchscreen.
&gt;At this point, it would be very hard for me to buy a car that didn&#x27;t have CarPlay integration with a touchscreen. I&#x27;ve seen implementations without touch, and they&#x27;re much, much less useful.Well, maybe the solution is to make apple carplay and android auto to work well with a dpad and buttons configuration, those interfaces have been working perfectly for videoconsoles and tvs, and a car system is more similar to that than to a phone.Actually the system works well, and it&#x27;s designed for that, And as the test confirm, using the touchscreen while driving is dangerous. The same that you can&#x27;t use a video app while driving, the touchscreen should be disables while the car is moving.

&gt;Most of us are used to being able to adjust the AC without looking, and that&#x27;s only possible because there are physical controls we can feel.My Tesla allows me to adjust the AC without looking, using the scroll wheels built into the steering wheel.

I use Android Auto in my car, and the only complaint I have thus far is the occasional misinterpreted input.Often, what I intend to be a tap will be interpreted as a swipe by the display. I suspect this can be attributed more to the cheap touchscreen hardware in my low trim model, than the software in Android or to the concept of touch screen interfaces.Just as with the older analog controls, there will be good implementations and cheap implementations. It&#x27;s not productive to compare well engineered, premium, apples to cheap, mass market, oranges.

I think your assessment is spot on. CarPlay is the best all screen car interface I&#x27;ve used, and these days it&#x27;s all I ever use if it&#x27;s available in the car I&#x27;m driving. The only car interfaces I like that aren&#x27;t CarPlay are all buttons and dials, i.e. pre smart phone era cars, and even then only a handful really made sense to me.

&gt;I&#x27;ve seen implementations without touch, and they&#x27;re much, much less useful.What, exactly, are you doing with your infotainment system that requires so much use? I mean, I agree, CarPlay and Android Auto are nice, but I&#x27;m only playing music and using the navigation, both of which can be done easily without the fancy software.&gt;Most of us are used to being able to adjust the AC without lookingIt&#x27;s not merely that we are used to it, it&#x27;s the entire purpose of the tactile interface: allowing you to adjust things while keeping your eyes on the road.

&gt; CarPlay is amazingly goodAs someone who recently rode in a car with CarPlay and saw two young technology professionals try to use it, I disagree. One of them owned the system and drove it every day it still didn&#x27;t seem like either one really understood it (&quot;Why&#x27;s it doing that?&quot; &quot;Maybe because ...&quot;).I agree that all the built-in systems I&#x27;ve seen are terrible, but CarPlay seems like merely the &quot;least bad&quot; implementation at this point. If that&#x27;s as good as we can do, I&#x27;d say we&#x27;re still in the &quot;research project&quot; phase.Nobody riding in my (ancient) car has ever had trouble finding the big red&#x2F;blue knob to change the temperature, or understanding &quot;Here&#x27;s my 2006 iPod if you want music, or unplug it and plug in your phone if you want&quot;. This is a solved problem.

&gt;The Tesla&#x27;s all-touchscreen situation in particular seems like a terrible idea.Don&#x27;t knock it until you&#x27;ve tried it. First off, you are completely wrong about it being an all-touchscreen situation. There are plenty of physical controls. Many people like you form conclusions based on not knowing anything about the car other than what you are told by other people. Think for yourself. Take one for a test drive.

The Tesla touchscreen interface is really good, partly I think because Tesla is just as much a software company as they are a car company.The other car manufacturers UIs are atrocious and their historical unwillingness to use car play has set them back.The tactile thing is one of those arguments that sounds good, but is just wrong. It’s like people arguing for the return of the blackberry form factor in smartphones.

&gt; I do agree, though, that touchscreens beyond phone interfaces should be used very sparingly. The Tesla&#x27;s all-touchscreen situation in particular seems like a terrible idea. Most of us are used to being able to adjust the AC without looking, and that&#x27;s only possible because there are physical controls we can feel.This is a very common misconception. You CAN adjust the A&#x2F;C via the steering wheel buttons, turn it off, control the fan speed etc. It&#x27;s very intuitive.In fact, you can this for most of the common controls. The settings on the touch screen are mostly for things that you only really bother with once like saving your seat-position and personal settings to your driver profile.

CarPlay might be good, never tried it, but Android Auto isn&#x27;t all that impressive, whether there is touch screen or not. I did not find it any more impressive with a touchscreen, though.But I think the bigger problem is that even if touchscreen were a better way of integrating with a phone, it&#x27;s still a completely wrong way of interacting with anything in a moving vehicle. At least with Audi&#x27;s classic MMI I could control almost everything without looking at buttons or screen (well, can&#x27;t quite input addresses that way, but you shouldn&#x27;t do it while driving anyway). Even apart from all the privacy-sucking implications of at least Android Auto, running infotainment through the phone with touchscreen interface sounds like a terrible idea.

&gt; phone phone phone phone phone phoneEither you should be driving or on your phone not both.

&gt; Correct. They have given up, and it&#x27;s good that they have, because they&#x27;ve all proven they absolutely suck at it.I started my career working on Ford Sync. I remember going to an exec fireside-chat type of thing where someone stood up and said &quot;the worst mistake of my career was outsourcing vehicle interiors in the 70s&#x2F;80s.&quot; This was to a group of engineers who were almost entirely outsourcing all of Ford Sync development to an offshore team. They didn&#x27;t see the irony.When I bought a car I went out of my way to find a way to avoid having Sync on it. I did succeed, but the best I could do was bug a separate cigarette outlet usb adapter so I could use it instead of the built-in USB port in the car. Why? Because plugging it into the car would force me to inherit all of the bugs in the assumptions built into Sync.I left Ford with the impression that vehicle OEMs are the Nokias of the auto-world. I wouldn&#x27;t bet on them to make a good consumer electornics end user experience.

I bought a 2016 Golf with CarPlay and only used it about twice. I hated how it was locked into only the functions it supported, didn&#x27;t let me use the in-car nav or other functions while it took over my screen, and it also took over my phone.

&gt;As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user&#x27;s need for touch screens in cars.Before phone integration, I might&#x27;ve agreed with you, or at least had no opinion on the subject.After watching many car companies, even high-end ones like BMW and Mercedes, fail utterly at producing reasonable phone integration systems or interfaces, though, I&#x27;m all-in on CarPlay.&gt;It basically means they have given up on developing a good branded interface between the driver and the car.Correct. They have given up, and it&#x27;s good that they have, because they&#x27;ve all proven they absolutely suck at it. In the meantime, Apple and Google (?) have done it for them, at least as far as the phone goes.(I assume the Android equivalent is equally good; no reason it shouldn&#x27;t be.)&gt;This to me is insane reasoning. That is no way user centric.I think it really IS, though.CarPlay is amazingly good, and only really works well with a touchscreen.At this point, it would be very hard for me to buy a car that didn&#x27;t have CarPlay integration with a touchscreen. I&#x27;ve seen implementations without touch, and they&#x27;re much, much less useful.I do agree, though, that touchscreens beyond phone interfaces should be used very sparingly. The Tesla&#x27;s all-touchscreen situation in particular seems like a terrible idea. Most of us are used to being able to adjust the AC without looking, and that&#x27;s only possible because there are physical controls we can feel.But the phone interface is distinct from that, and needs to be a touchscreen. When it&#x27;s not, or when it&#x27;s not present, people just pick up their phones and use them, which is worse.

<pre><code> As a User Experience Professional, I was
 never able to grasp the true user&#x27;s need
 for touch screens in cars. 
</code></pre>
Stage 1: We need a touchscreen so we can show a keyboard for sat nav address entry.Stage 2: Well, given that we&#x27;ve got this touchscreen, we might as well use it for.....

Of course it&#x27;s not user centric. It&#x27;s about capturing more revenue while limited the parts in the car. Back in the day, you had modular radio mounts. Ford broke the mold with the Ford Taurus and the integrated controls that you couldn&#x27;t replace.Now, if you care about a nice radio in your car, you need to upgrade your entire car for $5k.I have an otherwise awesome Honda Pilot with a built in, unsupported android tablet that doesn&#x27;t support carplay or android auto, and is hard to replace without heavy hackery because core controls of the car are built into the tablet.

Better than touchscreen, though, especially when moving (only doing it as a passenger, of course!)

Have you tried inputting directions into a car GPS using rotary controls? It&#x27;s reminiscent of old rotary phones and IMHO a terrible UX

I think supporting Android Auto and CarPlay is pretty user centric.  Those are the only half decent in-car interfaces I&#x27;ve ever used.  Nothing else is close.

&gt; Car Play support for me was a non-negotiable for the car I purchased two years ago.It&#x27;s a big point in my car buying decision just for the navigation experience alone.

But you can do CarPlay&#x2F;AAuto without the touchscreen idiocy.

&gt; Audi, for instance has said that part of the reason it’s discontinuing its rotary controller is that a touchscreen better supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.This to me is insane reasoning. That is no way user centric. This decision is 100% business driven and has nothing to do with the end user.That statement isn&#x27;t true, Car Play support for me was a non-negotiable for the car I purchased two years ago. Another friend made Android Auto support a big factor in his decision and said he wouldn&#x27;t buy another vehicle that didn&#x27;t support it. From other conversations we don&#x27;t seem to be outliers, that feature support is incredibly user(buyer) centric.

You&#x27;ve got to be kidding? Yes, the touchscreens on many&#x2F;most of the cars out there are a horrible user experience. I&#x27;ve shared in that frustration. But just look to how Tesla has handled this to see what can be possible. It isn&#x27;t perfect by any means but it is such an improvement to the user experience (being able to add buttons via the UI to enable new features, maps that respond quickly, etc). They still have analog controls for volume and other things. Touchscreens are here to stay. The user experience just needs to improve.

&gt; It gives you tactile feedback, making it accessible for anyone with sense of touch.Tactile feedback is also a huge security benefit. This is what really doesn&#x27;t make sense to me about the desire for touchscreens in cars - they&#x27;re inherently dangerous.

&gt; That is no way user centric. This decision is 100% business driven and has nothing to do with the end user. It basically means they have given up on developing a good branded interface between the driver and the car.Genuinely curious: what does the interface being &quot;branded&quot; have to to with the user? To me, focusing on whether their interface is branded would be more business-driven rather than user-centric.

&gt; This to me is insane reasoning. That is no way user centric. This decision is 100% business driven and has nothing to do with the end user. It basically means they have given up on developing a good branded interface between the driver and the car....or figured out that you aren&#x27;t as good at software as you are at building cars.Honestly, CarPlay&#x2F;Auto have been a godsend for me. The navigation software works better than anything I get from car manufacturers and just keeping me from mucking with my phone is fantastic. That said... I&#x27;m not sure the touchscreen part of that is the real winner there for me.

I have a newer subaru with a touchscreen and an older audi with the MMI rotary wheel.  The rotary wheel is a superior interface, it has a slight learning curve, but then you do most operations by feel without needing to spend much time looking at the screen.  the touch screen is finicky, and by definition requires you to take your eyes off the road to use it.

Are knobs and plastic moldings that expensive though? I&#x27;m not sure this is really a driving factor. Touch screens have marketing appeal (at least from the seller&#x27;s perspective), I have to think having a shiny touch screen on your new Mazda is simply just trying to get more people to purchase a new car and nothing more.

This argument doesn&#x27;t make a ton of sense to me. It seems like an inconsistent comparison to compare a single touchscreen to many customized knobs&#x2F;buttons&#x2F;etc., when you could also compare a single set of knobs&#x2F;buttons&#x2F;etc. to different screen sizes across models.Car companies don&#x27;t tend to custom-design knobs&#x2F;buttons&#x2F;etc. for each model. They tend to reuse the same ones across many models to save on development and manufacturing costs. They also already modularize these knobs and buttons across different &quot;accessory classes&quot;. You can probably see this in your own car even, if you see anywhere on your car&#x27;s center console or dashboard which has plastic caps where it seems like more buttons or knobs belong. Those are likely buttons&#x2F;knobs for additional functions in optional feature packages.Also, even for the same screen size across models, you&#x27;d still likely need custom bezels since most models are differently sized and thus have different dashboard shapes&#x2F;sizes within which the screen is mounted.Especially with how high-resolution touchscreens in cars are becoming in new models, I doubt they&#x27;re cheaper than a handful of plastic knobs and buttons.My guess is that it&#x27;s exactly what they said. It&#x27;s probably harder from a software perspective to adapt touch-screen-based interfaces like Android Auto and Apple Car Play to physical controls, and those difficulties probably come up over and over as the versions of these interfaces on the phones are constantly being updated, and the car must continue supporting more and more versions at one time.

I totally understand the business case for touchscreens in cars. It&#x27;s all about reducing cost to the business, but this usually comes at the expense of safety, which is a totally unacceptable tradeoff.

&gt; The likely driving force that is causing it is the manufacturers BOM costs.Whilst I think this is part of it&#x27;s about more than just reducing the BOM. There&#x27;s a trend to move all interfaces from knobs and switches to touch screens even when money isn&#x27;t the problem. For example the SpaceX Dragon capsule also takes this approach which you can see from the images below:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.spacex.com&#x2F;crew-dragon" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.spacex.com&#x2F;crew-dragon</a>A heavily vibrating vehicle which needs to be operated quickly and with 100% reliability by a human operator really should not be operated via a proliferation of touch screens and touch buttons as the images above show.I think current fashions are very much to blame in a lot of cases. A sleek touchscreen operated car in the showroom is a sexier buy than your more traditional button festooned dashboard. Buyer&#x27;s only get a chance to regret it after they&#x27;ve spent a lot of time with the vehicle.

Not to mention that touchscreens rated for passenger vehicles and the extreme environmental changes their interiors go through are not cheap. Look at how many screens Tesla has had to replace in their cars.

my old mustang had 10 old fashioned buttons under the screen that i could use to dial a phone number. new jeep has a rectangular thingy that could swallow up everything, but somehow it didn&#x27;t swallow 10 buttons, so i have to pull up the phone to dial a number while driving.

It&#x27;s not that hard to make programmable &#x2F; re-assignable physical dials and switches to interface in a tactile way with changing software applications.

I&#x27;d like to see a compromise on this. If there&#x27;s a passenger, they should be able to use a touchscreen. For someone not used to the car, a scroll wheel is going to feel very weird. And obviously safety isn&#x27;t much of an issue if the passenger is controlling it.Cars already know whether a passenger is present of course.

Touch screens are awful for operating while you focus elsewhere.
I miss touch typing and I sure like adjusting car controls without looking away.
What&#x27;s that, trust driverless cars you say? Never, and the basilisk be damned.

&gt; As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user&#x27;s need for touch screens in cars.You are viewing the &#x27;need&#x27; from the end user perspective. That is likely not the driving force that is causing touch screen proliferation.The likely driving force that is causing it is the manufacturers BOM costs.A single, rectangular, touch screen, that can swallow up a bunch of different knobs and buttons and basic displays, is likely cheaper from an overall BOM perspective than the set of knobs and buttons and basic displays (and supporting material (mechanical and wiring) for those knobs&#x2F;buttons&#x2F;displays).And, if two (or more) different car models use the same size rectangular screen, then one single &quot;screen&quot; can be used for plural models (with only software differences) vs. the need for unique moldings&#x2F;buttons&#x2F;etc. when providing the physical knobs and buttons on different models.The touch screen also enables different &quot;accessory classes&quot; even within the same model by a software change vs. a different piece of hardware. Think basic hot&#x2F;cold&#x2F;manual blower speed climate control vs. higher end climate control where you set a specific temp and the system picks heat&#x2F;cool&#x2F;blower speed. The same single touch screen can provide both the &#x27;basic&#x27; and the &#x27;luxury&#x27; interface via a software change vs. two different physical control units inserted into the dash.

&gt; Audi, for instance has said that part of the reason it’s discontinuing its rotary controller is that a touchscreen better supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.Sturdy rotary controls which really are knobs are much better for a car. If you&#x27;re on a bumpy road, the axis of the control will stabilize your hand. The controlling motion (twisting) can be more easily controlled, even if the bumps are trying to move your hand up and down. (I never see cars on the highway rapidly rotate about their roll axis more than 10 degrees. This only happens in Fast and Furious movies.) Furthermore, the feedback necessary to get from the control is all tactile. Contrast this with a slider control. An up&#x2F;down slider is bad, because the control movement is in line with the direction of the bumps. Even a left&#x2F;right slider has some problems with this, if your arm isn&#x27;t perpendicular with the control.Contrast all of the above with controls on a touchscreen. Almost all of the feedback is visual. Simply registering your hand on the control requires visual feedback. There is almost no physical stabilization of your hand in bumpy conditions. Instead, you have to compensate with a hand&#x2F;eye feedback loop, which requires even more visual attention.

Also fun to use an Arduino Leonardo to create custom input devices that are understood to be USB keyboards&#x2F;mice!

This is exactly what got me into modding Mechanical Keyboards.There is no reason that I NEED to launch Spotify from an actual switch controller...<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alliedelec.com&#x2F;product&#x2F;electroswitch-inc-&#x2F;6600&#x2F;70152263&#x2F;?gclid=Cj0KCQjw9JzoBRDjARIsAGcdIDVZ9jYSoxaQCgVT5rHK_xe4Xx02ZnqAExtj2i_XOc5F0u9o-GpjafUaArkeEALw_wcB&amp;gclsrc=aw.ds" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alliedelec.com&#x2F;product&#x2F;electroswitch-inc-&#x2F;6600&#x2F;7...</a>But it feels so much better to control inputs with hardware. And rotary dials for volume, and many tasks in photoshop are infinitely superior.

I was renting a 2018 car on vacation with apple car play and was very pleasantly surprised how good experience is. 
For comparison, I own the same maxed-out but 2017 car without a carplay. Apple Carplay is so much better then car manufacturers system in every respect I tried (disclaimer: I did work for Apple but several years ago and on unrelated projects)

I totally agree. I recall the Blackberry with jog-wheel (non-touch screen), worked great, could scroll at a speed I liked, easy, one handed navigation of email, joy. Then they dropped that for the mini trackball, which they introduced with the pearl (a break into a consumer market). This was a mistake IMHO, and from a business users perspective, they sacrificed business users reaching for a consumer market that the likes of Apple did better.Their again, many examples of not the best design happening as the consensus of public know how to use it. QWERTY keyboard layouts being classic example.Then consoles and the mouse+keyboard combo over a game-controller pad. For FPS, mouse wins for ease of control still for me.But the big takeaway for me about physical buttons over virtual touch-screen ones is the ability to leverage muscle memory. With physical buttons, you know were they are, how they feel and can do that without looking. Bit like sending a text from a nokia phone whilst it&#x27;s in your coat pocket. Try doing that with a touch-screen based phone. Whilst not an everyday use, it does highlight the advantages of buttons in some uses.Now, there is work ongoing in haptic feedback and some impressive work in the field of using ultrasound to create virtual surfaces you can feel. Which for many I&#x27;m sure will be great, but then the whole KISS design philosophy has somewhat taken a backseat in the name of features. But then, features are what sells many tech items today as they are still evolving. But there will always be people who prefer actual buttons. More so if you have ever been in a lift with a touch screen instead of buttons, which is something not to be sneezed at, literally unless you want to visit extra floors.

&gt; This decision is 100% business drivenIt&#x27;s 100% fad driven. Expect block chain in a car at some point because the future.

A screen with effectively infinite &quot;soft buttons&quot; is a hell of a lot cheaper than an equivalent amount of automotive grade pushbuttons.Initially this was done to save cost, but lately it&#x27;s removed a severe and justified roadblock to the addition of useless features, IMO.

The giant but not very useful 11in touchscreen in my 2017 Toyota Prius Prime can just be turned off. No really vital functions live in there, it&#x27;s mostly the (iffy) GPS and settings like the audio source, which I don&#x27;t need to change much. Almost all the normal things, like temp, lights, cruise etc. are still accessible via physical controls.

Just something to consider is that Toyota panels do have external controls that allow you to use the panel without the touchscreen.I have a 2016 Toyota Corolla, and the entertainment system is a touchscreen, but I haven&#x27;t touched it in years. There are several knobs and buttons located around the screen and on the steering wheel that provide full control over the functions, without needing to physically touch the screen.Maybe they have changes this in the last 3 years, but at least the 2016 models do have physical controls that are duplicated both on the entertainment panel and the steering wheel.While there is a touchscreen, you don&#x27;t need to touch it.

a thousand times this.A year or two ago I considered buying another car after I had a fedex semi hit me (turning left from a stop, not dangerous). I drive a 2004 corolla and love toyota, but the guy looked at me like I had grown frog legs when I asked if they had any models without the touchscreen.It was actually a major decision in me keeping my vehicle. I do NOT like the touchscreen, to me it&#x27;s a complete no-brainer that it&#x27;s more dangerous. I sure as shit don&#x27;t want to be clicking through crap while driving.When I was in HS I had a friend whose family had a couple of toyota vehicles. One of them was a small orange truck from the 70&#x27;s I think. That thing looked like absolute crap, but ran beautifully. The only thing that finally killed that vehicle was their son going around a curve too quickly in the rain and rolling it. It&#x27;s why I decided to buy toyota and I&#x27;m 100% happy with it.But this touchscreen issue is a big enough issue in my mind that I may start researching Mazda. I seriously do not want a damned touchscreen in my car.

Related to my other comment on this article here, I bought the new device which came with the Harmony Hub. Once I connected it to my Google Assistant, I haven&#x27;t looked back.

The stakes are much lower, but the same complaints apply to media center remote controls.Recently my Logitech Harmony ONE died, and I replaced it with their current high-end device. I HATE it. I want to be looking at the TV when using it, not shifting attention to the remote&#x27;s touch screen. Worse, the remote wants to support lots of controls, which it implements by allowing a swipe between pages. But it&#x27;s way too easy to accidentally change pages, and the pages are all different kinds of things, so it&#x27;s not clear how to swipe back to the one you want.So I took the $100+ device and threw it in the closet. I bought their 665 model, which is a big &quot;peanut&quot; form factor. It has all physical buttons, except four are located on the edge of an LCD screen. But that&#x27;s not a touch screen, it&#x27;s just for labeling purposes. All the buttons on the device are physical. This $50 device is so much easier to use than it&#x27;s big brother.

This may be true, but in terms of priority, I&#x27;d estimate that a car carries multiple people only 5-10% of the time it&#x27;s used.

In the case of being driven by the passenger&#x27;s phone, there&#x27;s no need for a touchscreen in the car itself.

From a user experience perspective, it seems strange to me that one would only consider the driver experience and not include the passenger. I 100% agree with you about the need for tactile non distracting controls for the driver. At the same time carplay controlled by the passengers phone has a lot of value in terms of value add to passengers.

In order to do that, we&#x27;re also going to need tens of thousands of dollars worth of additional hardware - high-end weatherproof sensors, and full-range actuators for all controls with enough authority to use all of the power the car has. Not to mention whatever pile of computers and software is needed. Changing out the UI so you can play games a little better seems like a sidenote beside that.

Agree with this for now, but what about when we&#x27;re no longer driving the car?When that happens a touchscreen and the ability to play games&#x2F;etc makes a lot of sense. I think what Tesla and others are doing is designing and preparing for the future. Although not ideal right now, they&#x27;ll be far ahead of Mazda when we transition to self-driving cars.

Counter-counter point: I much prefer the BMW interface because I can find the volume and AC controls without taking my eyes off the road.

Here is a counter anecdote. Recently I moved from BMW (buttons and dials) to Tesla Model 3 (basically a big iPad bolted on to the dash). Both me, my wife, bunch of friends with Model 3, all vastly prefer the touch screen experience.

I vastly prefer my touchscreen to analog controls - how the heck would I control my map and nav and radio without an interface that can change at need?

I&#x27;ve never driven a car with a touchscreen. And I wouldn&#x27;t want one for basic controls. Once I become familiar with old-school control locations, I don&#x27;t need to look away from the road to make adjustments.And damn, I got pulled over once for suspicion of drunk driving, in my wife&#x27;s car. In the process of finding some knob, I had drifted out of the lane.Anyway, heads-up is a great alternative. I look forward to lots of cool AR.

I own a Mazda that has this touchscreen and I use it to set nav destinations, but otherwise I rely totally on the analog controls. Typing with analog dials can be a nightmare though so I hope they sort this out -- my mother&#x27;s Audi makes you type with analog controls and it makes me want to pull my hair out. Good luck setting a destination when you&#x27;re in a hurry.

The 2019 mazda 3 without the touchscreen still has carplay and android auto. You can still do all of that. You control it with the &quot;commmander switch&quot; instead of a touch screen, and more often with the volume knob or buttons on the wheel for the most common tasks.

Mazda and other automakers build TRULY AWFUL UIs in their cars. Carplay is a godsend in this case. You can direct Siri to send texts, read texts and you have a superior GPS application. CHeck out the abomination that it Mercedes-Benz carousel for showing&#x2F;selecting radio stations on their cars.What you are really advocating is tactile feedback for digital displays--with some method of shaped feedback on by the screen itself. As a touch screen&#x27;s in cars don&#x27;t offer haptic feedback, that is an issue. That said some aspects like moving up and down stations or songs in a playlist can be controlled by steering wheel paddles or buttons on the wheel.

Maybe I&#x27;m in the minority here, but I have no problem with touch screens in cars. My problem with is with the horrible UI those touch screens provide. They&#x27;re slow to respond and don&#x27;t seem well reasoned for the functions it has.It&#x27;s why I love Carplay. It expands the function of the car in a needed way. Maybe analog controls are better, but interface matters less to me than function.

I too am glad Mazda did this, now I have to decide if I want to trade in my 2018 Mazda 3 for a 2019 one :-).Touch screens are cheap, mechanical switches are expensive. Mechanicals are expensive from an acquisition cost, tooling&#x2F;manufacturing cost, maintenance cost, and replacement cost. So automakers were happy to move everything into the touch screen and reduce these costs and boost their margin.I hope Mazda will be able to hold this line with their accountants.

I understand your reasoning, but for me after having used Car Play in my wife&#x27;s vehicle...it was a major factor in my car shopping experience.I spend a lot more time getting things set &quot;just right&quot; on my phone than I ever will on my car. Being able to hop in and have Waze, Google Maps, Pandora &quot;just work&quot; and be easily accessible rather than some built in system within the car that&#x27;s going to just &quot;check a box&quot;...it&#x27;s night and day. Car Play was so far above anything I&#x27;ve seen in a vehicle before that I actually miss it when it&#x27;s not there.I can understand the preference for analog controls though. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

Does it? I can locate and adjust a knob without ever taking my eyes off the road. The same can&#x27;t be said for a touchscreen.

Have you ever used iDrive? I&#x27;ve been using it in cars occasionally for at least 10 years and it still confuses me.I just bought my first vehicle with it yesterday, so maybe I&#x27;ll get better at it. Touchscreens are not great in cars but if you can perform the action quickly, it beats fiddling with a knob for 15 seconds.

&gt; This to me is insane reasoning. That is no way user centric. This decision is 100% business driven and has nothing to do with the end user.I absolutely hate user interface of my Audio (with rotary knob and without touch screen), so I use CarPlay pretty much exclusively.I would love to be able to use a touch screen on that for some of the interactions.&gt; It basically means they have given up on developing a good branded interface between the driver and the car.You can&#x27;t expect that all car markers will develop a good branded interface, just like most Android phone makers have a UI that&#x27;s worse than the standard Android one.With CarPlay, I get to use a UI from a company that&#x27;s an expert a making good apps.

It makes prefect sense: the whole automotive industry has a terrible track record for ui&#x2F;ux in the non-driving parts of the cars because they don&#x27;t care about it enough to put the effort in.So they outsource to Apple and Google that made a, frankly, even with touchscreens, better system then what car manifacturers would have ever produced.Now the problem is that Apple and Google had a hammer and treated the problem like it was a nail when it was not...

Exactly! there&#x27;s no place for a touchscreen in the car, although many drivers don&#x27;t know it:&#x2F;

Hopefully you were able to grasp the need for touch screens on mobile devices. Same for cars.

Hah. My car is a 2008, older than most in-car technologies, but when I&#x27;ve thought about replacing it, a big click-knob was going to be a #1 requirement. It just seemed like a mousewheel for car: an instant classic.

I will say that navigation to an address is much much better with an on-screen keyboard.   It is a uniformly HORRIBLE experience with buttons and knobs.  Maybe the endgame should be voice, but that can be hit or miss too.

Mazda&#x27;s touch screen is far away up on the dashboard while other brands like Citroen or Tesla place it between the driver and passenger, so it&#x27;s easily operated by both. I like both Audi&#x27;s rotary controller and touch screens. Both are a distraction to the driver because you have to navigate menus, not particulary because of the interface. Seat also has a touchscreen and it&#x27;s a VW brand.

I&#x27;m not buying a car with no touch screen. I like to have physical buttons for AC, and quick switching between media, radio, a dial for volume, things like that. But I also need a touch screen for Google Maps, and my music apps. Often times, my passenger might navigate these.Edit: Also, in all fairness, where the screen is relative to the dash matters, and the size of it as well. From the photos on the post, those Mazda touch screens looked pretty small and awkwardly positioned for touch controls.

&gt; Audi, for instance has said that part of the reason it’s discontinuing its rotary controller is that a touchscreen better supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.The baffling thing about that is that Audi&#x27;s MMI system was actually pretty darned good. And a few of the cars support controlling Apple Carplay with the rotary dial.Audi and BMW used to sell their dial interfaces as a unique advantage over touchscreen only infotainment systems. It blows my mind that they&#x27;re (Audi at least) going in the opposite direction now.

I like my touch screen. There is a lot I can do on it without much distraction. If something is in a sub menu that takes more than a fraction of a second to get to then I wait until I&#x27;m on a straight away that autopilot can handle and do it while I&#x27;m on autopilot.

Praise to Mazda for making this decision.As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user&#x27;s need for touch screens in cars. For years I have been working on product interfaces (not just apps). Many studies I conducted actually told me that people favored analog controls over digital touch screens controls. It gives you tactile feedback, making it accessible for anyone with sense of touch.&gt; Audi, for instance has said that part of the reason it’s discontinuing its rotary controller is that a touchscreen better supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.This to me is insane reasoning. That is no way user centric. This decision is 100% business driven and has nothing to do with the end user. It basically means they have given up on developing a good branded interface between the driver and the car.&gt; phones and tablets are familiar, so too should in-vehicle touchscreens.This too is so weird to me. I get that you want users to recognize an interface. And that it should mimic how you use other things. But at least put them in context.I hope other brands start following Mazda again for this choice.

Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles