Car touchscreens are a total menace – so why have them?
They were a must-have feature 10 years ago. But is it time to cancel these divisive devices, asks
When someone at a party asks what I do for a living, the subsequent conversation invariably goes one of three boring ways. Usually, an excited man in a polo neck will ask what the fastest car I’ve ever driven is. Then his girlfriend will tell me at great length how she’s going to convert a Transit into a “cute” camper van and go travelling next summer. Less frequently, but surprisingly often, people begin grumbling about how much they hate the touchscreen in whatever SUV they’ve just bought.
The car will be mechanically impeccable – safe, efficient, cheap to run and with requisite Isofix child-seat fitting points for their growing family – but will be let down by clunky infotainment or laggy satnav. Comments like “slow”, “annoying” and “a bit s---” are commonplace even from ostensibly tech-savvy demographics, who should be among the most enthusiastic touchscreen users. Instead, almost all prefer physical buttons.
Comments on Telegraph car reviews follow the same pattern, as does the consensus among car critics and the motoring press. In fact, the only people I’ve ever heard of who actively like touchscreens are those involved with consumer testing for large automotive brands. Not that I’ve ever met any of them, of course; I’ve only been told of their existence by PRs and marketing types, who insist that the modern motorist is unilaterally clamouring for more touchscreen tech.
Why car manufacturers love touchscreens
It’s true that some consumers really do like touchscreens,
15 years into the smartphone era. And given the relative complexity of the modern car, there are some functions that do benefit from a full colour screen – like satellite navigation, for example.
But there are other factors fuelling the rise of the touchscreen, and the rate at which these large and growing devices are gobbling up functions that might be better controlled with a button or a switch.
The first is cost. It’s predictably cheaper to add a line of code to a computer than it is to add wires, circuitry and buttons to the physical dash, making touchscreens better value to manufacturers than plastic or metal switches. And there are further economies of scale for giants like Volkswagen who can put the same screen hardware and software in a Skoda as they do a Seat, and simply change the logo that pops up when you turn the key.
Secondly, over-the-air updates are made possible by the inclusion of a computer screen in the car. Upgrades to a car’s infotainment system are an increasingly important part of car design, and allow manufacturers to incrementally improve their cars long after they’ve rolled off the production line. Adding functions isn’t possible when they’re all hard-wired in.
Distraction is speed over time
Swedish car magazine Vi Bilägare recently undertook a test that largely proved what we already know – that newfangled touchscreen-based infotainment systems are far more complex and time-consuming to use than traditional God-fearing analogue buttons.
A random selection of motorists were given time to familiarise themselves with a representative sample of 12 cars on the European market, including Dacia’s budget Sandero, Chinese new entrant the MG Marvel R, Hyundai’s bestselling Ioniq 5, and a number of other popular models currently on sale. Also in the mix was a 2005 Volvo V70 estate, with no
touchscreen. You can probably tell where this is going.
Under controlled conditions, the drivers were given a set of tasks to complete on the infotainment system. First, they were to activate the heated seat, increase the temperature by two degrees, and start the defroster – so far, so Swedish. Then they had to switch on the radio and tune in to a specific station before, finally, resetting the trip computer and lowering the instrument lighting to the dimmest setting.
By far the easiest and quickest car in which to do all this was the old Volvo – drivers took around 10 seconds to do all of the above in this 18-year-old car. But some of the newer cars were so tricky to use that drivers took around 30 seconds to complete the tasks, with one (the MG) presenting almost 45 seconds of fiddly hurdles before all the stages of the test were complete.
Travelling at less than 68mph (the limit on most Swedish motorways is 110kph), this meant the driver of the MG would travel around 0.8 miles (1.3km) while partially focusing on the tasks. Someone driving a BMW iX would travel 0.58 miles (928m), while someone in a Seat Leon would go 0.56 miles (895m). Of the 11 modern cars tested, the Volvo C40 and the Dacia Sandero offered the most straightforward infotainment systems, with motorists using the touchscreen to complete the tasks travelling around 0.26 miles in each (417m and 414m respectively).
But by far the shortest distance travelled while focusing on the controls was achieved in the old V70 – just 0.19 miles (306) travelled.
Technological hazard or operator error?
Touchscreens are often more cumbersome to use than buttons, but it’s worth acknowledging that we rarely need to perform these complex tasks while driving, and that the most obvious solution is to simply choose the temperature of your heated seat before taking the handbrake off.
Rebecca Guy is road safety manager at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. “Education is key to combatting the risks related to in-vehicle infotainment,” says Guy. “It is recommended that motorists understand how to use their vehicle’s infotainment specifics before commencing a journey, so that they aren’t tempted to toggle with the settings while their vehicle is in motion.
“Many of the features, such as playing music or setting up satellite navigation, should be completed before setting off on a journey,” she adds.
Now, there will be ruddy-faced motorists in the comment section who dismiss Guy as a signed-up member of the nanny state, who thinks it’s too dangerous to change radio stations when the adverts come on, and who probably wears a helmet to the shops. But deep down, even the most libertarian drivers know she’s absolutely right – we have become complacent about what we do while driving, and there’s little valid reason for us to be using what amounts to an iPad at the same time, even if it’s right there. Driving is arguably the most complex physical task that most of us do. Why, then, do we willingly complicate it by trying to type in a seven-character postcode at 74mph on a wet dual carriageway?
“As we await 2022 accident figures concerning driver distractions inside the vehicle, our primary concern is that there may be a marked rise that edges closer to the highs of pre-pandemic levels. For instance, 2021 saw 3,700 people injured on our roads compared with the previous year’s 3,174.
“We urge road users to resist the temptation to use any technology, such as infotainment, smartphones or other devices, when driving and pull over into a safe space if they urgently need to do so.”
How do we quantify ease of use?
Euro NCAP is the organisation that awards star ratings to cars based on their performance in crash tests. But there’s more to their work than simply flinging cars at walls and writing down what happens – technicians at the non-profit now consider a wide variety of much less exciting factors when rating new models, from inclusion of driver assistance features, to the ease with which child seats can be fitted.
From 2026, Euro NCAP testing will take into account the design and layout of dashboard controls in assessing cars. Touchscreens are a big part of this, meaning that – to some extent – cars could be marked down for having tricky infotainment systems.
“It is more about avoiding bad design than to push for the best design,” explains Richard Schram, Euro NCAP’s technical director. “If they did a good job, they don’t need to change anything.”
Schram is tight-lipped about what the testing might entail, but says there will be a new emphasis on safe driving under the new programme, one stage before crash avoidance. I ask whether touchscreens are inherently contradictory to this.
“No,” says Schram. “A clear, dedicated area of a touchscreen can be as easily accessible for a certain control as a physical button.
“We are not aiming to assess touchscreens; we are aiming to assess general controls, and Euro NCAP always wants to be technology agnostic.”
Imagining a posttouchscreen age
Widespread grumbling about touchscreens has reached manufacturers, and is being taken seriously. Hyundai, Volkswagen and BMW have all made noises suggesting a slight row-back on touchscreen dependency.
But what’s the alternative? Cars now perform more functions than could be plausibly controlled without resembling the flight deck of an A380, and with more technology being shoehorned into vehicles with every passing model year, that’s unlikely to change soon.
Some manufacturers think they’ve found a solution. Head-up displays (HUD), which project information onto the windscreen, have been around for years, and brands like BMW reckon this could be the future of car dashboard design. BMW Panoramic Vision, unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, spans the whole windscreen. It isn’t the only such system in development, and is unlikely to be the only full-width HUD on the market for long once it debuts to consumers in 2025. It’s plausible that this tech will enjoy the same ubiquity as touchscreens in 10 or 15 years’ time.
Touchscreens might have their critics, but projecting vehicle data, maps, driver aids and multimedia information onto the windscreen is unlikely to be any less divisive than a 10-inch screen on the dash. Regardless, it seems like the direction car manufacturers are headed in – and I look forward to people at parties telling me how much they hate it.