1173
Cars will need fewer screens and more buttons to earn five-star safety rating in Europe
(www.theverge.com)
This is genuinely good for safety.
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
1173 points (99.7% liked)
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Common European W.
Customer can choose any car they like as long as it has an ipad on the center console.
The screen should be strictly for the radio, and maybe some android-auto like thing.
Radio and parking camera, maybe sat nav for users that don't do android auto or carplay.
Bring back physical keys!
Blackberry
I don't even mind the option of being controlled in the screen, so long as there are also physical buttons. Radio and climate control should be easily accessible by physical buttons. Also, I really hate the newer aesthetic of looking like someone just jammed a tablet into the consol. There no contouring or anything.
I hate key fobs, I have two cars both with massive fobs. I can't keep both on my keyring if I'm planning to put my keys in my pants pocket. I also hate these stupid things are $200-300 to replace - even more at a dealer.
They don't even make the car more secure or harder to steal. Get rid of them.
You can usually buy physical keys san fob. If you're keys then..
That will get me in the door, but I need a fob to start the cars.
I'd expect modern cars to use proximity detection which means the fob only needs to be with you.
Like my Peguot has a fairly large fob, but it's just in the pocket of my jacket. Never leaves it. I guess it's a problem if you don't have a semi permanent thing like a jacket you use every day though.
Controlling everything in a car through screens is a safety hazard. It's insane that's even allowed.
I just bought a newish car and would not even consider any without physical buttons for climate. It really helped narrow the options, haha.
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The first time I heard that many car manufacturers are getting rid of traditional buttons and odometers in favour of touchscreens, I already thought that it is dangerous.
As always, corporations don't give af.
I don't see an issue to have digital odometer because you don't interact with it
For real, instrument cluster I'm okay having digital. It's not something I need to touch, usually there's steering wheel buttons to interact with it.
Having your whole radio/climate/etc all on one screen with menus and shit is stupid. You can't just reach over and change a setting without looking. I miss when everything was "analog". My first car was a 91 mazda rx7, and I knew exactly where every control was, didn't have to look at anything to operate it.
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Digital is fine for things that don't need to be touched. Arguably, it's better.
Separate analog odometers are better, because it's a single point of failure otherwise. If one breaks, I can still read all other instruments (fuel, engine temp, speed and/or rpm, whichever failed)
This.
You work in software just a couple of years, you learn to appreciate the mechanical solutions on a whole other level. Especially in cars.
I think the whole cluster can also fail all at once as well as the individual components, so it's actually more points of failure.
I'm not sure what you mean.
A single display that shows all controls as opposed to many "displays" per control. On top of that an odometer has less components than whatever translates the reading to an aggregated video output.
I just mean that your odometer and your speedometer and everything else are part of the cluster which can entirely fail so everything shuts down, just like a single display can fail, so there's no inherent benefit to analog over digital. It's not just individual components they are all connected still and the entire thing can all shut off at once as well, which happened to me in my little 2005 Pontiac Sunfire.
I drive a 2005 Opel Astra and had the tachometer and speedometer fail on separate occasions while everything else on the dash kept working.
Yes, they can fail individually as well as all together there are multiple points where it can fail at.
they already did a study that touchscreens are too distracting and dangerous, buttons are more intuitive and quicker to use, without looking at the menu.
But now cars won't look like what Blade Runner drove! /s
2015 Honda - perfect. Buttons when I wanted buttons. Touch when I wanted touch, and I never had to use it when driving.
2023 Ford - Yeah, it's bad and dangerous.
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I prefer my 2014 car to anything new i have tried. Buttons are just better.
Thanks, Europe!
IKR? The EU legislation to require a common charging system is already making big improvements. Seeing so many things, not just phones, that are now chargable via USB C. So many electronic gadgets, like my shaver, screwdriver and others no longer coming with a wallwart adapter each to live in my drawers and jam them up. Benefits for everyone, apart from the occasional company (Apple) that locks in to a specialised charger for profit reasons.
For real, so many good things happen here (us) because Europe makes it a thing, and it's too expensive to have separate manufacturing. Unfortunately for those that use iPhones, their requirement of third party app stores doesn't work here, because that's a software setting, and costs them nothing to have different. (Android user btw, don't come at me)
But if thereβs less screens then where will manufacturers put the advertising???
More buttons and more screens
I would also ban touch sensitive fixed controls. My father's Avalon has dedicated controls for the HVAC but they're touch sensitive, so you set the climate controls to 80C and full fan if you just wipe dust off the panel while the car's on.
You should be able to train your hand on the control, get a good grip on it, and then move it in such a way that a control input is realized. It shouldn't have to beep at you to tell you it's done a thing.
I can turn the air conditioner in my pickup on and off by feel alone, same with the basic radio controls.
VW id3, maybe the whole id series, has this bullshit. I test drove the id3 a couple of months ago. Buttons in the wheel are touch, but you can push them as well which feels clunky. rant warning! Giant freaking screen that got mad at me for trying to adjust the ac while driving (supposedly I tap it too fast, and got a time-out). Stupid LEDs under the windshield that tries to communicate stuff by lightning up in either side or move across and shit, that was really confusing. It even had mood lighting. Wtf, in a car?!? Putting the car in sports mode, to get an idea of how it can drain the battery on the motorway, changed the mood from blue to red.
Stupidest fucking car I've ever driven. Went with a fully optioned zoe instead. 5k⬠less for the same year, and actual buttons for stuff. Although I'd like to meet the engineer, who thought sticking buttons behind the wheel where they're hidden, was a good idea.
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Europe is being awesome once again!
Bout bloody time, I really hate modern cars
I want to be able to replace my infotainment system without hassle or loss of functionality
The good old days when the first thing you did when buying that old beater was change the radio to one with CDs or even MP3s... Of course if you didn't have the budget for that you could always get one of these cassettes with a jack cable to plug into your disc man, the only issue is it would skip when you hit a pothole.
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My car is pretty old and doesn't have any screens. I was using a rental car last week for a few days and I was definitely missing my physical buttons. I had to ask the guy in the passenger seat to change things for me because whenever I tried to without taking my eyes off the road I'd almost never hit the right buttons. Especially when I was going over bumps on the road.
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good
i kinda wonder if this is motivated as a non tariff trade barrier to chinese cars designed for the china market which loves apps, touch screens and karaoke in your car π€
Maybe but probably not. It's just basic common sense that all car manufacturers need to get on board with. Maybe there's just a coincidence that touchscreens and no physical buttons are cheaper to produce and the Chinese brands that you're referencing are also targeting cheaper production at the cost of road safety.
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