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I’m a former infotainment engineer. Touchscreens made it possible to make modern technologies available, and make them accessible in the car to people. If this results in car makers ditching touchscreens, people will get mad that they can’t use CarPlay like they used to.

In my experience, most people who have driven their car for ages can’t use the buttons on their center console without looking at them. Maybe the volume control…

As an experiment, I challenge you to draw a picture of your car’s center console from memory. See how much of it you get right. This isn’t to say that physical buttons aren’t any better than touchscreens, but I think people romanticize how effective they are with their cars interface.



I can do all of mine: three knobs are vent selection, fan speed, and temperature, three buttons below those are AC, defrost, and recirculate.

Don’t know every vent knob position, but the first (upper vents), second (adds floor vents), and last (defrost) are the important ones.

I couldn’t do the aftermarket Bluetooth radio, but the only buttons I use there are prev/next, plus the volume knob.


Was response time of the screen analyzed at all? Just the screen itself, not what any of the functions a press would trigger.




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