European car safety body is coming for touchscreens. The European New Car Assessment Programme mandates that key controls need physical buttons or switches

and opening the fucking doors

Car seat adjustment, above seat vehicle interior lights, steering wheel adjustment, door handles, door locks, main rear view mirror, climate controls for vents and seats, car starting, and trunk and seat releases should all have controls that can be operated either directly or with physical buttons.

If there is ALSO a screen driven element, that’s fine, but this stuff needs to work without a screen.

This stuff is not being done for the sake of UX. It is for saving money at the expense of consumer safety.

I have Tesla and their old design I could do easily while driving. They did a UI update and not everything takes several clicks. Anything that is critical to running the car should have a manual control. If touch screen isn’t available, you need to be able to operate the car, if nothing else to get to a repair center.

Exactly! Climate, audio, seats and mirrors controls also must be physical as they are more or less directly related to safety

Eh, I think this strikes the perfect balance where it ensures safety while not stifling innovation. Touchscreens are bad, and the consensus around that is growing. But the solution might not be a return to physical buttons, there are many possibilities and some might turn out easier and safer.

I'm sincerely appreciative of everything they do for consumers as a whole. Not everything makes it across the pond but at the very least it sets precedent and a lot of the groundwork is done if our politicians ever decide to get their shit together and give us a ground to stand on against corporations and lobbyists.

A guy can dream.

except of course for the blatant racism against non-western people, the current shift towards neofash politics (meloni etc), the militarization and the impeding economic collapse.

how do liberals manage to ignore problems so efficiently?

As long as you're not fr*nch

Except for the blatant racism, i could do without that.

My favorite is the warning to not look at the screen, which you have to acknowledge to get it to go away.

To be fair, using phones while driving was banned in most countries back when phones still had physical buttons.

This is the truth. The EU is much more efficient without the UK.

True that. There have been so many wins in just a few years.

This is faster than passing a law. Do this first then work on legislation in parallel.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

All of the functions described in the article are already on physical buttons and stalks in the Polestar 2 (I have one), so not sure how this is going to change anything? I'll agree that some of its error reporting and collision avoidance in particular are almost dangerous in their implementation, but that has no bearing on the physical buttons thing.

Zero dog in the game (I own a Mazda3) but I rented a Polestar and found it very enjoyable. Different, absolutely, but good enough that I was glad there is an alternative EV to Tesla if I wanted to get one.

Yours doesn't?

Not sure about fog lights(they need to be activated only once and only during fog), but climate control absolutely needs to be on this list.

I expect you will. I think It will be cheaper to have a single spec globally for a given model of car.

Practically a nightmare, but as a fantasy kinda cool. Initial D but they are theremin drifting would be kinda sick lol

Maybe they'll go low-tech and introduce drive-by-terrain

It's stopping it getting worse for a start. Bloody negative Nancy.

Wtf is a lime horn? Driving in Europe must be wild

This is just the Euro NCAP guidelines, not actual EU regulation, but still a positive development.
And I agree that the EU have been on an amazing streak lately, they seem to be the only governing body actually fighting for consumer rights.

It would be excellent if Europe forces manufacturers to replace old touchscreens at their own expense.

There's also buttons (I believe capacitive, but not 100% sure), but they aren't as convenient to use.

It's not only touch screen though.

I'd be ok with a haptic track ball or pad. If it gave you a noticable "click" it would be miles above the current screens.

they should just link the display to the steering wheel

to go left and right you steer accordingly

to go up and down you accelerate or break

Well, I like it for showing me what song is playing and to have my navigation up - but other than that - I don't want to be touching or interacting with it at all.

edit: grammar

What about the wind screen?

Hard disagree. Modern dash displays give tons of useful information that would be very hard to display legibly with dials. The flexibility they offer is good too, often having more than one dash layout. Nav screens are also extremely useful. Going anywhere and never getting lost? Get outta here.

And rear camera? Don't get me started on how a little dirt destroys your rear view until you pull over to clean it or how they represent a more difficult scenario for your eyes, increasing the amount of time you don't have your eyes on the road every time you check it. Unless you mean a back up camera and not a replacement for a rear view mirror, in which case yes those are super awesome.

Having upcoming signs / crossing and speed limits displayed on a small screen between the gauges is something I found quite handy.

The big display in the centre console is something that's only really usefull for maps / Spotify tho, not the rest of the car controls.

Especially because I've seen cars where they die due to temperature changes.

Navigation system? Music controls? I think what the NCAP is doing here is a good thing, but this is a bit too far to the other extreme.

Man, I haven’t got to the sci-fi cars yet. I’m still driving older tech (2003).

I can’t even glance at my phone to change a song on Spotify. I know I won’t do well with a screen. It’s too dangerous for me.

Didn't even occur to me that it was missing - I can find the cruise control buttons to turn it on/off, and set or change speed, with my eyes closed. Which is the whole idea. Eyes nowhere near the buttons, muscle memory takes over.

And what about handbrake and shifters?

weirdly Tesla Cruise control is a physical stick. just about everything else is touch screen, but indicators, gears, and cruise. (i think the new models it's actully all screen though)

And, for the love of dog, please require that the volume knob not rely on software! I hate trying to turn down/off the radio and then wait while the car decides whether I'm serious.

When I first start my car, the screen has to go through the boot up sequence and safety warning before the volume knob starts responding. The music starts playing right away, though, at whatever volume the previous driver deemed appropriate.

Eh. I don't think you need to specify "stalk". I would be fine with physical buttons anywhere within easy reach. If they want to make a racing wheel that has 30 switches on it, I think I'm fine with that.

I appreciate that SOME things don't have buttons now: getting into a BMW with that has the same number of buttons and switches as the cockpit of an airliner is ridiculous.

Bit pedantic but a stalk + assembly could cost closer to $200, I'm not sure about design and manufacturing though

the bar was so low

I say "EU, I belive in you!", now you can say it too.

I feel like when I tell people in my life this, they act like I'm crazy. The only person who truly believes me is my partner, who has been graciously enduring every time I point out that someone has their brights/fog lights on. It is a constant in my life, getting blinded by assholes.

Think of it this way. Cars already need an LCD panel for infotainment these days. New cars that lack them get passed over. At the very least, people want CarPlay and Android Auto for maps and music.

Secondly, physical switches and gauges haven’t been dumb analog or electric circuits for years. They all communicate with the car’s onboard computers.

So, if the car already needs a touch screen, and all the garages and switches are digital behind the front end anyway, it’s going to be cheaper to make the gauges out of software than plastic.

And with display panels getting cheaper and cheaper, you can slap a bigger panel in the car, and still save money on manufacturing.

Buttons and dials aren't cheap. Even in economy cars it probably costs the manufacturer a few bucks for each one, accounting for the switch itself and all the trim that goes with it.

It only takes a handful to outweigh the cost of the typical LCDs used in car systems.

My understanding was the screen itself is the expensive part. In the US, it’s required for a backup cam. At that point it’s cheaper and easier to assemble, just having everything on the network and doing software. Physical controls take more build time

the scale you have at the mall has a touch screen and has had one since the 90’s.

Not in my experience. Touchscreens arrived in the late 90s, yes, but only really with transport ticket machines, and then only if complex interaction was needed, e.g. selecting destination station or something.

To this day scales in supermarkets are either a) completely passive, that is, only display stuff, because the actual weighing is done at the till or b) have a keypad you punch a number into, generally foil. Works well enough. ATMs aren't touchscreen either they have a screen with what eight or ten buttons total to the left and right to select options. There's Braille on them I bet it's also an accessibility thing.

Getting away from screens, capacitive buttons have their place and I definitely rather have slightly funky capacitive buttons on e.g. a scale than physical ones which get dirt into them, foil ones which are I guess fine but still somehow revolting, or worst of all the scale using its weighing feet to figure out whether you pressed the left or right button. But generally speaking capacitive buttons have one simple advantage for manufacturers: They're by far the cheapest option.

My father has a relatively late model Toyota Avalon. It has a touch screen infotainment system; there are physical buttons on the steering wheel for most functions and a physical volume knob on the dashboard.

The HVAC controls have their own panel, but they're touch sensitive. So you can't feel for the knob or button you want and then interact with it. That shouldn't be legal.

I thought Tesla put handbrakes on the touchscreen as well, which seems all sorts of crazy to me.. Might as well make a list of stuff we really dont want on there now I guess.

Why 2005?

Newer Teslas don't have a turn signal stalk. They've put the turn signals on capacitive touch elements on the steering wheel because of course they have.