Touchscreen dashboards have finally taken over and ruined driving
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/touchscreen-dashboards-have-taken-over/Physical buttons are being consigned to history – but trying to prod a screen while navigating our famously poor road surfaces isn’t easy
James Foxall
23 January 2025 7:30am GMT
2021 Mercedes EQS
1980 Mercedes W123
On BMW’s next-generation Neue Klasse cars, beginning with the iX3 SUV launching this summer, drivers will have no choice but to use touchscreens. Its German rival Mercedes even offers a full-width dashboard consisting of three screens, called Hyperscreen (pictured above in the EQS, compared with the analogue, hewn-from-solid facia of the 1980s W123 Mercedes model).
They won’t be alone. An S&P Global Mobility survey of car owners found that 97 per cent of new cars released after 2023 contain at least one touchscreen.
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Why touchscreens took over
Chris Longmore, from the automotive design consultancy Drive, believes the touchscreen takeover is largely cost-driven. He said: “Tesla showed the way. By having everything on the screen, you can reduce the tooling needed to make switches and maybe going forwards do away with centre consoles altogether and [the cost of] making the panels you need for them.”
More at the link.
All my idiot touchscreen (2018) does is play the radio, and cycle through services that I don't get, and it's still too distracting for all the blind curves in my area.
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I don't like tablets or most phones.
If my PC has a touchscreen, I disable it from device manager.
That Mercedes dash is horrid, and many or most of the ICU brands moving toward EVs are making the mistake of keeping buttons and switches and/or making their screens look like buttons and switches. Sigh.
I rarely need to touch the screen in a Tesla while driving. Mostly temp control adjustments but those are all accessible through voice commands.
Amazing how many things just replace people. Some go way beyond, like cell phones.
Think about it. 
P.S. I did all the driving, so it was my navigator giving the commands. 
Just avoid the nasty jokes while you’re driving. Tessie might do something rash.
Software. ouch.
But had a friend with an original Tesla Roadster-- crazy fast.
A Ford Focus EV was fun but bricked a few days into my one week trial, 12V battery died.
A Mitsubishi MiEV was fun but very basic.
There was the Chevy Volt and eventually I bought one and it was struck by an angry truck driver.
I had taken my wife to try every EV on the market around 2018 and she waiting for the Tesla Model Y and then got one and I learned on that how the whole thing works.
I hate Musk but the car was developed by others and one of only few designed from the ground up to be an EV.