Carmakers are equipping their latest models with fancy touchscreens, but that could cause problems with Europe’s largest car safety authority.
The European New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP) is revamping its rating system starting Jan. 1, 2026 to mandate that five of a car’s primary controls — its horn, windshield wipers, turn signals, hazard warning lights and SOS features — will need physical buttons or switches.
Car models will have to comply to get NCAP’s coveted five-star rating. The scheme is voluntary but is heeded by most automakers because it’s closely monitored by consumers.
Belgium-based NCAP says that purely digital controls are a potential safety issue.
mandate that five of a car’s primary controls — its horn, windshield wipers, turn signals, hazard warning lights and SOS features — will need physical buttons or switches.
Would love to see cruise control added to that list.
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?
Common EU win
Fucking good. Long overdue.
I love some EVs, but I drove a Polestar 2 and a Model 3 on road trips for work in California. Never again. The nighttime driving experience is miserable imo, and the issues with the lack of stalks and buttons is real.
The Polestar is the only car to ever make me so angry I had to pull over. It had some kind of sensor issue, and decided the right way to notify my at 80mph on the highway was to A) cover my gate cluster with the error notification B) disengage my cruise control suddenly, at 80mph, and C) begin beeping.
I almost drove my rental into the Pacific Ocean out of spite.
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.
No buttons for climate control / fans, and Android auto on it is also kinda jank.
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.
I am glad there are other players in the market but the user experience was just miserable for me. Between the lack of buttons for all the climate control and the error messages, as well as subpar android auto support in favor of their own janky android OS (not great for rentals).
Maybe Polestar 3 will fix all this. Maybe.
can we please throw in banning blue LED headlamps too?
Wow, have any car manufacturers actually tried changing these functions to touch buttons? I know Tesla got rid of the stalks, but my understanding was they still had physical buttons on the wheel to replace them.
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.
Yeah I’ve seen plenty of HVAC and other auxiliary functions like radio moved to touch (and absolutely agree it shouldn’t be legal), but never the five they’re legislating in the article (horn, indicators, wipers, hazard, SOS). Imagine touchscreen indicator buttons! The market would rip them apart.
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.
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Capacitive buttons are the fucking worst. Even when the manufacturers try to incorporate haptic feedback, it’s never enough when you’re in a moving vehicle with bumps in the road…
Feel/touch and press/activate shouldn’t be the same action
Horn, windshield wipers, turn signals, hazard warning lights and SOS features.
What about: Headlights? Fog lights? Climate control? Etc…
I don’t understand the touch screens in cars, I would expect them to be more expensive than physical buttons. Are there that many people who think it’s fancy that it’s a selling feature?
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
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.
Don’t speculate about what you don’t know about - the world is full enough with BS.
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.
I’m happy with a Bluetooth connection to the stereo. I have maps on my phone.
Fuck carplay/android auto in the ear.
I hate getting a rental car and I just want my music, but it tries to hijack and download my whole phone.
I want to get in, connect my phone and go. Not 20 minutes wrestling it for control.
Digital displays are fine. It’s just a display. But controls should be manual (buttons, dials, etc) that can be operated with eyes on road.
Download your phone?
Not the whole phone obviously. But syncing all my contacts, recent calls etc.
I don’t know what cars you’ve driven, but I’ve never driven anything with CarPlay or AA that stored contacts or calls on my head unit. Moreover I’ve never had to wrestle with the head unit for 20 min. It usually initializes in a few seconds.
Were you using an old Android phone that had to download AA?
The car was the slow part, I have an S23+.
The wrestling was figuring out getting BT audio ONLY.
And until I reset the head unit to factory previous users, contacts, radio stations and destinations were all stored there.
Not great on a rental car.
You wouldn’t download a phone
i haven’t driven in a while but i can’t remember really needing to control my keys that much. usually they stay put pretty well once they’re in the ignition
Car models will have to comply to get NCAP’s coveted five-star rating. The scheme is voluntary but is heeded by most automakers because it’s closely monitored by consumers.
Bollocks. F*ck this shit. Make it mandatory and take those ticking time bombs of the road. They are endangering OTHER people’s lives. Voluntary my ass.
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.
Don’t let morons operate deadly machinery, FTFY.
Nice to see EU policy finally flourishing now that they’re no longer getting nerfed by the UK’s membership.
This is the truth. The EU is much more efficient without the UK.
What made the UK such a hindrance for the EU?
They had a veto and they also had the Tories
Modern England is a blight apon civilization, though half joking aside. As I understand it the UKs conservative bullshit maid it so they functioned like Kentucky here in the US, basically drawing shit out till it died. Which is makes sense when you consider that England without London is about as wealthy as Mississippi.
Kentucky 💪💪💪
yes I’m a Kentucky nationalist how could you tell?
Cgp Grey had a good video on the problems with the UK voting system.
I prefer the idea that the Anglo-Saxon brain is just naturally suited to licking boots and becomes angry when others don’t
Ever since the Norman French invasion of 1066, exile was the British solution for potential trouble makers. The Anglo Saxon nobility ended up in Constantinople, but once there were colonies, exile really became Britain’s version of bread and games. Troublesome people, like people with opinions or pregnant maids, could be send to the other side of the world whenever needed. Once all people with opinions on things like fairness and egality are gone, then you are left with the complacent bootlickers who are are happy to just victim blame. Until it happens to them that is, then it’s unfair.
Hey lets give the Angles some credit here, the areas they settled revolted a lot historically. I think the Scots and Norse rubbed off on them. But the Saxons on the other hand I aint got a fucken clue. Like that worked out for my ancestors since they rode with William the conqueror and it made occupation of southern England easy but fuck they wanted a fight and only the North gave it to them.
Probably because they wanted to be like us in the US.
Okay. In what way?
Ineffective and authoritarian, ready to jump into any new war, a populace that votes against their own best interest because of what their leader with a bad haircut tells them, staunch opponents to anything that could be labeled progress?
I can’t answer your question because I don’t know. But I take it maybe you mean that as a rhetorical question?
Sounds very bad if true, which I have no doubt it is.
True that. There have been so many wins in just a few years.
Also trying to regulate encryption… but the UK tried to do that itself too.
So when are they gonna wake up and finally do something about these automatic dimming headlights? They blind me regularly.
On a curvy street its impossible to not get blinded, no matter if the car is following me, or driving opposite way.
Who allowed that shit while clearly not testing it.
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.
i dont even think they do it intentionally, its just how new cars “work”.
I’ve droven cars that have that feature and you see alot more and it doesnt feel like you’re blinding the other person.
But in reality you do, especially if you have a lower car and not a huge suv
I think it is a healthy combination of how cars work and inattentive drivers.
Can we just use the European safety regulations for American cars? I’m tired of watching them get all the safety stuff a decade ahead of us.
I expect you will. I think It will be cheaper to have a single spec globally for a given model of car.
I’m afraid they won’t. When I was a Student I had a summer job at Mercedes assembling cars. At the time cars sent to the US needed bigger airbags - you’d think it’d be less error prone at negligible extra cost to just equip all cars with the bigger airbags but they didn’t.
If they can save a couple of cents by having less buttons they’ll have less buttons.
Interesting. Is that because Americans have bigger heads or weigh more overall?
Of they can save a couple of cents by having less buttons they’ll have less buttons.
Are buttons actually more expensive than a touch screen?
You’ll have a touch screen either way and it’s possible that the functions of the buttons are available on some app too.
Just as basically all cars except current Teslas do.
I think the EU would be doing Tesla a favor if they force them to add physical controls to switch between D, R, N, P.
Edit: The current Tesla Model 3 should comply with the new rule (not 100% sure about hazard lights).
I have no idea how airbags work, but I assume you can just slot in different sizes?
Adding buttons requires certain infrastructure to be present in the vehicle. There needs to be places to insert them, though they could have separate dashboard panels if they want to build two for each vehicle, and wires/inputs for them. They could have two versions for all this, but it does require some extra effort.
- Just think about the logistics involved ensuring the correct airbag is slotted. You don’t want to be sued in the US because someone got hurt or killed because the airbag was not up to spec. The damage to the brand would be bad too. Any way, it’s not as simple as just plugging in one thing or the other.
- You could absolutely have the same wiring on both versions and just slot in different front ends (button/buttonless). I recall a couple of cases for that as well - e.g. wiring for a (DAB) antenna that is not in every version of the car or hard drives where the capacity is defined by the firmware (though having identical hardware)
grand caravans had a screen that was not availble on all trims. if you did not have it you just had a plastic plate in its place.
(laughs in freedom while eating food containing chemicals banned in the EU)
banned and produced. im looking at you france.
Belgium-based NCAP says that purely digital controls are a potential safety issue. “What we now see is we have more and more … crashes where people are having collisions because they’re being distracted,” said Matthew Avery, NCAP’s director of strategic development. That matters because fatal car accidents are on the rise in the EU. More than 20,000 people died on the roads in 2022, a 4 percent increase over 2021. The bloc wants to halve the number of road deaths by 2030, with the goal of zero fatalities by 2050. Moreover, if the displays don’t have tactile feedback, drivers can be distracted by having to poke at the screen — unsure if the controls are registering. “The problem with touchscreens is that there is inherently a lag in them, and more importantly, there is no haptic feedback,” car interiors become increasingly high-tech, the different systems are starting to diverge. Gone are the days of getting into a car and immediately knowing where all the controls are; nowadays drivers have to adjust to each new car. the illumination from the screen diminishes the ability to see down dark road[s] because pupils normally adjust when [cars] have more light inside and [the] instrument panel and touchscreen causes an additional amount of light in the car, therefore diminishing nighttime vision," Carmakers like Tesla which rely heavily on new tech will have to decide if NCAP’s five-star rating is worth reversing its interior design
Side note: touch screen are a gimmick not a new technology. the scale you have at the mall has a touch screen and has had one since the 90’s. These touch screens are used in specific locations and settings to manage complex ui, with a lower maintenance cost and the chance to keep a device running for longer with a simple os update. Most touchscreen are, believe it or not, still resistive, as they have a strong feedback and they work across most temperature ranges. Most touchscreens are added to static tools like lab tools or workstations like lifts, scales, and so on. At no point they added resistive touchscreen in cars when the tech was new. Wanna know why? Touchscreens suck. Than the Iphone came and brought us here. Now we think that touchscreens are futuristic and fancy. Not, they aren’t. Star wars and even Star trek had all physical control with full sets of buttons for the management of the ship. If a starship that you always liked had physical buttons why shouldn’t your car have that design?
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.
This probably depends on where you live.
Every super market that I go to, where I am expected to weigh vegetables and fruits myself, has touchscreens for the scales. This has been the case for many years now, I can’t recall when they changed from buttons to touchscreens, so probably 15+ years.
The bank ATM where I withdraw money has a touchscreen in addition to the old buttons and keypad. Both work, but the touchscreen has more options.
Yes! I fucking love buttons and dials! And maybe Android Auto can just heckin’ let me use my phone keyboard when I’m stopped.
Yours doesn’t?
If Android Auto is active, it blocks me from opening Google Maps on my phone and I have to mess with the touchscreen interface a bunch before it offers to let me use my phone’s keyboard while stopped. It would be less annoying if the voice search option and the search interface on the car’s touchscreen was less bad.
Interesting. Mine USED to not allow maps to open when in auto mode, but now doing so will force open the step-by-step instructions on my phone while leaving the map on the car (this started like 4 months ago)
But the phone keyboard for maps thing has been simple for like 4 years: just tap the search bar that’s up on the car screen and if I’m not moving it’s just there on my phone screen sometimes it actively annoys me because I wanted to use voice as my phone slid to the floor or some shit. Not just on my phone but on everyone I know who uses AA, are you on some ancient version or something?
Mine does that sometimes, but there’s plenty of times when it’s just being a glitchy pile of garbage. I’ve got a fully updated pixel 8 pro and a 2021 Subaru Crosstrek, but sometimes they just don’t like to talk to each other correctly. It’ll also do this fun thing where it just fails to turn on the mic for phone calls until I reboot the phone and the car before reconnecting them.
There did used to be some glitchiness in AA for me along those lines about a year ago, but they cleared up about a month before the P8 launch. I also use a P8P, but on an older car using the wired-only AA since the cars end doesn’t support Bluetooth AA sadly. Wonder if that’s got something to do with it?
Funny enough the glitch that’s remained no matter how many updates (and yes I’ve reset settings on both ends many times) is that whatever audio was left playing will Autoplay at max volume when AA initiates. Luckily I can just mute my system and then go forth, but it’s annoying to have to rewind or if I forget.
