Touchscreens Don’t Belong in Cars, Says the Guy Who Designed the World’s Most Popular Touch Screens
Touchscreens in new vehicles keep getting bigger and bigger. The automakers behind these massive touchscreens tout them in their marketing as being a benefit of buying their cars. (All the better to make ads more intrusive, right, Stellantis?)
Unfortunately, there are a few problems with these touchscreens (besides being another place to be inundated with ads). One, consumers are beginning to get tired of them. Two, multiple studies have reported that car touchscreens significantly increase the risk of accidents.
Of course, those issues could have all been avoided had they asked the guy who is largely responsible for the proliferation of touchscreens around the world: Jony Ive.
Who is Jony Ive?
Jony Ive is the designer of the first cell phone to feature a touchscreen: the iPhone. He is also the guy who designed the interior of the new Ferrari Luce EV – the first electric vehicle ever made by the Italian automaker.
So, of course, the Ferrari Luce EV is filled with touchscreens, right? Wrong.
Yes, it does have a touchscreen. They are almost unavoidable at this point. However, Ive also included numerous physical switches and buttons in the Luce.
Why did Jony Ive use switches and buttons instead of touchscreens in the Ferrari Luce EV?
“The reason we developed touch [for the iPhone] was that we were developing an idea to solve a problem,” he explained to Autocar. “The big idea was to develop a general-purpose interface that could be a calculator, could be a typewriter, could be a camera, rather than having physical buttons.
“I never would have used touch in a car [for the main controls]. It is something I would never have dreamed of doing because it requires you to look [away from the road]. So that’s just the wrong technology to be the primary interface.”
So why is there still a touchscreen in the Luce? Because he said he designed it to be used intuitively, and safely.
“We use some touch in the central [screen], but it’s very thoughtful, and the vast majority of the interfaces are physical,” he explained. “Every single switch feels different, so you don’t need to look.”
Why did touchscreens in cars become so prevalent?
Jony Ive said at some point, touchscreens became “seen almost like fashion.” (Looking at you, Mercedes.) The problem, as he sees it, is that car companies aren’t “trying to solve problems” with their touchscreens, as he did with the iPhone. They just think bigger is better. (No, not you, Audi, or you, Kia.)
