- cross-posted to:
- cars
- technology
- cross-posted to:
- cars
- technology
European New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) — an independent and well-regarded safety body for the automotive industry — is set to introduce new rules in January 2026 that require the vehicles it assesses to have physical controls to receive a full five-star safety rating.
While Euro NCAP testing is voluntary, it is widely backed by several EU governments with companies like Tesla, Volvo, VW, and BMW using their five-star scores to boast about the safety of their vehicles to potential buyers.
“The overuse of touchscreens is an industry-wide problem, with almost every vehicle-maker moving key controls onto central touchscreens, obliging drivers to take their eyes off the road and raising the risk of distraction crashes,” said Matthew Avery, director of strategic development at Euro NCAP, to the Times. To be eligible for the maximum safety rating after the new testing guidelines go into effect, cars will need to use buttons, dials, or stalks for hazard warning lights, indicators, windscreen wipers, SOS calls, and the horn.
The Euro NCAP’s safety guidelines aren’t a legal requirement, however, car makers take safety ratings pretty seriously, so any risk of points being docked during such assessments is likely to be taken into consideration.
You don’t genuinely believe anyone is installing and wiring up individual buttons in a car, do you? That whole row of buttons is delivered as a single unit just like the screen is and will have a single connector just like the screen does. Sure, you then have to install and test two units (screen and buttons) but that is about it in terms of extra work.
Lol of course not, but it’s assembled somewhere (with people or expensive robots) which is why it has a cost more than the simple cost of the button itself. It’s a bespoke piece of hardware specifically designed for the vehicle instead of a commodity LCD screen which can be mass produced for multiple vehicles, (edit and as I said, is already required in the vehicle for a backup camera at a bare minimum, so it’s just the upgrade cost for a slightly more expensive screen, not a screen vs no screen)
It is not as if buttons required in cars differ wildly between models, they could easily mass produce those too if they wanted to and if cost is such a major concern maybe getting rid of the stupid design team that makes them look different for every model would save a lot more money.
That would definitely help save on costs on a lot of fronts but I’m sure you’d get people complaining about the cars lacking their own style/differentiation and everything being the same if they did that. I’d think it would still be cheaper for a screen though, those things are just mass produced on a whole other level as it’s more than automotive.
But doing that is how you save money yes. Same dashes between cars, seats, heat pumps, computers etc. as many same parts as you can between as many models as you can with as few custom parts as you can, while still making a car people want to buy that differentiates itself enough.
Also how they all get integrated. The same dash using the same computer with the same cameras, will be cheaper than the same dash with a different computer and different cameras. That will probably always be at the individual OEM level though. But if things like that were standardized it’d be cheaper.