I wish car manufacturers would refocus from touchscreens (for reasons I will assume everyone understands) to a cost-cutting compromise of modular physical knobs and buttons.
Imagine if there was a standard form-factor, so manufacturers could install a 1x4 unit and then plug in a line of dials or button-clusters, where each section has its own tiny display that can be software-controlled to show what it does.
Yeah, it won't always match the exact lines and swoops designers want to use, but I want usability, I don't buy a car to show off the interior to others. The people who do do that are probably buying much more expensive cars and can easily afford to do things the classic way.
Cars used to have modular buttons. It was very common to have a couple of blanks in your infotainment cluster.
The problem is that it still requires custom per-feature assembly. A single car model needs a dozen different button configs, with a dozen different wiring harnesses. That's a lot more expensive than a simple one-size-fits-all touch screen you install into literally every single car and configure with a software flag.
AFAICT those were generally modular per trim level, and mainly involved excluding features at lower trims.
What I mean is something that is modular per-manufacturer or maybe even across manufacturers, where customization comes from the arrangement in a grid and what is pumped through each control's little display screen to identify its purpose and status.
> A single car model needs a dozen different button configs, with a dozen different wiring harnesses.
That seems to assume every button/dial will have a direct connection, but I'm thinking the harness would terminate in the block-of-sockets, which would be reprogrammable with logic like: "Analog input in socket 1 controls resistance on wires A and D with the following mapping. When value is in this range, show this picture."
The motivating idea here is: "Can we keep a variety of physical controls while making them cheaper, more-functional, and easier to repair?"
Cars used to have modular buttons. It was very common to have a couple of blanks in your infotainment cluster.
My brand-new luxury-brand EV still has blanks. Not all trim levels get the rear fog lights, or a few other things I can't remember. Also, they're used for buttons related to adding the towing package.
Not all markets get all features at top trim levels. A top trim level 5 series in Malaysia is pretty close to the US base model 3 series (plastic trim panels vs wood or textured metal), whereas China sometimes has long wheelbase chassis available, and occasionally you can order power window shades and self closing doors. Even the US doesn't get LWB option here in the states (it's great though, your kid can't kick the back of your seat until they're almost 4)
There are still few models of Japanese cars in Japan that can be ordered without infotainment. It'll come with a warning sticker to not poke your fingers. Those are intended for customers not satisfied with selections of stock infotainment upgrades - there are multiple choices of poverty specs to luxury infotainment units for the same model, in the first place.
IMO, one of contributing factors to ongoing touchscreen apocalypse is "off the lot" model of American car purchasing, which penalizes custom configurations, which in turn eases development of customer hostile integrated infotainment.
If manufacturers can't expect cars to retain stock, standard, integrated infotainment for the life of the car, some of the features can't be implemented by the infotainment team, but must be handled by chassis team to be offloaded to a separate computer. It can happen.
Imagine if there was a standard form-factor, so manufacturers could install a 1x4 unit and then plug in a line of dials or button-clusters, where each section has its own tiny display that can be software-controlled to show what it does.
Yeah, it won't always match the exact lines and swoops designers want to use, but I want usability, I don't buy a car to show off the interior to others. The people who do do that are probably buying much more expensive cars and can easily afford to do things the classic way.