Every Car Has a Giant Touch Screen Now
As recently as 10 years ago, touch screens in cars were tiny — if they were there at all. Most were grudgingly added by automakers in anticipation of a US mandate on backup cameras, or an early response to Elon Musk, who dropped a 17-inch monitor into a Tesla in 2012. Destinations were largely DIY, mapped on a plugged-in GPS device or chirped from an iPhone jammed in the cupholder.
Fast forward a decade and touch screens are no longer a reluctant add-on or an innovative auto perk; they're table stakes. Some 97% of new cars globally have at least one touch screen, and they are metastasizing quickly. Almost a quarter of US cars and trucks now have command displays spanning 11 inches or more, according to S&P Global Mobility; luxury brands are now normalizing a separate screen for passengers. And nowhere is this arms race more evident than in electric vehicles. As battery-powered motors commodify driving — giving sports car-level superpower to giant pickups and tiny hatchbacks alike — the center-stack display offers the biggest, brightest space to stand out. The only question is, at what cost?
“The size of screens has tripled from what I thought was huge,” says Gartner Inc. analyst Mike Ramsey. “Some threshold was reached … where the car companies said, ‘Distraction be damned, we've got to have bigger screens.'”
In an electric car, the capacitive pane is the nerve center of the vehicle: It handles virtually every command and diagnostic, from reading tire pressure to plotting the best charging stops. It also manages a suite of adjustments that in gas-guzzlers were traditionally tied to buttons and knobs. If a driver wants to adjust her side mirrors, for example, she often has to tap the screen. Shut off or redirect the air
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