Cars will need fewer screens and more buttons to earn a 5-star safety rating in Europe | Euro NCAP will introduce new testing rules in 2026 requiring physical controls for the highest safety score
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Those things would be way more useful if they had a wider FOV. I hate how most people now use them as the only way of checking behind them when backing up, because you really can't see shit well enough for that. It's meant for seeing something small and close that even physically turning around to look, you wouldn't see it. Like an animal or a child directly behind you.
All they've done is make people drive less safe because so many people just stare at the fucking camera screen instead of actually turning their head and checking their blind spots.
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The rate of decline of insects in the last few decades is quickly making that a non-issue.
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More physical controls is great, so I see this as a win. For navigation and media, I don't want to be without the screen, but I hate that my ventilation controls are 50 % hidden under touch controls, meaning I usually don't bother to change them while I drive, because it requires looking away too much.
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Queue
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My car is 25 years old and never ran anything over.
That's in part because your car is 25 years old. Designs have changed over time to increase the sizes of blind spots (as an unintended consequence of things like strengthening the support pillars for the roof to increase rollover survivability).
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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.
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Builds in a very expensive replacement component too.
A control button breaks? New button is a (still over-inflated) $75 to replace.
A Tesla control screen breaks (and they do, just as often as buttons) - $1500.
https://www.greencarfuture.com/electric/tesla-screen-replacement-cost-process#Cost
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Yea and sweetening wine with lead never hurt anyone, the Romans turned out fine!
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New models have LED headlights and they're awful. They're angled down, but any sort of hilly back road means you're blinding anyone in front of you anyway. Halogen are much better because it's a softer glow instead of a laser beam.
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One thing I really like about the Lucid Air is that the big screen retracts. Makes it look and feel quite different, almost like an older car without the big screen.
Important controls like seats, temperature, and volume/pause are physical. So you can have the big screen when you want it, and it goes away when you don’t. More cars should do that, though the additional moving part probably isn’t great for longevity.
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I think Euro NCAP ratings would have more teeth if it was mandatory for manufacturers of standard passenger vehicles to submit a reference model for testing. Voluntary testing doesn't work since manufacturers would be averse to submit cars for testing if they thought they'd get a bad score. And while Euro NCAP does sometimes buy cars for testing, they don't do it for every make and model.
And if the cheapest dogshit cars on the road (Kia Picantos, Dacia Sandero's etc) can have buttons, dials, wipers and indicators then so should everything above it. Companies like Tesla remove controls to cheap out on having to make a part, but they attempt to pass this off as innovation when it puts people's lives at risk.
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Tesla doesn't have that excuse. The original Roadster, Model S and Model X all had fairly conventional controls. They deliberately undermined the safety of their vehicles by aggressively removing physical controls with the model 3 and Y. It probably saved them a few bucks, but at the cost increased risk to human life. If they get penalized in safety tests for their penny pinching then so be it.
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If you're in the US like me, we should be aware the problem isn't bright lights; it's that our regulations don't allow for the European beam alteration tech that will dim sections at a time based on oncoming traffic.
Brighter lights are a huge boon to safety, but we need the corresponding tech to keep it that way.
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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. It'd think it would still be cheaper for a screen though.
But doing that is how you save money yes. Same dashes between cars, seats, heat pumps 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.
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are animated lights cool? debatable. in my opinion, kinda.
are animated lights practical? no. I actually think they're more of a distraction. I need several use cases of where animated lights other than at car start up play an actual useful role in operating the vehicle.
car companies are going away from the practical and into the cool factor and I don't think it's a good thing. those huge car fins on caddys looked cool but provided absolutely no practical functionality (I even believe that studies showed it made them less safe. disclosure: I'm pulling this out of my rear end but I think it's true).
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and good luck getting those regs passed with this congress and this administration. it's likely never going to happen unless the auto industry demands them.
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The United States, Canada, and Japan have the requirement, too. Australia's takes effect in November 2025.
