Car makers have been increasingly relying on touchscreen controls for in-car items that were once the domain of physical buttons.
This has led to more than a little frustration, as functions such as cabin temperature settings and even door mirror adjustments, which were previously easily and quickly accessible without distraction for the driver, suddenly became hidden behind layers of on-screen menus that were difficult to find without taking your eyes off the road for extended periods.
Now, though, it seems as if touchscreen dominance is coming to an end. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, part of the Chinese government that regulates vehicle sales and type approval, is drawing up plans requiring car makers to include physical cabin buttons for key functions. These could be introduced as soon as July next year.
The regulations are expected to demand that real buttons or column stalks be used to control the likes of lighting, gear shifting, electronic driver aids, windscreen and rear screen defrost. A power-off button for electric cars, as well as buttons for anything with a safety aspect, including windscreen wipers, will also be required. These buttons will have to have at least a 10mm square surface area. The Chinese authorities will apparently be keeping a close eye on how usable and accessible these controls are and how reliable they are.
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The move is likely to force many Chinese car makers to change tack when it comes to interior design.
Brands such as Xpeng, Jaecoo and Chery are often largely reliant on their large touchscreens for almost all commonly used controls, although both BYD and MG – which are the best-selling Chinese brands in Europe and in Ireland – have been more keen on physical buttons for common controls.
The car maker likely to be most affected by the rule is Tesla, which has even gone as far as turning gear selection over to an on-screen control. Tesla has excised all but a tiny number of physical controls from its cabins.
What it will mean, for all car makers, is more expense, as a big part of the growth of touchscreen controls is that they’re cheaper to programme than buttons are to make.
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Recently Ferrari’s boss, Benedetto Vigna, told journalists that the move to onscreen controls was all about cost. Speaking to Autocar India, Vigna said: “The touch[screen] button is something that is made for the supplier’s advantage ... Making a touch button is cheaper – 50 per cent cheaper.”
Vigna was talking up a new generation of interior design, which mixes more physical buttons in with the screens and displays, which he termed “phygital”. It will be seen first in Ferrari’s first-ever all-electric car, the Luce, the inside and outside of which has been created by designers Jony Ive, of iPhone and iPad fame, and Marc Newson.
With perhaps a touch of irony, Ive said at a Luce launch event that he would never put all-screen controls in a car, as they require you to look away from the road. Perhaps other car makers should take note.
The move by China’s authorities to enforce the use of at least some physical buttons mirrors moves in Europe by independent safety experts Euro Ncap.
While the EU has not introduced any specific regulations for in-car buttons, Ncap says that in the future no car will be allowed to have a full five-star safety rating if all of its controls are touchscreen, and the safety organisation will be carefully monitoring the way in which car makers lay out their cabins.
Euro Ncap’s director of strategic development, Matthew Avery, said: “The overuse of touchscreens is an industry-wide problem, with almost every vehicle-maker moving key controls on to central touchscreens, obliging drivers to take their eyes off the road and raising the risk of distraction crashes. New Euro Ncap tests due in 2026 will encourage manufacturers to use separate, physical controls for basic functions in an intuitive manner, limiting eyes-off-road time and therefore promoting safer driving.”
What the new Chinese regulations do not include is an outright ban on electronic door handles for cars. Several incidents, including a major flood in the Guangdong region in 2024, saw motorists having to smash windows to escape their cars as heavy rain caused short-circuits in their door latch electronics.
Data from the China Insurance Automotive Safety Index (C-IASI) also showed that vehicles with electronic door handles achieved only a 67 per cent door pop-out success rate in side collisions, in sharp contrast with the 98 per cent success rate of traditional mechanical handles. It seemed to be pointing to an outright ban on such flush-fitting, electronically activated door handles by the end of this year.
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However, that now seems to have been softened, with Chinese officials instead saying that flush-fit handles are okay, but the car makers will have to robustly demonstrate how the doors can still be opened in an emergency without recourse to tools. BMW, for one, had already modified the China-market versions of its iX3 electric SUV to use mechanical door handles, rather than the pop-out ones we get here.
Many recent Mercedes models, including its all-electric cars, have also used motorised flush-fit handles, but the company’s safety expert, Dr Christian Glöggler, told The Irish Times that Mercedes always includes a mechanical component as well.
“If you have a severe accident, and both the 12-volt and 48-volt electrical systems shut down, we can still open our doors every time from both the inside and the outside,” Glöggler said. “The reason being that we have built into the doors a mechanical chain system, so even in a severe accident, whether you are inside the car or you’re one of the rescue personnel, you can always open a Mercedes door.”
While that’s confidence-inspiring, it’s worth noting that even this mechanical system relies on subsystems that detect an accident occurring and extend the door handles beyond their flush-fit position. This could possibly fall foul of the Chinese authorities.
How much difference does a flush-fit door handle make? Some research suggests that the difference between a flush-fit handle and a traditional one that sits proud of the bodywork could be as much as 0.01Cd in the car’s drag coefficient. That doesn’t sound like much, but it could be enough to save as much as 0.6kWh/100km in terms of how much battery energy you’re using, and because drag rises at the square of speed, that difference will be much greater if you’re spending lots of time on the motorway.
Then again, the added weight of the motors and sensors needed for a pop-out handle may well negate that aerodynamic advantage, so it’s quite possible that just fitting an old-fashioned, reliable, lever-style door handle and latch might be better all-round anyway.
