Automotive UX Design is heading toward an absurd future — and we need to talk about it
Automotive UX Design is at the center of a debate that blends innovation, common sense, and a generous dash of genuine concern.
Over the past few years, automakers around the world have gone all-in on touchscreen displays and artificial intelligence as the future of the in-car experience. But this technological race has started producing situations that range from curious to downright dangerous.
The most recent spark came from a statement by Rivian’s head of software, who suggested that voice control powered by AI agents should be the primary means of interaction between driver and vehicle. The reaction was, let’s say, pretty spirited 😬
Forums, social media, and interface and usability experts responded with a mix of disbelief and genuine concern. And it’s not hard to see why. The Reddit community discussed the topic extensively and arrived at basically the same conclusion: nobody wants to have a conversation with an AI agent to perform basic functions in their car. And nobody wants every single function buried somewhere inside a touchscreen menu.
After all, there are already cars on dealer lots today that require you to tap a screen to open the glove box or to adjust the air conditioning vents. This isn’t science fiction — these are cars you can buy right now. If this is already our reality, what else could be coming?
The question is unsettling, but it’s worth facing head-on, with one eye on the technology and the other on common sense.
When the screen became the cockpit’s main character
The transition from analog to digital dashboards didn’t happen overnight, but over the past ten years it picked up incredible speed. Tesla was one of the first to popularize the idea of a cockpit dominated by a large central screen, eliminating most physical buttons and concentrating nearly everything into a touchscreen interface. The concept was seductive: clean visuals, over-the-air software updates, and a feeling of being inside something from the future.
Other automakers saw that and figured they needed to follow the same path — fast. The result? An avalanche of vehicles with massive screens, nested menus, and functions that used to be triggered by a simple physical button now hidden in some submenu you have to hunt for while driving.
The core problem here comes down to a fundamental UX Design question: context of use. Scrolling through an app on your phone while sitting at a coffee shop is a completely different experience from interacting with an interface while traveling at 65 mph on the highway. The concept of cognitive load, widely discussed in the field of interaction engineering, shows that the more visual and mental attention a task demands, the more it competes with the primary activity — which, when you’re driving, happens to be the most critical one possible.
Physical buttons let you locate and operate them by touch, without taking your eyes off the road. Screens don’t offer that luxury, and that’s where a real risk lives — one that distracted driving research has been flagging for years.
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Studies conducted by institutions like the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety in the United States have shown that touchscreen interface systems in vehicles can divert driver attention for periods well beyond what’s considered safe, sometimes exceeding the two-second threshold deemed critical for road safety. This isn’t theory — it’s data collected in real-world use. And yet, the automotive industry kept pushing in this direction, driven by a combination of competitive pressure, product aesthetics, and of course the narrative that advanced technology always equals progress.
The thought experiment nobody wanted to imagine
The original article from The Autopian proposed an interesting and deeply unsettling exercise: take the current trends in automotive UX Design and simply extrapolate. If we already have screens controlling glove boxes and air vents, what would stop the industry from going even further? The hypothetical answers are simultaneously funny and terrifying.
Steering wheel on screen: touchscreen driving
Cars have been using drive-by-wire steering systems for over a decade now. That means, technically, the physical steering wheel doesn’t need to be mechanically connected to the wheels. The technology to replace the steering wheel with an image on a screen already exists. Picture the scene: no physical steering wheel, just a representation of one on the display. You swipe left or right to make turns. Drag the image radially to rotate.
Proponents of this idea would probably argue that without the steering wheel there’s way more legroom, or that the car would already be set up for autonomous driving. Maybe they’d even suggest you could connect a Bluetooth video game controller to steer. Just don’t forget to charge the controller before hitting the road 🎮
Sounds absurd? It does. But ten years ago the idea of opening the glove box through a screen would have sounded absurd too.
Pedals on screen: the touchscreen goes to the floor
And why stop at the hands? The logical extrapolation of this screen obsession would lead to a touchscreen on the vehicle floor, replacing the gas and brake pedals. The driver would need to use their bare feet to interact with the screen — which, it should be noted, isn’t actually illegal in most countries, even though it’s a terrible idea.
The virtual pedals would feature sliders to adjust acceleration and braking intensity, with visual feedback showing how much each pedal is being pressed. And just to keep things interesting, the acceleration control would be vertical and the brake would be horizontal. Futuristic and completely impractical at the same time.
Driving by voice: when AI takes literal control
And what if we take the Rivian software chief’s statement at face value? He literally said his end goal is for voice control to become the primary means of interacting with the vehicle. So let’s imagine that applied to the actual act of driving.
You get in the car, cross your legs, put your hands in your lap, and say something like: Car, select drive and apply acceleration at 18 percent. And the car obeys. Then you change your mind and ask to go 30 mph. The AI agent responds with something like: Great idea, 30 mph seems perfect for this kind of situation. I’m sure everyone in the left lane of this highway respects your careful, relaxed approach.
Things get really tense when you need to brake. You yell at the car to slow down, and the AI agent responds: Slowing down seems like a great idea. I love how willing you are to pause your progress and observe what’s happening around you. Just say the word and I’ll be happy to decelerate.
Then you scream desperately that you need to stop because you’re in a school zone and there are kids nearby. And the AI replies: Sure, I’d be happy to stop. Stop what? The music? The navigation? Your reminders? Let me know and I’ll stop as soon as possible.
By this point, you’ve already rolled about 200 feet into the playground. It’s satire, of course, but the point is serious: delegating safety-critical controls to voice systems that can fail to interpret urgent commands is a recipe for disaster.
Sun visor controlled by screen: the final blow to dignity
This last extrapolation might be less dramatic than the others, but it’s probably the most plausible — and that’s what makes it so disturbing. Considering that glove boxes already exist that only open via screen, why not a sun visor controlled by touchscreen?
You could try pulling the sun visor down manually, but the built-in motor would offer so much resistance that forcing it would produce horrible sounds of gears grinding, a floppy and loose visor, and a repair bill running into the thousands of dollars.
The on-screen controls would let you swipe up or down to adjust the visor position. There’d also be a photocell that reads the amount of light entering the vehicle and adjusts the visors automatically. In practice, this would result in the visors going up and down frantically all the time, like a chicken in slow motion.
And of course, there’d be an app on your phone that would allow full control of the sun visor angle from anywhere in the world, at any time. Because apparently someone needs to adjust their car’s sun visor while lounging on a beach vacation 🏖️
Voice AI as a solution or a new problem?
The Rivian software chief’s proposal didn’t come out of nowhere. It reflects a trend gaining momentum within the automotive sector: using conversational artificial intelligence as the primary interaction layer in the vehicle. The logic sounds reasonable on the surface. If the problem with screens is that they demand visual attention, why not replace most interactions with voice commands? The driver speaks, the car understands, the action happens. Hands on the wheel, eyes on the road. Seems perfect on paper.
Except the reality of voice interaction with AI-based systems is still far from being as smooth as that description suggests. Anyone who’s ever tried using voice assistants in noisy environments, with a regional accent, specific vocabulary, or simply in a situation where the system didn’t understand the command the first time knows exactly what we’re talking about.
The frustration generated by a failed interaction in an environment like a moving car can be just as distracting as any screen. And that brings up a critical UX Design question: what happens when the system fails? What’s the fallback? If AI is the primary means of interaction and it doesn’t respond correctly, the driver needs another way to execute that action safely and quickly.
There’s also the matter of perceived reliability. Research in the field of human-computer interaction shows that users tend to abandon voice systems when they fail repeatedly, even if the overall accuracy rate is high. A single failure at a critical moment can destroy trust in the entire system. In the automotive context, where many interactions happen during stressful situations, heavy traffic, or adverse weather and noise conditions, the margin for error is even thinner.
This doesn’t mean voice AI has no place in the car. It means it needs to be designed as a complementary interaction layer, not an absolute replacement for everything that existed before.
What good automotive UX actually looks like
There is a workable balance between technological modernity and safe usability, and some automakers are already trying to find it. Porsche, for example, has kept physical buttons for critical functions even in recent models with large screens. Toyota has resisted the trend of completely removing physical climate controls, opting for a hybrid approach that combines screens and buttons. These aren’t decisions born out of conservatism — they’re decisions grounded in responsible UX Design that puts the real-world context of product use ahead of aesthetics or the tech narrative.
The concept of affordance, widely used in interface design, describes the property of an object that naturally communicates how it should be used. A physical button has clear affordance: you see it, touch it, press it, feel the feedback. A flat screen has no inherent affordance — it depends entirely on visual cues to communicate what it can do, and those cues require visual attention. When you think about an automotive environment, where interface design has to compete with the road, traffic, passengers, and every other stimulus of a trip, that difference stops being a detail and becomes a matter of public safety.
The world is starting to push back
The good news is that not everything is heading in the direction of touchscreen chaos. There are concrete signs that both consumers and regulators are pushing the industry back toward a more sensible path.
A noticeable movement toward bringing back physical buttons is already underway in some models. Automakers that went overboard removing tactile controls have realized, through satisfaction surveys and actual customer complaints, that they went too far. This kind of healthy course correction shows that the market won’t accept just anything simply because it looks futuristic.
On the regulatory front, China announced it will begin requiring physical controls for certain vehicle functions, reducing dependence on the central screen. European regulators have also been discussing specific standards around distracted driving caused by touchscreen interface systems. NHTSA in the United States continues to refine its guidelines on the design of in-vehicle infotainment systems.
This creates legitimate pressure for automotive UX Design to evolve responsibly, incorporating the best of what artificial intelligence has to offer without sacrificing what ergonomics and safety demand.
The future depends on the choices we make now
The hypothetical scenarios presented — steering wheel on a screen, touchscreen pedals, driving by voice, and app-controlled sun visors — sound absurd. And they are. But the uncomfortable question this debate raises is exactly this: none of these scenarios is technically impossible. The technology for each of them already exists or is very close to existing. What separates us from these dystopian realities isn’t technological capability, but rather design decisions, safety regulations, and above all, consumers’ willingness to reject solutions that prioritize futuristic aesthetics over real-world usability.
The technology is here to stay, and that’s a great thing. High-resolution displays, increasingly capable AI assistants, and advanced driving systems are real achievements that can make the automotive experience better and safer. The question is making sure these tools serve the driver, and not the other way around. That they complement human interaction instead of replacing it entirely. That the obsession with looking innovative doesn’t override the need to be functional.
The future of automotive UX Design needs to be built on evidence, common sense, and respect for the safety of the person behind the wheel. And if that means the industry needs to hear a chorus of drivers saying no thanks, we want our buttons and steering wheels back — then so be it 🚗✨
