Automakers spent the last few years racing to strip physical controls out of cabins and replace them with glossy glass rectangles. Now that those decisions have landed in driveways, a growing number of designers and engineers are quietly acknowledging that one of the defining features of 2025 cars has gone too far. The industry’s push toward ultra-minimal dashboards and sprawling touchscreens is colliding with driver frustration, safety concerns, and a sense that new models have lost some of their character.
Instead of feeling futuristic, many of the latest interfaces are being treated as a cautionary tale about what happens when aesthetics and cost savings outrun ergonomics. I see a clear pattern emerging across expert reviews, owner complaints, and even insider commentary: the all-screen, buttonless cockpit that looked so clean on a design sketch is turning into the feature many people, including the people who created it, now wish had been handled very differently.
How the all-screen cockpit took over 2025
The feature at the center of this regret is the sprawling, tablet-style touchscreen that now dominates the dashboards of 2025 models. What started as a way to declutter cabins and showcase software has hardened into a design dogma, with climate controls, drive modes, seat adjustments, and even glovebox releases buried in digital menus. The result is a cockpit that looks sleek in photos but demands far more attention from the driver in real traffic than a simple row of knobs and switches ever did.
Critics have been warning that these overly minimalist, screen-dominated cabins are at best annoying and at worst dangerously distracting, especially when basic tasks require multiple taps and swipes. That tension is now playing out in customer clinics and internal reviews, where designers are being forced to confront the gap between the clean surfaces they championed and the messy reality of using them at 70 miles per hour. The feature that once symbolized modernity is increasingly being treated inside studios as a design trap that is hard to escape without admitting a misstep.
Why designers are second-guessing their own dashboards
Inside design studios, the regret is less about the idea of digital interfaces and more about how aggressively physical redundancy was stripped away. I hear the same story repeated in different forms: teams were pushed to chase a “living room on wheels” aesthetic, with as few visible buttons as possible, because that look photographed well and aligned with broader tech trends. Only after launch did it become clear how much cognitive load had been shifted onto drivers who now have to hunt through layered menus just to adjust fan speed or change a drive mode.
Professional reviewers have echoed that concern, arguing that the current wave of overly minimalist interiors often sacrifice usability for the sake of a showroom-friendly first impression. When a single fingerprint-smeared panel controls everything from navigation to defrost, any software lag or layout misstep becomes a safety issue, not just an annoyance. That is the kind of feedback that forces designers to look back at their own sketches and ask whether the pursuit of purity went a step too far.
Drivers are loudly rejecting the touch-only experiment
If designers are having second thoughts, it is because owners have been voicing theirs for months. Drivers of 2025 models are still complaining about the same feature that automakers keep doubling down on: the central touchscreen that swallows every function into a glowing rectangle. Instead of feeling empowered by software, many drivers describe a sense of being trapped in a user interface that was clearly optimized for a marketing brochure, not for a bumpy commute in bad weather.
Reports of ongoing frustration with these interfaces have become hard to ignore, with Drivers continue to complain that simple tasks now require eyes-off-road attention. When owners talk about missing physical knobs for volume or temperature, they are not being nostalgic, they are describing a basic safety instinct. That chorus of complaints is feeding back into automaker research, where the same feature that once looked like a competitive advantage is now being flagged as a liability in customer satisfaction scores.
The enthusiast backlash: “They are too simple”
Beyond day-to-day usability, there is a deeper cultural backlash brewing among enthusiasts and design-focused buyers. For this group, the problem is not just that everything lives in a screen, it is that the cars themselves feel drained of personality. The pursuit of minimalism has produced a wave of vehicles that look interchangeable, with flat dashboards, thin lighting signatures, and very little in the way of tactile detail to distinguish one brand from another.
That sentiment is captured bluntly in one widely shared critique where They are too simple, with “obscenely narrow lights” and a sense that the search for minimalism has “ruined” the soul of modern cars. When the most memorable part of a new model is the size of its screen rather than the way its controls feel in the hand, it is easy to see why designers who care about brand identity might look at their own work and wish they had pushed harder for more distinctive, analog details.
Safety and distraction: the cost of chasing clean lines
Regret inside design teams is also being driven by a growing recognition that the all-screen approach carries real safety trade-offs. Physical buttons and knobs can be located by feel, which lets drivers keep their eyes on the road while adjusting settings. A flat sheet of glass, by contrast, demands visual confirmation for almost every interaction, especially when icons are small or menus are nested several layers deep.
Experts have warned that these screen-dominated cabins can be “dangerously distracting at worst” when drivers are forced to navigate complex interfaces at highway speeds. That critique hits at the heart of automotive design, which is supposed to balance aesthetics with ergonomics and safety. When a feature that was meant to simplify the cockpit is instead being linked to distraction, it is no surprise that some of the people who championed it are now looking for ways to walk it back without admitting outright failure.
How cost-cutting locked in a bad idea
Part of the reason this regretted feature spread so quickly is that it aligned neatly with cost-cutting goals. Replacing dozens of dedicated switches with a single screen and a handful of capacitive touch strips reduces parts complexity and assembly time. Once that logic took hold, it became difficult for individual designers to argue for the expense of extra hardware, even when they worried about usability.
That financial incentive helps explain why Drivers continue to complain about the same interface choices year after year, even as surveys and reviews flag the problems. Once a platform is engineered around a large central display, reintroducing physical redundancy becomes a multi-year, multi-million-dollar project. That lag between recognizing a mistake and being able to fix it in hardware is a big part of why regret is surfacing now, just as the first wave of all-screen interiors is hitting its stride in the market.
Exterior design is feeling the same hangover
The regret is not confined to interiors. On the outside, some brands are already starting to retreat from the most polarizing styling experiments of the last few years. Oversized grilles, aggressive creases, and ultra-slim lighting signatures were meant to make cars stand out in a crowded market, but they often ended up alienating buyers who preferred more balanced proportions. As those reactions filter back, designers are being nudged to soften the extremes.
One high-profile example is the way Today, BMW appears to be quietly course-correcting, with newer concepts and production models dialing back some of the boldest experiments. That shift mirrors the interior story: a recognition that pushing too hard for visual impact can backfire when customers have to live with the result every day. Exterior designers, like their colleagues inside the cabin, are discovering that the line between distinctive and off-putting is thinner than it looked on the sketchpad.
Enthusiast pressure is reshaping design priorities
Enthusiasts have played an outsized role in forcing this reckoning. While they represent a fraction of total buyers, they are disproportionately vocal, and their critiques often set the tone for broader online conversation. When design-focused communities complain that modern cars have become anonymous appliances, it puts pressure on brands that trade heavily on heritage and emotional appeal.
The blunt verdict that They are too simple and “no longer have any soul” has clearly resonated beyond niche forums. I see that language echoed in mainstream reviews and even in the way some designers talk about their own portfolios. When the people who care most about design are united in saying that a feature has drained character from the product, it becomes much harder for executives to defend it as a long-term strategy.
The quiet pivot back to buttons and character
Faced with this mix of owner frustration, safety concerns, and brand-image risk, automakers are starting to adjust course. The pivot is subtle for now: a few more physical toggles under the main screen, a dedicated climate bar, a rotary controller returning to the center console. These changes may look minor, but they signal a broader realization that the all-screen experiment needs guardrails.
On the exterior side, the same recalibration is visible as BMW appears and other brands appear to be easing away from the most divisive styling flourishes. Inside studios, I hear more talk about “human factors” and “brand warmth” and less about pure minimalism. The feature set that defined 2025 cars is not going to disappear overnight, but the mood has shifted from uncritical enthusiasm to cautious revision. In that sense, the regret designers feel about the all-screen cockpit may turn out to be productive, pushing the next generation of cars toward a healthier balance between technology, tactility, and personality.
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