The touchscreen backlash is officially an industry story now, not just an enthusiast gripe. A recent Automotive News report lays out how automakers from Volkswagen’s Scout Motors to Hyundai are walking back screen-only interiors, with Strategic Vision data showing barely a third of drivers trust an in-car AI assistant the way they trust Siri or Google Assistant. Hyundai’s software offshoot 42dot is exploring single tactile controls for repetitive tasks. Some manufacturers are experimenting with dual-screen setups that split driver and passenger interaction entirely.
MINI has been living this argument in public for three years, and it is worth revisiting how the brand actually handled it.
When we first went hands-on with the circular OLED interface in 2023, the pitch was minimalism with a clear hierarchy: critical driving data up top, live widgets in the middle, dual climate zones fixed at the bottom regardless of what app is open. That is a meaningfully different decision than simply burying HVAC three menus deep. We also noted at the time how MINI’s approach compared with BMW’s own iDrive architecture, and it is worth being precise about that comparison. BMW’s X1 strips down to a similarly short list of physical controls (gear selector, volume knob, drive mode) but wraps them in a two-screen layout, curved glass, and deeper menu structure. MINI’s single circular display, by comparison, keeps the hierarchy flatter even when the underlying control count is comparable.
So MINI gets real credit here. The parking brake, gear selector, volume knob, drive mode selector and safety switches remain physical across the J01, F66 and Countryman range. That is a shorter list of hard buttons than the R-generation cars had, but a longer one than most EV-era competitors bothered to keep.
The trouble is what sits between those two poles. Our recent reviews called moving HVAC fully into the touchscreen a clear step backward in usability, and that critique has not gone away with the convertible or subsequent model year updates. Adjusting fan speed while driving still means tapping glass instead of reaching for a dial, and system responsiveness has been inconsistent enough that we flagged it again in our F66 LCI preview, where faster response times and clearer menus topped our wish list for the refresh.
Which brings us to Ferrari’s Luce, an unlikely but useful reference point. Jony Ive, who spent a career convincing the world that touch was the future for mobile computing, designed the Luce’s cabin around the opposite instinct. Climate, media and car settings each get a dedicated physical button. The steering wheel is packed with tactile dials rather than touch-sensitive pads. Ive’s stated reasoning is blunt: touch is the wrong primary interface for a car because it demands your eyes leave the road. The Luce still has a touchscreen, angled toward the driver for deeper settings, but nothing time-critical lives there exclusively.
That is the tension MINI has not fully resolved. The circular display is genuinely one of the more thoughtfully organised interfaces in the industry, and it deserves more credit than it gets for avoiding the worst excesses of screen-only design. But three years in, the honest read is that MINI drew the physical-digital line one or two functions short of where it needed to be. Climate control is the function drivers touch most often and least want to hunt for, and it is exactly the one MINI chose to digitise.
Whether MINI pulls that back with the upcoming MINI LCI or waits for the next full generation is an open question. But if Ferrari, of all brands, is now the industry’s loudest advocate for the physical button, MINI’s own long-running debate about how much of the driving experience belongs on a screen just got a very expensive endorsement.
