50% of consumers say they will switch brands after a poor digital experience.
It’s a stat that puts OEMs in a challenging catch-22 situation. Stick with a generic but robust HMI solution or go custom and risk quality issues. The problem with the first option is becoming invisible in an increasingly busy market where drivers crave brand affinity through seamless cockpit experiences.
With off-the-shelf solutions, you lose the opportunity for brand differentiation. However, integrating bespoke solutions introduces vulnerabilities during the integration process. The result of which can be even more devastating. Nothing annoys consumers more than laggy touch screens, frozen interfaces, or confusing voice interaction. Road rage is chronic enough, without people yelling at their vehicles in frustration.
So, is it worth the switch to custom HMIs? What quality challenges are there to overcome, what are the costs of getting it wrong, and what are the rewards for flawless execution?
The Shift Toward Custom HMI Experiences
The automotive market is becoming increasingly commoditized. HMIs are the one area where OEMs can build their distinctive user experience. Simply relying on generic solutions makes it impossible for a brand to establish its emotional connection with a customer or justify its premium pricing.
It's why 90% of OEMs are likely to adopt custom HMI solutions by 2034. It's all about gaining a competitive edge.
This isn't just about trying to install the best technology. It's about delivering a custom interface that becomes a part of a brand identity. Take Tesla, for example, and how recognizable their interface is. Or, there's BMW's iDrive philosophy, which differs from the Mercedes MBUX approach.
None of this is accidental.
With over 50% of consumers saying a brand's digital experience influences their loyalty, and with vehicles becoming software-centric, users expect seamless and personalized HMIs.
This means OEMs must continue innovating or risk losing their share of the global HMI automotive market, which is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11.5% through 2030.
With hardware specifications becoming less critical and software leading the way, off-the-shelf HMIs often fall short. Especially when you consider it's a primary touchpoint between the vehicle and its user.
Modern drivers expect more than just a car; they want smartphone-like experiences with seamless connectivity and intuitive interfaces. However, this push toward customization comes with significant challenges...
Quality Challenges in Custom HMI Development
Here's where things get tricky. Integration for software-defined vehicles is a challenge for many OEMs. Recalls related to software, including HMIs, have skyrocketed since 2020. By 2023, approximately 15% of all US automotive recalls were attributed to software issues.
In addition, 2024 alone saw 27 million vehicle recalls in the US, with electrical systems being the most troublesome component type, impacting nearly 7 million vehicles.
Of course, with custom HMIs, it introduces more variables and challenges with integration, along with testing challenges. If not managed properly, there's a real risk of increased bugs and degraded UX.
The Reality of Consumer Expectations
Consumers are easily frustrated by laggy or jumpy user experiences. They expect real-time responsiveness, multi-modal inputs like touch, voice, and gesture, along with meeting critical safety features.
For software development, these are the expected challenges to overcome through testing. But when it comes to automotive vehicles, there are also real-world environments and safety-critical requirements to take into account.
Vehicle HMIs must work reliably in extreme temperatures. That could be minus 20 Celsius to plus 50 Celsius. There are different lighting conditions, a user wearing gloves, dirty screens, and vehicle vibrations, all of which are tough to replicate in laboratory testing.
Perhaps the most significant jump to make is safety validation. Most consumer apps don't really need to go through much safety testing. Automotive HMIs directly impact driver, passenger, and other road users' safety. It means that interfaces need to be validated to ensure they're not causing dangerous distraction levels for drivers. Response times need to meet safety requirements, and fail-safes need to be implemented correctly.
The Testing Bottleneck
Unfortunately, traditional automotive testing methods struggle with complex custom HMI systems. Using manual testing creates a bottleneck, dramatically increasing time to market and reducing test comprehensiveness.
Adding to this, trying to recreate realistic testing environments requires a significant infrastructure investment. Even still, it can lead to inadequate validation.
And failures in the testing process can spiral exponentially and become more expensive to address. If not caught in development, or even before product release, it can be devastating.
For example, the Takata airbag recall is estimated to have cost the industry over $24 billion globally. It's just an example of how investing in quality assurance for bespoke HMI systems can reduce the risk of costly recalls and even legal liabilities.
The True Cost of Custom Branding
HMIs now span whole dashboards and cockpits in modern vehicles. They're immediately visible to drivers every time they enter the vehicle. As we've already established, they're a core feature in creating a brand experience within vehicles, and it's a key differentiator.
Historically, automotive manufacturers might have worried about engine problems or the exterior look of the car, and often, problems in these areas might not even be noticeable to the owner.
Now, a laggy touchscreen, confusing interface, or annoying voice controls can affect the daily vehicle enjoyment. Although they might seem like small areas of performance in the basic operation of a vehicle, they actually create a disproportionate negative perception.
There's severe pressure in the automotive market right now. Brands are racing to deliver new features and keep up with competitors. However, there's a trade-off between speed and quality. This might lead to shortcuts in quality assurance, ultimately increasing bug and defect rates.
It's a quick downward spiral with user frustration leading to negative reviews and reduced customer satisfaction, along with increased support costs for software fixes.
It highlights the need for automotive companies to have robust testing frameworks in place when delivering custom HMIs. They need to be both reliable and efficient to deliver products to market fast.
Balancing Branded Experience with Quality
There's a tricky balance to strike for brands. Do you invest in customization or prioritize reliability?
While HMI recalls are less frequent than hardware recalls, software-related issues are rising and either need to be fixed with recalls or firmware updates.
Focus on customization for user interfaces can drive positive brand engagement. Think UI design, personalization, voice assistance, seamless smartphone integration, all areas that provide a considerable impact on the perceived value of a brand.
On the flip side, reliability and safety in the systems also provide a reassuring brand image. Simple connectivity, precise diagnostics, and ADAS integration all ensure core vehicle functions remain stable and safe.
Ultimately, it protects both the user and the brand. It's a challenging market to serve from a user experience and safety perspective.
Strategies for Maintaining Quality While Achieving Differentiation
So how do you go about maintaining quality whilst retaining differentiation?
One way is to use modular architecture. This helps you separate core vehicle functions from customized UI layers. Essentially, it offers innovation without risking system stability.
Volvo’s Sensus Connect is an example of strategic customization done well. The Scandinavian manufacturer focused on what matters most to its brand identity. The infotainment functions were built on a proven Android OS, but customized with safety notifications, driver assistance features, and visual design enhancements. A robust foundation with a custom layer incrementally added across vehicles.
The Volkswagen ID series and the MEB platform deliver this modular approach with customizable UI levels. They sit on top of a stable platform to strike a balance between innovation and quality. The Modular Electric Drive Matrix (MEB) is a dedicated EV architecture. It is built to maximize space while offering long-range and digital connectivity. The modular design enables it to be used for a range of vehicle sizes and incorporates over-the-air updates, providing a reliable foundation for a wide selection of EVs.
This method also enables a progressive enhancement strategy, allowing these branded experiences to be incorporated incrementally without compromising the stability of the core functionality. It's a method that will reduce risk while enabling teams to learn, develop, and improve quality processes.
During the development process, continuous testing innovation also needs to be implemented. This means that testing can be automated throughout the development process, avoiding costly fixes and rewrites tagged onto the end of the production process. It enables early defect detection while reducing cost and time to market without compounding quality issues.
UI testing tools enable you to write tests once and run them across multiple platforms, even as your UIs evolve. These testing tools address two critical validation angles that are essential for custom HMI success.
First, functionality validation verifies that everything works as expected—from touch responses to voice commands and gesture recognition.
Second, layout verification confirms that everything looks as expected and maintains brand visual consistency. This second aspect is especially crucial for custom HMI development where brand identity through visual design takes center stage. Any deviation can undermine the carefully crafted user experience.
Through robust object recognition capabilities, these testing tools ensure reliable execution across both functional behavior and visual presentation and adapt to UI changes while maintaining comprehensive coverage.
The result?
A future-proof approach that helps manufacturers align with safety standards while identifying early-stage bugs when they’re most cost effective to fix. All of which reduces the resources needed to fix them and allows manufacturers to implement new updates rapidly without compromising quality.
The key is finding that sweet spot where innovation meets reliability, where branded experiences don't come at the cost of user safety or satisfaction.
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