Complicated Infotainment Screens Account for 25% of New Vehicle Problems, Study SuggestsRoad & TrackFred SmithTue, September 15, 2026 at 7:24 PM UTCAdd us on GoogleInfotainment Makes Up 25% of New Car Issues: StudyTeslaFor the past two decades, increasingly large screens and the interfaces they run have become a more elemental part of the automotive experience with every passing year. That's not likely to change any time soon, either. Not only have companies like Mercedes-Benz maximized existing screen real estate with optional full-length dashboard screens, executives are not ruling out the possibility of finding even more places to put them.Naturally, that has created a few problems. According to a JD Power study published last week, 25 percent of all vehicle problems can be tied to the car's infotainment systems. The research group says that this makes the screen systems what the group calls its single "most problematic major vehicle category" for incidents, and the only category to get worse while overall vehicle quality otherwise improves across the board. In total, multimedia-related issues add up to a reported 42.4 problems per 100 vehicles, and issues in the category represent all of the top five most frequently-reported vehicle problems."As vehicles become increasingly software-defined, quality issues are leaning less toward hardware failures and more toward system complexity, software performance and connectivity," JD Power director of customer success, OEM solutions Lisa Boor said. "Customers expect these technologies to work seamlessly every day."AdvertisementAdvertisementOf course, manufacturers remain committed to increasing both the size and the importance of their central screens, which have become necessary to manage an ever-growing array of convenience, comfort, driving assistance, and performance features. Screens are often cheaper than physical gauges and controls, too, incentivizing brands to integrate more elements of the car onto them in lieu of the more conventional switchgear found on cars before the advent of the cheap display. Plus, some must-have or required features like back-up cameras can effectively only exist alongside screen displays—although companies like Bugatti have found clever workarounds for to integrate them into high-end interiors.All of that means that infotainment screens are here to stay for the foreseeable future. As these systems get larger, both physically and in complexity, reliability issues could continue to rise for the foreseeable future.You Might Also LikeIf You Can Only Own One Car, Make It One of TheseThese Are the Most Popular Cars by State