Source: JeepSource: JeepPassenger screens are a love-it-or-hate-it affair.Some enjoy having their own controls and (in some cases) a video and entertainment hub built directly into the dashboard immediately in front of their faces, and others simply hate it. Usually the driver isn't impacted so much, as there's a filter on so the screen can only be seen head-on, but for the slim margin of vehicles that have passenger dash-mounted screens, the numbers speak for themselves: These screens go mostly unused, across the board.Source: AudiSource: AudiAdvertisementAdvertisementBlame some of it on screen fatigue; when you're sitting shotgun, you probably either want to look at your phone's screen or no screen at all. We get that, 100%. Sit in the passenger seat of a car with a potentially slightly outdated screen in front of your face, and one you don't already have your preferences logged or signed into, and it's hard to engage. Not to mention, who doesn't enjoy just looking out the window to watch the world pass by once in a while?Unfortunately for us who like to drive to disengage with the digital world, passenger screens have much more prevalence now than ever, and that will only increase going forward. JD Power looked at roughly 68k vehicles from the 2026 model year and found that 35% of those who bought a car with a passenger screen said it had never been used at all. A laughable 6% said it's used regularly.Being that the majority of passenger vehicle trips still favor only 1 (technically 1.5, but that's not real math in the practical sense) passenger-i.e., the driver-it's not surprising that the passenger screen goes largely unused.Source: FerrariSource: FerrariAdvertisementAdvertisementWhen those few do actually use the dash-mounted screen (which sits where an airbag usually would, and we can see how that makes the screen a mildly terrifying notion alone), the study found that 21.3% of users had problems with the screen itself. We tend to think JD Power doesn't lie, so that's bad news technologically.Long story short, the more screens are shoved in vehicle occupants' faces, the more likely they are not to use them and to find problems with them should they actually use them. Basic translation: We want to engage with screens when we want to-like using a phone as a passenger in an automobile-and not when we're forced to. Also see: how manufacturers are returning to buttons for controls rather than touchscreens.Become an AutoGuide insider. Get the latest from the automotive world first by subscribing to our newsletterhere.
