JD Power says 35% of passenger screens have never been used

This is less a near-term earnings event than a slow re-rating of cockpit architecture. European safety standard-setters are effectively taxing overly minimalist interiors, which should redirect OEM spend toward redundant tactile controls, driver-monitoring, and more complex HMI integration. That favors suppliers with broad interior content and hurts pure screen-centric positioning, especially for EV brands that used cabin simplicity as a cost and brand advantage.

Second-order, the market may be underestimating how much this changes attach rates across the supply chain: more hardware buttons means more wiring, control modules, validation, and warranty exposure, while the “big screen” content becomes less differentiated and easier to commoditize. Over 6-18 months, that can compress the multiple on software-heavy interior narratives and lift the strategic value of established European and premium OEMs that already have physical redundancy baked into platform planning.

The immediate price reaction should be muted because model refreshes are lagged, but the catalyst path is real over the next 1-3 quarters as 2025/26 programs lock. What would falsify the thesis is continued deletion of hard controls without any penalty in safety scoring, or consumer data showing no improvement in satisfaction and retention from tactile interfaces. If that happens, the regulatory signal is noise; otherwise this is a gradual but persistent headwind for screen-first cabins.