In contrast to the USD300m market anticipated for 2024, IDTechEx‘s recent report, „Haptics 2025-2035: Technologies, Markets, Players,” projects a nearly USD2.5bn automotive haptics industry in 2035.
The shift to solid-state buttons in car interiors is a major factor in this rise since they lead to simpler mechanical designs, can save money, and stop dust and other impurities from getting inside behind physical switches. Since solid-state buttons don’t have input confirmation built in, a haptic actuator lets the user know when they’ve pressed a switch without requiring visual or aural cues.
„This input confirmation was helpful when these haptic buttons were only used for the control of non-core driving functions like climate control or entertainment systems, but it is vital when they are used to control core driving functionality. A key case study here is the steering wheel in Tesla’s Model 3, specifically in the Highland refresh post-October 2023. Previous Tesla models had used physical buttons on the steering wheel to replace indicator stalks, but this update moved these to capacitive haptic buttons, which did not have a physical detent when pressed. Haptic buttons on the steering wheel are also used to control other important functions, like cruise control and windscreen wipers. In the coming years, other marques are likely to follow Tesla’s move as they seek to simplify the car cockpit’s design while increasing reliability and potentially reducing production costs,” according to Sam Dale, Senior Technology Analyst at IDTechEx.
The use of haptic buttons for basic driving functionality is anticipated to lead to the adoption of more haptic actuators per car, in addition to increasing the acceptance of these solid-state buttons in more vehicles and, consequently, the quantity of haptic actuators supplied into the automotive industry. A strip of capacitive buttons with a single, commodity haptic actuator, such as an LRA (linear resonant actuator) or even an extremely inexpensive ERM (eccentric rotating mass) motor, may be sufficient to confirm input from multiple buttons when haptic buttons are used to control less crucial features. However, requirements become more strict when a misclick could result in an accident. Naturally, all of this is anticipated to help this market develop as IDTechEx forecasted.
A Great Opportunity
To help localize feedback, it will probably be necessary to use one actuator per button. This presents a great opportunity to use more sophisticated haptic actuators, especially piezoelectric actuators from suppliers like TDK, which can produce a „crisper” button press feel because they can accelerate very quickly and fit in a smaller package than most haptic actuators. Additionally, piezoelectric actuators can incorporate pressure sensing capabilities themselves when used with drivers from a business like Canadian player Boréas Technologies, eliminating the need for additional capacitive sensing circuitry.
The primary obstacles in this case are the challenging validation procedures that come with all new automotive technology and its seeming fragility, which Boréas CEO Simon Chaput told IDTechEx is more a result of a general lack of engineering expertise regarding piezoelectric actuators than a problem with the technology itself. By providing its own technical services and reference designs to implementers of its driving technology, Boréas has fought this.
Helping Address the Issue of the Lack of a Button „Click”
Haptics, which can offer a degree of input confirmation that is more difficult to overlook than visual or aural feedback alone, can also improve the functionality of the display in an automobile’s center console, lowering related distraction. Automakers like Nissan and Audi have included haptic input feedback to help address the issue of the lack of a button „click,” which has been a common complaint linked to the growing reliance on the center console display to manage tasks that formerly had their own buttons.
Here, the user experience could be improved by more recent actuator classes, such as voice coil motors (VCMs). Their design may be adjusted to actuate more uniformly across bigger surfaces, such as a display, and because of their wider frequency response range, they can transmit a wider variety of haptic sensations than the widely used LRA.
Despite all the positive news for the adoption of haptics in vehicles, there are headwinds as well. Pressure to reduce reliance on touchscreen center consoles is coming from the safety body Euro NCAP. From January 2026, it says it will downgrade the safety rating for vehicles that do not use physical buttons for basic operations like activating hazard lights. This may lessen opportunities for haptics integration if this results in a move back to physical buttons; although this is not a regulatory move, so many automakers may choose to simply take the hit here.
The Move Towards Increased Haptic Integration
Another headwind comes from consumer perception, with the VW Group stating that the auto giant had moved away from the haptic buttons it had used in some models as these had been poorly received by customers. Improving the design of these buttons to provide more clearly defined edges and the use of more advanced actuators for an improved tactile feel could go a long way toward solving these issues.
Ultimately, despite these pain points, the move towards increased haptic integration in automotive interiors seems inexorable, with major automakers and Tier Ones across the board having significant stakes in these technologies. IDTechEx’s report, “Haptics 2025-2035: Technologies, Markets, Players,” is a valuable resource to help you understand the evolving status of this market. It includes 10-year forecasting and market overviews, which focus on key application areas, including smartphones, gaming, VR, laptops, and, of course, vehicles. IDTechEx has been covering this market since 2015, and its network and overview of this exciting market are extensive.
Haptic technologies deliver feedback through the sense of touch, from simple vibration alerts all the way to immersive tactile interactions. In 2024, the largest market for haptics is in smartphones, but as the smartphone market stagnates, the industry is looking towards automotive interiors as the major opportunity for the next decade.
Haptics in vehicles are far from new; for example, some Mercedes models introduced vibration alerts for lane keep assist as far back as 2009.
