Overview - The Infotainment Touchscreen

A touchscreen offers many advantages: if you want to access information in the display, no buttons need to be found and pressed and no dials need to be operated. Instead, information can be selected directly by touching the screen. Also, a touchscreen provides far more options for accessing functions and menus, because a whole range of interactive buttons can be displayed. This allows the actual number of physical buttons on the device to be kept to a minimum.

The only drawback: some force was required when touching the pressure-sensitive part of the screen. This was due to the resistive structure of the touch-sensitive layer.

The surface of a capacitive touchscreen has two glass layers on top of one another. They are strips coated in a transparent metal oxide which act as conductors. The glass plates are arranged with the coated sides facing each other, with the strips forming a grid. The non-conductive spacer prevents the coated surfaces from coming into contact with each other.