A lot of people seem to be thinking of this as a touch screen vs physical button issue, but in the case of VW it was actually much worse: they put capacitive buttons instead of physical ones everywhere. The worst of both worlds: a lack of tactile feedback and the inability to have a flexible interface.
I own an ID.4, the "car" part of the car is fine, but the controls inside are by far the most unpleasant I've ever used. 60% of the time I want to turn the fog lights on, it registers as "Defrost Max" that is right next to it. The worst offender by far though are the windows controls. Instead of four buttons like most sane cars, you have 2 buttons as well as a capacitive "Rear" toggle. That toggle is both incredibly easy to activate by accident and impossible to use with glove.
I can't fathom how someone designed these things and though, yep, this is a good experience. At least the car has wireless CarPlay so I can ignore the terrible VW software.
The interface of the id4 was known to you prior to purchase and the Chevy bolt existed…
We needed a third electric car and instead of buying a second audi etron we bought a second Chevy bolt for 1/4 the price solely based on the interface and controls.
It was a weird period in 2022 (ish?) when the US electric car tax credit was changing. The Mach-E was our first choice, but the delivery would have been too late to receive the credit (IIRC). We didn't love the interface, but it wasn't a deal breaker, especially for the tax credit difference.
Unfortunately, many EV brands (Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, etc) and the biggest EV player from the legacy automakers (GM) all don't support CarPlay. They see you as a captive user that they can monetize through their UI instead of Apple/Google.
The Rivian is really testing my resolve to never buy another vehicle without CarPlay. If I don't buy one, that will probably the #1 reason.
Don't tell General Motors–the largest carmaker in the United States and a huge player in the global market. They are phasing out CarPlay in all their brands.
Does it also have motion sensors to turn on the interior lamp? That's what I've found the most frustrating on some of their models.
You want to turn on the lamp? Try some waving gestures...
Also, I don't know whether this is a feature, a bug, or just a lack of skill on my side but I couldn't get the lamp to turn on with the engine turned off. VERY impractical.
The windows' "rear" button thing is especially infuriating. That and the climate controls being behind a mandatory privacy click-through warning every damn time you turn the car on. Gah.
I have heard rumours that they were penny-pinching to get the price under various countries' cut-offs to be eligible for EV grants.
But yeah the interior controls are terrible for an otherwise pretty nice car.
Cheap when second hand. Plus a lot of the annoyance only becomes clear after using it for a while or in different seasons from when you did a test drive. Many cars are like this right now, although EuroNCAP is obviously forcing a change for the better here (because it is so widespread)... but I needed a car then and couldn't wait for the new rules to arrive in X years so...
It's fine - it's just a car and it is fine as a car, just some irritating bits.
"New Euro NCAP tests due in 2026 will encourage manufacturers to use separate, physical controls for basic functions in an intuitive manner, limiting eyes-off-road time and therefore promoting safer driving."
> now are a part of European Transport Safety Council requirements
Actually, no, no official EU organization nor any council mandates that. It's Euro NCAP, an independent organization, who decided they'll include tactile control in their car safety evaluation. It is literally explained in that article.
It will still make a difference, but this is not something EU did.
The NCAP and the ETSC usually work very close together.
A lot of times safety innovations are first introduced on NCAP ratings, then the ETSC carefully evaluates adoption and will then advocate for those requirements to become legally binding regulations.
A technical standard will then typically be designed at the UNECE, Then the European Commission will propose it to be discussed and voted both by the EU Parliament and the European Council.
It is not like the NCAP is just the EU version of the US "Consumer Reports". While not a part of the EU, it is a non-profit thoroughly embedded into the development of automotive safety standards in the EU.
Having driven a lot of cars with a fuckton of buttons on the steering wheel, how exactly do people use these without having to look down? One or two multi-function buttons connected to a screen is great, but there is no way I would be able to safely use that mess of physical buttons shown in the photos.
By feel. Not everyone uses all the buttons all the time, but stuff you use a lot is easily operated without taking eyes off the road. It pairs well with the other upside of physical controls, the manufacturer can’t move them out from under you with a software update.
I've owned such cars for many years and no, I've never learned all the buttons. Also, I'm not advocating for a touchscreen, but a small number of buttons plus a screen is far more ideal than a massive mess of buttons. This shit has always been a UX nightmare, it sucks that it's coming back.
The touchscreen on my 2010 Prius stopped responding, I could still use the "Voice Control" button on the steering wheel. Waiting 10 seconds each time to navigate the menu by voice, hoping it heard me clearly each time.
Surely voice commands can replace buttons and touch interfaces in 2026!
You just feel around for it. Buttons on the steering wheel can be a lifesaver because you don't have to reach down or even look at it, you know what you're doing.
Most people drive the same car most days. Either many or most people (I don’t have stats) drive a different car some days. There’s entire companies — Hertz, Avis, etc — with business models based around this observation.
I normally don't look at them, you know by heart which is which and ours has also one up/down sticking out knob on each side (volume & cruise speed control). Combined with very nicely visible laser heads up display I never look on dashboard nor computer screen in the middle while driving.
Staying continuously visually connected with all environment simplifies driving and definitely improves safety. Also thanx to that heads up display I didn't get a single speeding fine while by default driving at the very limit of allowed speed, including our radar-infested towns and highways.
2010-level of tech of bmw f11 is enough for me, the only real improvement would be full unsupervised self driving which isn't coming anytime soon.
Speak for yourself. I can adjust all of my physical climate controls, radio, wipers, and cruise control without taking my eyes off the road. Maybe some fumbling to pick the right blower angle.
Some manufacturers have massively screwed up the cruise control buttons. On Rivians, for example, the car will instruct you to take control of steering if you will soon enter an area where it can’t do assisted steering. Fine, except that the only control that can transition directly from assisted steering to plan enhanced cruise is to jerk the steering wheel, which is distinctly uncool. So you instead cancel cruise entirely and then re-engage it.
To add insult to injury, despite the fact that the speed up and speed down buttons are actual physical buttons, they are so aggressively denounced that there’s a loop: press button, wait, press, read screen to see if you’re making progress, press, etc.
Anyway, the point is that, while physical buttons in predictable locations can make it possible to operate something without looking, it still needs a good design and implementation.
Sounds like the IIHS which has been imposing 'mandates' on car manufacturers with little proof that these mandates are effective. These mandates are costing us all millions in upfront and insurance rates but I never see any evidence that they are worth the cost they impose. Not opposed to the mandates specifically just the lack of cost benefit analysis.
Can you be more specific about these “mandates” you take issue with?
IIHS doesn’t have any mandate power over manufacturers (they are not a regulatory body) but they do align with insurance company interests, whose goals are to pay out less for damages from vehicle incidents, and therefore IIHS logically would theoretically be focused on actuarial data-driven analysis. If you have specific examples of where this has not been the case, I’d love to learn more.
I'd love to know what the justification for replacing them in the first place was. I can't think of any device, appliance, etc. I own whose UX is _better_ for not having physical, dedicated buttons or switches and instead having a touch interface or buttons which require a complex series of presses or chords. It's almost like there was _no_ UX research to back any of these "features" up and people just went ahead and made these changes because they could, it was fun and they look cool.
To give a very concrete and potentially hazardous example: I have an induction range which has no physical controls but has a touch interface which requires various combinations of tapping, holding and sliding fingers. To say nothing of the fact that this is useless for people who have significant visual impairments, how am I supposed to turn it off if there's an electrical fire because a pot boils over or something? Is the expectation that I reach into boiling water that potentially has current running through it and hope to tap my fingers in the right place? Am I supposed to try to yank the power? Or is the expectation that I just walk outside and call the fire department?
Though also I would wonder if bad market research was a problem. I bet if, 10 years ago, you showed someone a traditional VW interface, or a touchscreen thing, they'd go "oh, cool, touchscreens". They might feel differently if they actually _used_ the thing, but if you skip that bit of the research... It's fairly common that companies make changes based on what customers _say_ they want, because customers are not necessarily good at realising what they _actually_ want until they experience it.
It's not just that touch interfaces are cheaper. It's that you can decouple the interface design and feature set from the manufacturing schedule and shorten the overall development.
While I get that I also think it's a bit odd because how much has actually changed about the basic required set of buttons needed to operate a vehicle in the last 20 years? Most of the differences I see are down to trim levels and companies already had the solution to that with panels that weren't on the main cluster of dash controls. My low trim Golf has a couple obvious panels near the shifter where different optional things would live; seat heaters etc.
I guess, that only new things are:
1) driving assist things
2) drive mode select (sport, comfy, etc)
3) and HUD change (trip a, trip b, etc)
4) voice command button
5) regen braking control (EV only)
1 may be one the same button as cruese control
2, 5 may be on shifter knob panel
3 and 4 are the only new buttons on steering wheel
1 is all over the place depending on what your car has; my wife's car has lane keeping and blind spot monitors and those live in a knockout panel down and left of the steering wheel.
2 I've usually found in the buttons near the shifter
3 I'm not sure what you're referring to? If it's the little screen generally between the speed and battery/rpm display those controls are usually on the steering wheel in my experience.
4 Steering wheel, in every car I've seen it in and that's often standard across the models
5 This one I've only had one experience with and that's my wife's Kia Niro EV and those are on what would be shifter paddles in a car with a gear box.
The number of buttons on steering wheels between my decade old gas Golf and my wife's few year old Niro EV are shockingly similar though presented and arranged differently. Both have 4 buttons and two directional pairs (audio control for skipping on one, volume on the other, cruise control speed on another and one dimension of the hud paging on the last) though the Niro has the pairs as rocker switches that can click for one extra button I suppose.
Also you can use the same touchscreen for different vehicles and the manufacturing of that is always the same or if there is variation it is over smaller numbers of parameters: maybe a bigger or a brighter touchscreen.
I think of an initiative GM had, I think circa 2000, to standardize branding across all their vehicles and notably use the same buttons from the bottom of the line compacts up to flagships like the HUMMER, Cadillac, and the GMC Suburban. Sensitized by media coverage whenever I looked at these buttons sitting in a GM car or looking through the windows I felt that it diluted the higher end brands.
You could integrate the buttons into the touch screen controller. They don't need to connect to physical relays in the device to activate functionality, they can be every bit as "soft" as the touch screen itself, but actually provide haptic feedback on use.
They only want the screen for the stereo and backup camera, not anything else. It's easier to update a car from 2004 say to have Android Auto than to fix one made in 2024 that doesn't have it. $400 aftermarket stereo from crutchfield..
I would say that 2005 was peak car, except 2000 is slightly better because they had not yet gone nuts with serialized components.
(another reason is that direct inject fuel injection hadn't taken over yet, it's a disaster)
No, 10 years ago everyone was complaining that their BlackBerry was faster to type on than an iPhone (or maybe that was 12 years ). I don't think touchscreens being a pain to use is a new revelation.
To align this more precisely - 2015 was the year of the Blackberry Priv (I used one for a couple of years) and, being an Android phone, felt like kind of a last gasp for Blackberry.
They might feel differently if they actually _used_ the thing
That has to be a big part of it... especially if the customers' reference point is modern touchscreen cell phones (high quality displays, fast, etc).
But, the touch screen in my Honda is NOTHING like my iPhone. It's slow. It's not a good display. The software package is lackluster. It has a "apps" page, but there's no app store for crying out loud!!!
At least the screen is only for radio stuff and a few car monitoring things. The HVAC is still manual buttons.
> I'd love to know what the justification for replacing them in the first place was.
It isn't hard to see, tbh. Think about the controls in a Tesla from a few years ago. They had physical controls for drive selection, turn signals, cruise control/TACC, cruise control distances, volume, next and previous track, seat controls, and manual overrides for the automatic wipers. The things that were used a little less were on the touch screen, with automation attempting to mitigate the downsides of this. This largely consisted of climate, manual overrides for the automatic headlights, and things like suspension settings.
So, what has VW made better here? Well, they have physical controls for turn signals, drive selection, volume, next and previous track, etc. They appear to use the touch screen for much of the climate control and entertainment settings, including appearing to retain the much maligned touch settings for seat heaters.
I'm not convinced that this is better. By contrast, my Nissan has driving settings like lane centering and seat heater controls on physical buttons... right next to my left knee where they are nearly inaccessible while driving.
TBH, the whole debate around this needs to be recentered around actual ergonomics and less around touch vs physical.
> By contrast, my Nissan has driving settings like lane centering and seat heater controls on physical buttons... right next to my left knee where they are nearly inaccessible while driving.
I can beat that.
2011 Prius. USB-A port is inside the center console at the bottom of the back vertical interior panel.
You have to lift the center console lid, move all of the crap you've stored inside the console away from the lower rear of the compartment to reach the port, then by feel (unless you want to turn your head 100 degrees to the right and look down while driving) attempt to slot the USB cable into the receptacle.
The climate controls should be physical buttons. Touchscreen climate controls tend to be giant messes requiring multiple interactions and often (hi, Tesla!) have controls in unpredictable locations. And fine-tuning the climate while driving is not exactly unusual.
Of course, physical buttons can be awful too. I’ve been in a Mercedes SUV where the A/C state is controlled by some bizarre split physical buttons and 100% of front passengers surveyed are entirely unable to confidently figure out what they do even after reading the test and contemplating for a while.
For decades, people have been able to change the temperature in their vehicles in less time and without taking their eyes off the road. Why defend an obvious regression?
Tesla fans sung the praises of other stupid ideas like the Highland's indicator buttons and the Plaid's 'yoke', both of which were silently shelved after buyer dissatisfaction.
Yeah, I think Tesla from a few years ago was the sweet spot. A small number of multifunction physical buttons for all the things you need while driving. I've driven a number of cars over the years with a mess of physical buttons like VW is introducing, and the result is that I've never actually used them because it's too complicated to locate the right button while driving. So usually I either just don't use the features in those cars, or end up having to stop to figure how to adjust some basic ass thing.
My Whirlpool cabinet-mounted oven has a touch screen dead center right above the door. Better not open that door for any reason, or steam will condense on it and turn it off / automatically change settings. It technically disables the touchscreen when the door opens (another huge PITA, how many times have I tried to turn it off or do other things with the door open) but that doesn't help when the screen is still steamed up after being closed.
The number of times I've got gone back to check something and it was ruined sitting 200deg lower than it should have been is more than I can count.
Similar for cooktops - I’ve seen IR-reflectance-based touch controls go haywire due to dimmable overhead lights, and heard of frustration with capacitive controls going haywire from liquid splatters.
There are some very real benefits to touch interfaces in cooking (primarily ease of cleaning a solid flat surface, and manufacturers don’t need to worry about moisture ingress), but it’s pretty hard to make one that actually consistently works in a way that won’t accidentally burn your house down when your cat walks across the cooktop in the middle of the night. I’m personally going to stick to knobs and buttons in the meantime.
> it’s pretty hard to make one that actually consistently works in a way that won’t accidentally burn your house down when your cat walks across the cooktop in the middle of the night.
Regardless of how the controls work, you can make a cooktop that, functionally, will not set your cat on fire: use an induction stove. Unless your cat ends up in a pan or your cat is ferromagnetic, the stove won’t heat it :)
I think in context, Tesla was having quite the success story in the 2017-2022 time period, and their big screen and frequent software updates was getting a lot of attention. A lot of the stories around then were:
* Tesla infotainment is fast, responsive, good software
* Other OEMs struggle to compete in this space
* Other OEMs have software updates that require dealer visits
So the OEMs tried to emulate having a big screen UI and shoving more functionality into software, so they can update it.
Not to say Tesla gets all the credit, or that OEMs didn't start leaning on screens more and more before then. As screens got cheaper, customers demanded bigger screens, and OEMs felt like getting rid of buttons and shoving the functionality in the screen UI was the best way to appease their customers.
A big and higher definition screen provides a ton more context from the navigation's map with wider sidebars that can contain more information, while also providing more contrast and better legibility.
Usual Android auto screen sizes and resolutions feel to me like the difference between looking at a 32" monitor and an early 4.5" LED mobile screen. Too small for context, low definition, and not enough space to display additional useful information (so you don't have to touch the display every 5 seconds).
> A big and higher definition screen provides a ton more context from the navigation's map with wider sidebars that can contain more information, while also providing more contrast and better legibility.
As someone with a 2003 Golf (with a tape deck) I find the screen on my iPhone sufficient to get me to where I want to go. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Many of them do. My aunt bought a new car last year and was bragging about how big the screen was. She seemed confused that i thought a big screen was a downgrade.
In the states I've lived installing a big screen like that in your car is against the law. Unless the manufacturer specified it as original equipment. So yes, a bigger screen is a selling point
> I'd love to know what the justification for replacing them in the first place was.
There were two converging factors: number one is that there was a time where it was considered a sign of sophistication / progress. Definitely a case of form over function, but remember this was the era when everything Tesla did was cool and everyone was chasing them.
The second factor is cost. Physical buttons are expensive to design, certify and manufacture (most people don't have a notion of how high the durability bar is for everything that goes into a car interior). Once you have to have a touchscreen anyway you can (theoretically) remove almost all physical controls.
Touch controls are frustrating in general. But in this case, I don't think there is a safety issue from electric fire because of a spill. For generic turning it off (as in stop producing heat, not break the electrical circuit), isn't that just removing the pot on an induction stove?
Apple doesn't document how their iphone touch interface works. I have to use google to tell me how to do things. I don't want to have to use google while driving to figure out what the interface is.
If changing temperature is life-or-death situation for you - pull over.
If you are on a highway - driver assist is probably enough. In city you can fiddle while waiting for traffic lights.
Again, this assumes you are particularly mentally challenged and car has very poorly designed controls. Majority of people haven't got an issue with it.
First they put screens in for navigation because people were using dash mounted ones. Guess it felt logical to move the entertainment and info in there too (infotainment) and then came the EVs and the goofy tech era of cars. Late 2010s was peak automotive - most modern cars are like tacky appliances inside now.
Maybe not the answer you are looking for, but rumor has it that engineers at VW were well aware of points like those you raise.
However the CEO at that time, Herbert Diess, outspoken admirer of Musk/Tesla, pushed for touch interfaces anyways.
I must assume the justification was "it is cool". especially considering they also placed capacitive touch "buttons" on the steering wheel. Those are the worst of both worlds in every case imaginable.
Manufacturers sometimes change things that already work, just to separate the "old technology" and the new. When people want a completely new car, they expect things to be different and new, even if they are worse.
I believe Toyota did this frequently in their Prius models, where things were different from mainline Toyota just because, like the center-mounted speedometer and the joystick shifter.
> I'd love to know what the justification for replacing them in the first place was. I can't think of any device, appliance, etc. I own whose UX is _better_ for not having physical, dedicated buttons or switches and instead having a touch interface or buttons which require a complex series of presses or chords.
I can't speak for other manufacturers, but having lived with a Tesla I can say these are some justifications, beyond cost:
- Standardization. With some exceptions where hardware is different, once you've driven one Tesla you can drive any Tesla. I love physical buttons too, but I don't love finding the drive mode buttons in a different place every time I rent a car, or trying to figure out how this one does the windshield wipers, or headlights, or radio tuning, or parking brake, or whatever.
- Simplification. Along with the mandate to reduce physical controls, Tesla also pushed toward making everything automatic. I never have to think about my headlights (and they dim in a circle around any detected vehicle in front of me), and I don't have to think much about drive modes either. It does a good job of automatically picking the correct direction when you tap the brake, and has a good mechanism for auto-switching between forward and reverse as you manipulate the brake and wheel.
- OTA updates. When something isn't working out for people they can make adjustments. They can also add new features (AI assistant, more automation) without mounting new buttons.
There are some silly choices, like the glove box (which is tiny and not very useful anyway) requiring a voice command or the touchscreen. And some people don't like the touchscreen vents (I do, surprise surprise). But most of it makes good sense.
It's cost savings. I'm a UX designer, a friend of mine works at an electric vehicle startup. I asked and it was unambiguous. The kinds of buttons that go into a vehicle aren't like the raw components we buy on amazon for hobby projects. They go through much more rigorous testing to be resilient to hours of use, extreme temperatures, etc, and are commensurately more expensive. Those mediocre touchscreens are cheaper than the BOM for all those fancy buttons and dials, which might each have their own control board or group bus, etc.
I'm not sure whether this is also true for your induction range. Certainly on generic table lamps and such, the touch-activated buttons are the hobby slop we'd buy from amazon.
Anyway, I've never really heard anyone offer performance, likeability, or usability as a reason for touchscreens in cars. Glad to see the industry get rid of them, at the decadeslong speed you'd expect from a dinosaur industry with a regulatory forcefield.
It’s also a lot easier on the production line if you don’t need a new set of control knobs and blanks for each vehicle that comes by based on how it’s been spec’d.
But that’s the issue. Grey suits in boardrooms with no passion for driving making decisions based on cost and homogenizing manufacturing amongst the car lines.
For example someone at VWAG thought it was a good idea to replace the 911 key with a button, and dials with a screen. Why? Cost and stupid tech fantasies fueled by EV manufacturers and Apples next-gen CarPlay nonsense.
>I can't think of any device, appliance, etc. I own whose UX is _better_ for not having physical, dedicated buttons or switches and instead having a touch interface or buttons which require a complex series of presses or chords.
It may be better in an overall-compromise sort of way, but a touchscreen is not better for typing. I still miss the BlackBerry, and basically just stopped bothering to do any real text entry on a phone after keyboards went away.
They have no meaningful choice. To the degree that this does represent consumer preference, however, what it tells us is simply that touchscreen phones are preferred overall: it does not follow that touchscreen keyboards, specifically, are preferred for text-entry tasks.
I used flagship keyboard smartphones as long as they were offered. I literally voted with my wallet.
The idea that, because we aren't willing to pay $700 for a garbage tier "smartphone" with spotty support and basement level specs is somehow evidence that we don't actually want keyboards on our phones is bad faith.
Before smartphones I was buying feature phones with full keyboards too, including things like the Samsung Alias 2.
Meanwhile, folding phones, despite being a niche, are getting real attention by manufacturers, because it's a "new" gimmick and can drive sales.
Like what the sibling comment said: money. It's cheaper to produce one type of screen module and deploying that one type across car models that different kinds of switches. Also it was some kind of USP; to public perception of touch screens equal luxury during iPhone boom. Even though the software implementations were left to be desired ie. nothing was buttery smooth
> I'd love to know what the justification for replacing them in the first place was.
Schadenfreude maybe after watching people interact with their UI. I regularly drive in an ID4 and it's hilarious how terrible the whole experience is from a user UX point of view.
to me it feels like a cost cutting measure needed for Tesla to survive. Elon and his reality distortion field made it look like a touch screen (and no controls) are superior - and all the car companies started mimicking it out of fear to miss out on something
FWIW: induction ranges have sealed tops. There are no paths to get a high voltage from the AC input to the range top, no matter what boils over, and if you break things such that there is a short the relevant GFCI failsafes will shut it off long before you work up the courage to try to touch the controls.
Safety is in fact the big selling point of the device. The surface doesn't get above food temperature. If you boil a pot over, move the pot and just wipe it up with a rag, just like you would spilled tea or whatever.
That's not to say there aren't human interface issues with relying on capacitive sensors[1], but safety surely isn't one of them.
[1] Actually "boiling over" is in fact the shortcoming: what happens is that your sauce spills over the controls and causes the sensors to glitch, which the device detects as a failure and shuts down before you can wipe it. Then you have to reset all the temperatures.
I have an induction range with touch controls, and I'll tell you they are the most frustrating thing about it (other than half my old pots not working, but that was a one-time hit).
Why are they frustrating? Because every time I have to clean the stove top (which is after most uses) wiping the controls results in activating them. Sometimes things boil over or spit out hot fat while cooking and you need to clean it up right away (or it will get cooked on like welded steel) and you end up switching the simmer on the back element to high and drop the oven temperature by 100 degrees. A zillion beeps and cute jingle tones don't help, they just contribute to sensory overload.
It's a great cooktop but I would prefer physical controls that are not on the cook surface.
GFCI for a 220V / 50 amp stove didn't enter the code until like 2020. My county hasn't even adopted that. It's unlikely any random person you encounter lives in a place with a GFCI controlled stove.
Also the breaker itself is like $130+, plus slightly higher chance to nuisance trip, so fat chance any builder is putting that in voluntarily.
Most people install induction stoves as part of a larger kitchen or home reno. If you're switching over from gas you probably didn't have a 50amp 220V circuit anywhere near the stove. But kitchen renos have to bring the kitchen up to code, so if you're bringing in an electrician anyway to redo all the wiring, might as well put in a circuit for the induction stove, and code requires that it be on a GFCI.
The folks who just want a drop-in replacement are probably not getting induction - they're the ones who complain about the necessary electrical upgrades being too expensive.
That seems to be what Impulse is targeting - standard size drop in inductive with a lot of high tech features (for the price) and a ludicrous battery, so you don't need to upgrade the wiring (since you don't cook 24x7 after all.) No ideas if the numbers work out, but they're definitely aiming at a perceived gap...
Yeah, my new induction range after a kitchen microwave fire is on, I think, a 40 amp circuit. But the whole kitchen electrical (and, indeed, much of the house) was being redone anyway.
I assume this as well. I hope we get a trend of customers/reviewers looking at a touchscreen-heavy cars and saying "you guys really cheaped out on the interior, eh?".
Ultimately, yeah. But specifically I think it's a combination of saving money directly on the bill of materials and assembly, and saving money on design flexibility (heck, you can probably do the entire infotainment design process at the last minute and flash it onto the cars after the entire assembly).
The car has to be scrapped when the UI hardware fails.
You can live a LONG time without a working ... radio tuning knob, if the other 99.9% of the controls work. Or if the right passenger door lock button fails, really who cares. But when the central control of the entire car fails, its scrap.
One of the problems with fixing problems is that by fixing them, you're demonstrating to customers that problems can be fixed, and you risk setting the expectation that problems will be fixed. This puts pressure on management to fix more problems, and management generally finds this problematic.
Though if you don't do it, someone eventually decides to start a competing company, fix all the problems, demonstrate that they can be fixed, take all your customers, and put management out of a job.
Yup, that was one of Steve Job's principles: he recognized that someone was going to do something better and take your market share — so it is best if you cannibalize your own market share before they do.
I will never not talk about how bonkers it was that Jobs got up on that stage in 2005 and launched a complete replacement for the iPod mini, at the time the best-selling portable music player and it wasn't even close.
How many other execs would have the courage to do that vs letting the current thing (microdrive player) settle and holding the new thing (flash memory player) in reserve to launch only in response to a competitor gaining traction?
No guarantee that they or their investors will be willing to sell to you, and in some cases it means that management in the upstart ends up taking over the acquiring company, as with the Apple->Next, Disney->Pixar, and Time Warner->AOL mergers.
Seems like a trend in the right direction - Subaru's doing the same for their 2026 models. Still too much shit on the steering wheel in my opinion but at least there are physical buttons/knobs for the climate system that don't require multiple touch screen button presses;
What in particular do you want to avoid on the wheel? My thought is it's a perfect place for jet-style HOTAS controls, for the same reason; no moving your hands from the wheel, and driven by tactile feel and physical location.
I don't want any buttons on the steering wheel, except the horn.
I don't want a screen at all, but reversing cameras are now mandatory so that one is probably not going away.
I like the "return to real buttons" trend but it's less about buttons and more about the appropriate physical controls for the operation being performed. The control itself should both indicate current status and provide for changing it. For example, things that are "on" or "off" should have a switch with distinct "on" and "off" positions, not a single pushbutton that toggles. Temperature or volume or blower speed should be dials or sliders that move between two physical end points. If you have to repeatedly push or hold an "up" or "down" button and look at a display to set the temperature that's suboptimal. Moving a slider or dial where the physical position corresponds to the actual setting is so much better.
The type of buttons but also the inconsistent behavior. Buttons with an indicator light for on / off state for instance (vs an actual physical toggle or switch), some times stay on when you start the car again, others reset to default. I get there are some regulatory requirements around this too, but still annoying.
I want more things on the steering wheel. Anything the driver should reasonably be operating while the vehicle is in motion should be on the wheel or immediately surrounding it, IMO.
My objection to stuff on the steering wheel is that in my experience the buttons are often multifunction. I.e. a "+" and "-" button that do different things depending on a mode that is selected with some other button. Takes too much thinking while your attention should be devoted to driving.
My Mercedes is absolutely terrible at this. Having owned it for a couple of years now I still have no intuition about what most of the steering wheel buttons do. On the other hand, they get cruise control right: It's a simple stalk on the steering column. Up for faster. Down for slower. Easy to find and operate without even a glance off of the road.
If there were a few carefully chosen single-purpose buttons on the steering wheel I could maybe get on board. But if there are too many or they are multifunction then it's cognitive overload.
Yes, but also controls for things that should not even be controls. I can select---from the steering wheel---how many seconds the interior lights stay on after I close the door. Why? Just pick a reasonable number, and don't ask me to think about it. Or if you must, put that setting somewhere out of the way so I don't accidentally fall into it when I'm driving. Or better yet, give me a switch specifically for the interior lights that I can control manually. The cars back in the 1970s did a better job with this than today's cars do.
> I can select---from the steering wheel---how many seconds the interior lights stay on after I close the door.
I don't mind this feature is somewhere deep in the menus of the driver settings area. However, if you're tripping over settings like this either the car is poorly designed or your routinely delving into settings areas you really shouldn't be in while driving.
It's well organized which is nice (cruise control on the right, media, etc on the left) but there's over 20 different buttons/functions there. At very least, X-Mode, Trip odometer reset, phone hold button, audio source button aren't worth the prime real estate.
I don't use my phone at all while driving so all of the phone buttons could go away in my car. I hate audio assistants, so that button could go away too. The dash control switch could be on the dash.. etc etc. I'm not a UI person and I'm sure some committee fought over every square inch of that space, but just personal preference.
VW's head of design announced this months ago, and spun it as listening to customer feedback, choosing to return to features people "love". I remember at the time being a bit annoyed by the level of spin.
In reality, for Europe at least, their hand was forced by Euro NCAP via their safety tests. They announced it a couple of years ago but it starts now. No car that has just a touchscreen, instead of physical controls, will be awarded a 5-star rating. I don't really know to what extent people take note of the NCAP ratings these days, but they certainly used to be a very big deal to car buyers (for example, in the late 90s, the rating given to the Rover 100 effectively killed it overnight).
The NCAP ratings make physical controls essential for the most basic functions (e.g. indicators) and strongly encouraged for others (e.g. climate control).
So obviously the same goes for other manufacturers shouting about doing the same thing - don't swallow their hype about how much they love your feedback.
> physical controls essential for the most basic functions (e.g. indicators) and strongly encouraged for others (e.g. climate control).
In what cars are indicators not a physical control?
Question aside, I definitely agree with the shift back to physical buttons. My new car has a touch screen for climate control and I loved it, for about a week. And now I hate it because it just adds confusion and distraction when driving
I remember going to buy a new car in 2015. My girlfriend had a Honda Fit from a few years prior and I loved driving in it. Felt so roomy given the tiny size. Went for a test drive in one and every single button was digital. Not even a volume knob, just little touch sensitive buttons. Ended up buying a Mazda 3 and Honda eventually switched back to physical buttons for most things.
Surprising to see companies still learning this a decade later.
In all car reviews, driver impressions and forums, there is near universal and near unanimous preference for physical buttons for common control like volume and climate control. It is beyond me why anyone would experiment with something that is like 100 year old tech and loved by people.
I hope Apple Carplay and Google Android auto can also take over other car control such as volume and climate control. Later someone can build uniform hardware buttons and knobs that I can place on my steering wheel and it can use the phone to control those features.
Most car manufacturers made this mistake because they started mimicking the then leader for innovation (and customer satisfaction), Tesla, too much.
General cautionary tale: just coz a company is successful, doesn't mean it's doing _everything_ right. Plenty of folks who love their Teslas would prefer a few more buttons (and door handles on the inside, etc) if given the choice. Could say similar things about some choices Apple made.
1. What Tesla did right was put a big screen in the center of the car, and then actually think about the UX, and how to improve the software to avoid having to fiddle every other minute with controls on the screen (e.g. climate control is usually amazing, I rarely touch the temperature). What other companies did was just put the screen and slap on sub-par software without much regard for UX, so of course it sucks, even if you have the big screen.
2. Yes, I'd have loved a couple extra buttons, perhaps programmable. My main gripe for instance is/was the air re-circulation (used to live in a country with lots of tunnels), but I'm sure others would have liked some other button. I'd have been very happy to have 3-4 software-programmable buttons for the most used functions.
> I would disagree with that. You do not need a big flashing distract-o-tron in the middle of the dashboard.
Except my car's screen is not distracting: I set it up for my destination, I give it a glance when needed for navigation, and I basically don't touch it until I'm done driving, because (second part of the previous comment) the UX is so well done that I don't have to. Worst case, voice control works well enough for e.g. changing playlists and songs or changing destination mid-trip.
> Cars should have exactly zero screens.
People have been attaching tomtoms and mobiles to the windscreen for the past 30 years anyway to solve exactly the same problem (navigation), and they were always inferior solutions to a well done integrated screen: detaching on a bump, leaving forever-smudges, having to update all maps offline, removable meaning easier to steal, limited functionality, ..... So I disagree. I'd rather have governing bodies evolve to take screen UX into account at regulation: most cars with screens couldn't have been sold.
The display dims adequately , and is far less distracting than competitors , who usually have multiple displays and flashing lights. Especially luxury brands who do the above and have "bejeweled" decorative LEDs all over the cockpit.
Tesla has the most subdued interior of every brand on the market.
sure, I would prefer 90s interfaces if I had the choice, but given the products on the Market , Tesla's attentiveness to the driver experience ( low LCD brightness, moderate contrast UI, reducing demand on the driver) exceeds all competitors by a large margin : better than luxuries, better than German cars.
Washing machines next. A total stupid idea to put capacitive touch on it. Just lean over the counter and it simply resets the wash program to re-run the past 3 hours of progress. Can't think of operating it with wet hands.
This horrible touchscreen-only situation always reminded me of a similar fashion trend in the mid 80s... digital speedometers and "automatic" seatbelts.
Both looked great in a magazine, showroom, and the Knightrider TV show, but were suboptimal in real life.
Thankfully no one back then had the absurd idea to force them into every single car model, and eliminate choice for the next ten years.
But make climate control 3 knobs: Fan speed + off, temperature and output ports. Put the AC button inside the temperature knob, and the 'recirculate' button inside the output ports knob.
With the radio have a push on/off volume knob that starts up at the SAME volume as always (i.e. relative, not absolute) and NOT the previous volume. The volume knob should have some resistance to it. Opposite that have a tune knob for precise tuning, and pressing that gets you into setup and navigates you through it. This should have the same resistance, but the outside has some indents so you know it's not the volume knob.
Have 6 preset buttons and 3 'banks' with a single 'next bank' button. pressing and holding a preset will save it with a beep for confirmation.
On the steering wheel: up/dn for radio should be seek, not next/previous preset. There are 6 nice big buttons for presets but when traveling seek up/dn is the main way we change music.
On the door have the rear view mirror controls, and above that have a knob for dashboard light brightness.
While we're dreaming, just have an interchangeable panel. Allow 3rd parties to make whatever dials etc. the customer wants. And if it were up to me I'd also get rid of the screen entirely and only have a HUD for navigation. It will never happen, let alone become mainstream, but dreaming is nice sometimes.
I was imagining a console that's at easy arms reach that's fixed into interior and don't require taking eyes of the road. The S3XY buttons look pretty cool, but they don't seem to be able to give you the resistive feel of something fastened to the interior. The Knob provides something like a console, but it seems pretty limited in how many tactile options it provides and you still need to take your eyes of the road. A number of simple dials with tactile clicks and fixed positions provide a user interface that don't require visual confirmation.
And touchscreens are another visual distraction. I think they're a contributor to the increasing vehicle accident and mortality rates. Ideally, nothing should take your mind/eyes off the road. A HUD for navigation and dashboard guages/alerts is about all anyone 'needs' in terms of display, but in the end it's about what individuals want, human lives be damned.
(I say kinda because you still get a bit of peripheral vision from HUD. Traditional dash behind steering wheel is undoubtedly worse - this has been proven decades ago).
This data says otherwise. I'm certain pedestrian mortality has been increasing, and by the looks of this graph it looks like 'other road user' deaths are trending up too. If you have data to support your claim, keen to see it.
The glance time might be affected by a lack of contrast? Or perhaps the novelty of using a HUD? It's possibly right, but I'd want to see more study on the 'why' it's worse and whether that's a technical thing.
This also needs to be divided per miles driven as those are constantly increasing.
Finally, my guess pedestrians are disproportionately more at fault here - mostly impairment (meth, fentanyl), but also smartphones and headphones in particular. Drivers are mostly distracted by phones mostly, not by adjusting climate controls for 2-3 seconds.
> US seems outlier while rest of the world fatalities are decreasing
Europe can be explained by pedestrianisation of cities, congestion taxes, separated bike lanes that encourage bike use, vehicle safety standards that—at least until recent loopholes have emerged—have been keeping dangerous vehicles off the road. Even still, if you look at that graph you'll notice a little uptick in the last 5 years, curiously around the time that screens became more prevalent, but also...
> my guess pedestrians are disproportionately more at fault here - mostly impairment (meth, fentanyl),
A-pillar sizes and bonnet heights have all been increasing, reducing visibility of pedestrians. Sounds like a larger factor to me. People have been getting high and drunk behind the wheel for decades, but maybe it's more prevalent now?
> not by adjusting climate controls for 2-3 seconds.
That's really all it takes if a kid decides to chase after a ball on a side street. You might have seen them before they ran from one side past behind an occluding object and emerged on the other, with not enough time for automated systems to respond (if they respond). A lot can change in 2-3 seconds, and I'd be surprised to hear an experienced driver say otherwise.
Heh. FWIW gender-affirming care has been out of vogue lately everywhere around the world, not just US.
Truck issue feels like imported here in NZ. We don't even have f150 here, most popular car is hilux and raptor which are about same height as my people mover.
In the last three years, there have been two times when we traveled, rented a car, and were given a Volkswagon.
Both times, the touchscreen-only controls were such a pain in the butt that we vowed we would never purchase such a car. It was a timesaver, because in that period our family has gotten two new (to us) cars, and our experiences with the rental Volkswagons allowed us to exclude an entire manufacturer from consideration.
If they haven't re-broken their interiors by the next time we look for a new car, I guess we'll have to consider them again.
No, we wanted full EVs. Mazda doesn't make any, only hybrids. We wound up going with Chevrolet in both instances.
The Equinox EV is one of the better EVs to offer AWD out there right now, matching the range of a Model 3 at a decently better price and obviously massively better UI. Slower charging is the only real downside.
And a used pre-2020s Bolt is a really excellent value, because they are insanely cheap (under $15k) and due to the whole catching-on-fire thing they all had their batteries replaced in the last few years, which means you get a much newer battery than the mileage/age of the car would suggest. The Bolt is replacing a much older Leaf, so bumping the range up to ~200 miles from ~70 is a huge upgrade for us.
One reason I just bought a 2025 Miata, is that has physical buttons for almost everything. Even the touchscreen can be operated with physical buttons. That and the manual transmission, makes it feel almost retro. It does have a lot of alerts like lane change monitors, but it doesn't bother me too much.
We were thinking of getting the ID.Buzz, but the lack of physical buttons was a big turn-off(our newest car is a 2015). Looks like they aren't even doing a 2026 Buzz, so hopefully we see a 2027 model with physical buttons again.
I am happy to see this and hope it spreads. A lot of us, IMO, would pay more for physical buttons - which is really a way to go about this, even though logistically it's problematic. If you want physical buttons, pay for it, if not, go with digital capacitive touch. I think cars should be like airplanes - physical controls, able to be felt and pushed without taking eyes off the road. The digital buttons far too often require my attention to be diverted, or pull over.
From what I’ve read it will be real and is supposed to evoke the early VW Polos. I believe you will be able to switch between that and a more „modern“ look
I suffered similarly but I think the latest software (>5.0) solved most of the issues and I don’t notice the software anymore at all (which I take as a positive - I.e., it just gets out of the way)
I'm not sure we're even on same versions. They appear to push different branches on different platform revisions.
Mine still cold boots/watchdogs every time you start the car in what I suspect a Patriot-style fix of numerous issues. It still has confirmation dialogs over confirmation dialogs (e.g. when selecting CarPlay you get to confirm your choice three times). Voice input is still unusable: the only thing it reliably recognizes is when I tell it to fuck off (and it scolds me for that). Door locks/keyless became more unreliable, which I frankly doubted was even possible. Everything is lagging, especially after cold boot: getting to entering nav destination after you sit in the car takes an eternity.
I was disappointed to see those images. The headline vastly overstates it IMO. "Some buttons on steering wheel, center console still entirely one giant touchscreen" is not "bringing back physical buttons".
It's a shame too. I drive a 2016 VW GTI and it's an absolute joy. The last era of VW worth any consideration. Small touchscreen that shows current playing track, or carplay/map, but still with physical controls for volume and AC. I was glad to see Doug DeMuro shred them for the electronics in the newer model.
I'll be driving my 2016 car and 2008 truck into the grave, at which point I'll replace them with something of the same era or older. There are some enticing ways to die in a fiery car crash, but eating a median while trying to finger stab a mid ass ipad knockoff for control of the defroster is not among them.
I have a similar model (2015 VW GTI, manual transmission) and I'm so glad I bought one before they ruined it. I will also be driving mine until it falls apart.
Next, they need to make the buttons more physically distinguishable, instead of panels of identical buttons
The dashboards of older pre-1990s cars had a wide variety of buttons, switches, and knobs, all with different locations and feels. Of course today's designers would see this as an unclean mess driven more by manufacturing considerations than "design" considerations, but it was a much lower driver workload to operate those "messy" controls. The different position, size, shape, and feel of each control allowed easy operation by just feel, without taking eyes off the road.
In contrast, the all-the-same rows of buttons on modern cars are still hard to operate after familiarization; which one is the front vs rear defrost?
Moving many buttons to the steering wheel overcomes many of these limitations, but again, rows of identical buttons do not help. Consider a Formula One steering wheel with 20+ controls. They are 100% custom and can be made any way they want. They make the OPPOSITE of identical controls — they are all different and brightly colored.
The point of driver cockpit design is NOT some clean asthetic.
The point is to use every available mnemonic device so a driver under heavy workload can recognize the controls instantly and reliably.
Great, I bought a 2024 Mazda 3 Premium Turbo over an Audi RS3 or VW Golf R in part because it had all physical controls and the touchscreen functionality is automatically disabled over 10mph. It's a great car, and between the simple button/knob driven UX and the HUD, I can make changes without looking away from the road while driving, which just plain makes sense for a car. The Tesla idea of putting a big tablet as your only interface to the car was stupid and insane from the moment it was done, it's shocking it took this long to return to sanity. Let's hope other manufacturers follow suit.
You were shopping a Mazda 3 Premium Turbo vs an Audi RS3? The Audi is almost twice the HP and double the cost of the Mazda. I'm not sure physical buttons would really be my driving consideration between those two cars.
Yes. I was shopping all available compact sedans and hatchbacks with AWD and turbocharged motors. My budget was wide and I enjoy spirited driving, I would have loved for the RS3 to work out, but it didn't for several reasons but the primary was that the interior UX was pretty awful.
That's a pretty frustrating market segment to shop for in the US these days, given there are so many good options that just aren't sold here. I was looking for similar cars early last year and quickly ruled out Golfs (and a variety of others) over the total lack of actual buttons. So annoying. I wound up with a Mini Clubman—another fun premium compact that's now no longer being made.
Yeah, I also considered a Mini then, and just took my wife shopping for her new vehicle. She also likes smaller cars so we considered getting her a 2026 Mini Cooper S but they've gone the other way and done almost everything on a single center-screen, there's no actual instrument panel anymore, but there is a HUD at least in the higher trims. Ultimately this was a huge turn-off for her, and we ended up getting her a 2025 Lexus ES350 (which I realize is quite a bit larger vehicle than a Mini Cooper).
When I vehicle shop, my budget isn't endless, but it's fairly uninhibited because I keep cars for an average of 10+ years and I like driving and want it to be an experience I enjoy. That said, companies just aren't making cars I like much anymore. I /loathe/, utterly /detest/ crossovers, and that's the vast majority of new vehicles being brought to market. Even vehicle lines that I previously liked, such as the BMW 3 series, have become enshittified in weird ways that dilute the core concept of that particular vehicle line. I'd love an E92 M3 w/ DCT but made in 2025/2026, but that's not made anymore and I think the current G80 M3 is a much worse car in every way that matters to me, even though the S58 is in some ways a better engine.
It's really disappointing and frustrating trying to find a decent vehicle these days.
Ironically people are constantly surprised every time this comes up that I cross-shopped a Mazda 3 vs an Audi RS3, but if you put aside some of the cost difference (which isn't as large as you think, it's 50% more, not 2x the price), Mazda is trying to up its game and move into the Japanese Luxury space to compete with Lexus, Acura, and Infinity rather than the other Japanese brands. Some issues aside, I think the execution on the interior of the Mazda 3 Premium is pretty great, especially at its price point ($40k base).
My current car took the fully touch experience approach (except for the usual stalk controls) and while I love the rest of the car, I despise the interface.
I’ll be in the market for a new car soon and I am only considering ones with touch buttons for HVAC. It’s not worth getting into an accident trying to change the temperature.
Volume and HVAC physical buttons are an absolute must for me.
I was given a rental once from a dealership who was doing warranty work on my truck. It was one of those weird months in the midwest, where the temperature could be 80 or 30 depending on the day, and this day just happened to be 30. I realized shortly after I got onto the road that it wasn't getting any warmer, because A/C was on. There were no buttons to turn it down or off, only a touchscreen, so I just did the 15 minute drive home of shame in 30 degree weather with the AC blasting. That was all it took to make me swear off -ever- buying a car without physical buttons.
I'm involved in the development of the voice assistant for the VW Group and I find it pretty good honestly. You can control quite a lot via voice and it works pretty reliably.
This has a few other issues to me compared to many similar dials.
It’s unclear what the temperature numbers actually mean if this isn’t an automatic climate control system (or is in manual mode).
The part that rotates also appears to be symmetric, which means one may need to find the white marking to decipher where the dial is pointing. That can be even more difficult in a dark environment than trying to read a display.
Yes, not perfect, but MUCH better than their current version of touch-screen only climate control, which is an exercise in frustration. "Relative perfection" :)
The numbers are centigrade, which for the local market is mostly very obvious and widely understood. 22 is roughly room temperature, so it's good that's at 12 o'clock. This model doesn't have auto climate control.
> which means one may need to find the white marking to decipher where the dial is pointing
You hand can feel the angle the dial is pointing. It was a non-issue for me. the white is illuminated softly at night, and one very quick glance can confirm the position anyway.
> The numbers are centigrade, which for the local market is mostly very obvious and widely understood. 22 is roughly room temperature, so it's good that's at 12 o'clock.
I'm aware of centigrade, I've lived in places that use centigrade. :) My issue is that absolute temperature markings don't seem appropriate for a manual climate control system that isn't matching a temperature. Here, the traditional blue/red-style markers or similar are probably more informative.
> You hand can feel the angle the dial is pointing. It was a non-issue for me. the white is illuminated softly at night, and one very quick glance can confirm the position anyway.
Fair, if it's clear with some tactile difference and is visible at night that seems quite alright!
VW was also bound by emission standards, yet Dieselgate still happened.
I would be very surprised if it didn't have some kind of "heavily-restricted debugging interface, only available to select VW engineers, which provides a limited set of fully anonymous vehicle diagnostic metrics" - which in practice is of course used to sell trivially deanonymizable data to anyone with a few bucks to spare.
"The data, which includes detailed location information and even vehicle owner details, was left exposed and unprotected on the internet for an extended period of time."
Wir wissen wo dein Auto steht
Volksdaten von Volkswagen
Dieselgate essentially happened due to the interaction of the EU and US emission standards. EU emission standard got lowered until it wasn't physically possible, without reducing the machine power, which the market doesn't want. Thus, they introduced test mode, which does have the emissions actually allowed, but is worse in all other aspects. This worked in the EU, because the tests environment is defined and no other tests are performed.
The US regulators wouldn't have cared about higher emission levels as all cars in the US have them anyway, but the cars were still introduced with the EU specs. First because otherwise they would need to remeasure all the car emissions and second, because even as the real emissions would still be low by US standards that would have questions why the same car has different emissions in EU and US. That plan however didn't work out, as the US doesn't do tests in a controlled environment, but while actually driving. Thus, the scandal started becoming public. That is the official part.
The following comes from an "industrial expert", that held a guest lecture at our university: This whole thing was actually done with knowledge (and silent agreement) of the EU regulators, as they aren't dumb and know what is physically possible. However they were still forced to act once this became public in the US, as the politicians and the general voter don't like regulators doing there own thing against the law. Also this was done by a VW supplier, which is basically the only shop in town, so of course this wasn't specific to VW.
So in my opinion, blaming VW, while legally correct, is actually kind of dumb. At last a bit anecdotal evidence: We also did the update for our car. Of course we tried to delay it, but eventually the car would have lost it's street legality, so we needed to do it. And afterwards the car is louder, has visible emissions and smells (more). (No, this isn't even a car from VW or any other company of the same business group.) Thanks. Sometimes the best option would have been to just keep quite and stick to gentlemen agreements.
>VW was also bound by emission standards, yet Dieselgate still happened.
Sure, but it is not like they just got away with that (ironically other manufacturers who did essentially the same thing, did mostly get away with it).
>I would be very surprised if it didn't have some kind of "heavily-restricted debugging interface, only available to select VW engineers, which provides a limited set of fully anonymous vehicle diagnostic metrics" - which in practice is of course used to sell trivially deanonymizable data to anyone with a few bucks to spare.
The GDPR allows you to receive a copy of all data a manufacturer has about you, "trivially deanonymizable" is by any reasonable interpretation of the GDPR personal data.
Of course you can believe that VW and other manufacturers are secretly ignoring laws (again) and of course evidence for that would be hard to come by, but it it did come out it would be a massive scandal, with a massive criminal investigation.
In general, do you want to have minimal laws protecting your privacy and manufacturers blatantly not caring about existing laws and individuals having no recourse or do you want strict laws protecting your privacy with manufacturers facing heavy sanctions, when they ignore those laws? The choice seems pretty clear.
Removing network connectivity from basically any new car is trivial, often as simple as pulling an easily accessible fuse.
I'm guessing that you haven't actually done this on "basically any new car".
If you had tried, you would know that there is no fuse dedicated to "network connectivity". It is typically tied in with other, often essential functions like the engine control computer --- specifically in order to thwart a simple disconnect.
What I have seen done is to tear into the right roof pillar and cut the wires going to the antenna on the roof. But this is usually not without consequences as well such as a perpetual error code display and/or the radio, navigation or entertainment functions stop working.
I've done this on a W222, a W223, a continental GT and an Urus. On each of those cars it was as easy as disconnecting the antenna, on none of them did I have to tear into the roof pillars.
I've never seen an antenna that was difficult to disconnect, on the super simple end you have something like the W222 where you can literally just pop out the antenna cover on the roof and just remove the antenna module inside.
>But this is usually not without consequences as well such as a perpetual error code display or the radio, navigation or entertainment functions stop working.
Well sure, I do have cars without GPS because I was lazy. Carplay still works fine, so can't really bother to do anything about it.
> Carplay still works fine, so can't really bother to do anything about it.
That largely depends on the specific vehicle. I’m surprised that there wer no negative effects in pulling the telematics fuse on a W223, less surprised on a W222.
Hart innovation , yet I would never ever drive a car like a Tesla without head up display. That’s ludicrous. If you have ever done a risk assessment of any kind you know why .
Related to Euro NCAP mandating physical controls for certain functions, "including indicators, hazard lights, sounding the horn, operating windscreen wipers and activating the eCall SOS function"?
Honestly this doesn't look better. You still have a large touch screen, but now you also have > 20 buttons on the steering wheel. Capacitive (no touch feedback) ones at that.
The actual fix would involve simplifying the driving experience. Adding 30+ buttons to the steering wheel and 25+ to the console does not improve the situation.
The bar should be whether the operator can keep their eyes on the road while operating the controls. And when getting into a new vehicle, how easy can they find common controls like mirrors, climate, parking brake, cruise without consulting the manual.
I rented a Highlander which did have nice physical controls, but many features were buried in cryptic menus. The auto steer feature, which dragged and pulled steering in corners, and aggressively applied braking , was buried under 3 levels of menus labeled "RTSS", "SCS", "Advanced".
Capable drivers don't need cornering and braking assist. It's $2k+ worth of useless components , for a worse driver experience.
Ok great! Now the real test begins. Will it sell? Will it outsell its competition? Those answers are up to you! I would not buy this just for the buttons.
UI and UX have decline dramatically in the last 10 years across the board. Most of this can be attributed to hamfisted security measures and data collection/dark patterns to abuse consumers. But why cars? I only drive rentals, so I deal with a different car almost every time, and the lack of simple, physical buttons is a straight up safety hazard.
Considering GM is going headfirst the other direction, along with removing carplay support, I'll be looking for a something else. Especially a "disconnected vehicle" at some point where it includes no cell interface or one that can easily be yanked.
Dashboard screens are so cringe, I’d be happy if they were banned outright. I want dials and dim indicator lights for the console, and knobs and buttons that have the dual purpose of interface and display on the dash. This is a machine, not a video game, everything should be in service of making the driver look out the windshield.
Modern cars are absolute shit, the UI on my 30 year old Camry feels amazing by comparison to any car that I’ve driven that has come out since 2010.
Well done, VW ... they still have issues but I'll take that one on the plus side of the ledger.
The Tesla-fication of the dashboard has been such a shit automotive direction over the last decade and I'm relieved other manufacturers (not just VW) have woken up from the Musk fever-dream.
A good balance of screen and physical buttons is just fine, thanks.
Much better than having a user interface that unreliably works to begin with. I'd rather have to replace a button after 5 years than having to use their shitty touch garbage that has what feels like a 75% false negative rate.
Armchair designer rant: this is just as fucked up as totally touch or totally capacitive. Use 2-3-4 "infinite wheels" with different touch feelings and audio feedback to control by spatial memory and touch the most important and used features needed when driving. Combine it with clickable wheels on the steering wheel a la Tesla and IMO you have the best of both worlds. But going back to the shitload of identical-to-the-touch buttons with just an icon on it to differentiate them is WRONG.
Too little too late, let's also not forget the diesel emissions scandal.They deserve what happened to them.VW and BMW innovated by trying to push subscription models on heating seats and such down our throats.
I entered a 150k € Mercedes two weeks ago and the display looked very similar to a toy display I got for my godchild.
The market, where I live anyway, has largely forgiven VW for the diesel thing. Probably every fifth or sixth car I see in my city is a Volkswagen, and lots of them are recent models.
A lot of people seem to be thinking of this as a touch screen vs physical button issue, but in the case of VW it was actually much worse: they put capacitive buttons instead of physical ones everywhere. The worst of both worlds: a lack of tactile feedback and the inability to have a flexible interface.
I own an ID.4, the "car" part of the car is fine, but the controls inside are by far the most unpleasant I've ever used. 60% of the time I want to turn the fog lights on, it registers as "Defrost Max" that is right next to it. The worst offender by far though are the windows controls. Instead of four buttons like most sane cars, you have 2 buttons as well as a capacitive "Rear" toggle. That toggle is both incredibly easy to activate by accident and impossible to use with glove.
I can't fathom how someone designed these things and though, yep, this is a good experience. At least the car has wireless CarPlay so I can ignore the terrible VW software.
> 60% of the time I want to turn the fog lights on, it registers as "Defrost Max" that is right next to it
Ever tried to open a window on an ID.7? There are 4 windows, 2 buttons and a touch sensor that toggles between front and rear windows.
Step 1: Try to open to driver's window. You touch the sensor and open the rear window.
Step 2: Try to close the rear window now. Of course you touch the sensor again. The buttons now controls the front windows which are not open.
I'm getting used to greet my neighbors through the rear window and close it later when I stopped the car and can look at the controls.
Why didn’t you vote with your dollars?
The interface of the id4 was known to you prior to purchase and the Chevy bolt existed…
We needed a third electric car and instead of buying a second audi etron we bought a second Chevy bolt for 1/4 the price solely based on the interface and controls.
It was a weird period in 2022 (ish?) when the US electric car tax credit was changing. The Mach-E was our first choice, but the delivery would have been too late to receive the credit (IIRC). We didn't love the interface, but it wasn't a deal breaker, especially for the tax credit difference.
Because we live in a complex world with minimal choices and we can't vote with our wallet on every single issue for every single purchase.
I've driven an ID.4 multiple times (my employer gives it to me when I go in office) and I got used to all of this in few minutes.
I'm not saying that it's a good experience, but I don't think it's a tragedy either.
> At least the car has wireless CarPlay
In 2026 this is roughly equivalent to saying "at least the car has wheels."
Unfortunately, many EV brands (Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, etc) and the biggest EV player from the legacy automakers (GM) all don't support CarPlay. They see you as a captive user that they can monetize through their UI instead of Apple/Google.
The Rivian is really testing my resolve to never buy another vehicle without CarPlay. If I don't buy one, that will probably the #1 reason.
Wireless CarPlay was relatively uncommon in 2021 when I bought my last new car. Have that many manufacturers added it in the subsequent 4 years?
Don't tell General Motors–the largest carmaker in the United States and a huge player in the global market. They are phasing out CarPlay in all their brands.
Unfortunately, that is not true. Many manufacturers are very resistant to using Carplay.
Does it also have motion sensors to turn on the interior lamp? That's what I've found the most frustrating on some of their models.
You want to turn on the lamp? Try some waving gestures...
Also, I don't know whether this is a feature, a bug, or just a lack of skill on my side but I couldn't get the lamp to turn on with the engine turned off. VERY impractical.
You have to touch the light itself, which is more or less fine, but sometime doesn’t work if you’re wearing gloves…
Same with my id.3
The windows' "rear" button thing is especially infuriating. That and the climate controls being behind a mandatory privacy click-through warning every damn time you turn the car on. Gah.
I have heard rumours that they were penny-pinching to get the price under various countries' cut-offs to be eligible for EV grants.
But yeah the interior controls are terrible for an otherwise pretty nice car.
Why would you even buy a car with such infuriating UX defects? It would be a hard no for me, I think.
Cheap when second hand. Plus a lot of the annoyance only becomes clear after using it for a while or in different seasons from when you did a test drive. Many cars are like this right now, although EuroNCAP is obviously forcing a change for the better here (because it is so widespread)... but I needed a car then and couldn't wait for the new rules to arrive in X years so...
It's fine - it's just a car and it is fine as a car, just some irritating bits.
And more to come! Physical buttons now are a part of European Transport Safety Council requirements to get a high safety rating, from https://etsc.eu/cars-will-need-buttons-not-just-touchscreens...:
"New Euro NCAP tests due in 2026 will encourage manufacturers to use separate, physical controls for basic functions in an intuitive manner, limiting eyes-off-road time and therefore promoting safer driving."
> now are a part of European Transport Safety Council requirements
Actually, no, no official EU organization nor any council mandates that. It's Euro NCAP, an independent organization, who decided they'll include tactile control in their car safety evaluation. It is literally explained in that article.
It will still make a difference, but this is not something EU did.
The NCAP and the ETSC usually work very close together.
A lot of times safety innovations are first introduced on NCAP ratings, then the ETSC carefully evaluates adoption and will then advocate for those requirements to become legally binding regulations.
A technical standard will then typically be designed at the UNECE, Then the European Commission will propose it to be discussed and voted both by the EU Parliament and the European Council.
It is not like the NCAP is just the EU version of the US "Consumer Reports". While not a part of the EU, it is a non-profit thoroughly embedded into the development of automotive safety standards in the EU.
The previous user literally linked the ETSC website.
From the images, it feels like the buttons are a bit too much in terms of being eyes off.
Having driven a lot of cars with a fuckton of buttons on the steering wheel, how exactly do people use these without having to look down? One or two multi-function buttons connected to a screen is great, but there is no way I would be able to safely use that mess of physical buttons shown in the photos.
By feel. Not everyone uses all the buttons all the time, but stuff you use a lot is easily operated without taking eyes off the road. It pairs well with the other upside of physical controls, the manufacturer can’t move them out from under you with a software update.
The trick is to own your car for a few years at which point you remember where the buttons are by feel.
This is the advantage over a touchscreen - you can't learn those by feel.
For frequently used things, like cruise control, just a few months needed.
I've owned such cars for many years and no, I've never learned all the buttons. Also, I'm not advocating for a touchscreen, but a small number of buttons plus a screen is far more ideal than a massive mess of buttons. This shit has always been a UX nightmare, it sucks that it's coming back.
It’s not necessarily “a mess”.
I rent A LOT of cars for work and it’s clear that some makes know what the fuck they are doing(Volvo, Toyota) while others don’t.
> Toyota
Gotta be kidding me.
The touchscreen on my 2010 Prius stopped responding, I could still use the "Voice Control" button on the steering wheel. Waiting 10 seconds each time to navigate the menu by voice, hoping it heard me clearly each time.
Surely voice commands can replace buttons and touch interfaces in 2026!
You just feel around for it. Buttons on the steering wheel can be a lifesaver because you don't have to reach down or even look at it, you know what you're doing.
Usually there are a few buttons that matter to you, and you will memorize their position after some quite short time.
I don't like music while driving, so I know by feel how to mute or turn media/radio off in every car my family has.
My wife can't drive without music, so, she knows all the other media controls I don't care about by muscle memory.
The same way you're able to touch-type
Touch typing is a standard layout. Every car is different.
Most people drive the same car everyday.
Most people drive the same car most days. Either many or most people (I don’t have stats) drive a different car some days. There’s entire companies — Hertz, Avis, etc — with business models based around this observation.
I normally don't look at them, you know by heart which is which and ours has also one up/down sticking out knob on each side (volume & cruise speed control). Combined with very nicely visible laser heads up display I never look on dashboard nor computer screen in the middle while driving.
Staying continuously visually connected with all environment simplifies driving and definitely improves safety. Also thanx to that heads up display I didn't get a single speeding fine while by default driving at the very limit of allowed speed, including our radar-infested towns and highways.
2010-level of tech of bmw f11 is enough for me, the only real improvement would be full unsupervised self driving which isn't coming anytime soon.
That’s the point : by memory . You don’t have to move your eyes away from street at all
Do you touch type on your keyboard without looking at and searching for letters?
Buttons on the wheel is the same. You simply learn their place and feel.
They don't, it's mostly vibes plus them assuming that the "touchscreen cars" don't have some nebulous physical button that they probably do.
Speak for yourself. I can adjust all of my physical climate controls, radio, wipers, and cruise control without taking my eyes off the road. Maybe some fumbling to pick the right blower angle.
Some manufacturers have massively screwed up the cruise control buttons. On Rivians, for example, the car will instruct you to take control of steering if you will soon enter an area where it can’t do assisted steering. Fine, except that the only control that can transition directly from assisted steering to plan enhanced cruise is to jerk the steering wheel, which is distinctly uncool. So you instead cancel cruise entirely and then re-engage it.
To add insult to injury, despite the fact that the speed up and speed down buttons are actual physical buttons, they are so aggressively denounced that there’s a loop: press button, wait, press, read screen to see if you’re making progress, press, etc.
Anyway, the point is that, while physical buttons in predictable locations can make it possible to operate something without looking, it still needs a good design and implementation.
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Sounds like the IIHS which has been imposing 'mandates' on car manufacturers with little proof that these mandates are effective. These mandates are costing us all millions in upfront and insurance rates but I never see any evidence that they are worth the cost they impose. Not opposed to the mandates specifically just the lack of cost benefit analysis.
Can you be more specific about these “mandates” you take issue with?
IIHS doesn’t have any mandate power over manufacturers (they are not a regulatory body) but they do align with insurance company interests, whose goals are to pay out less for damages from vehicle incidents, and therefore IIHS logically would theoretically be focused on actuarial data-driven analysis. If you have specific examples of where this has not been the case, I’d love to learn more.
I'd love to know what the justification for replacing them in the first place was. I can't think of any device, appliance, etc. I own whose UX is _better_ for not having physical, dedicated buttons or switches and instead having a touch interface or buttons which require a complex series of presses or chords. It's almost like there was _no_ UX research to back any of these "features" up and people just went ahead and made these changes because they could, it was fun and they look cool.
To give a very concrete and potentially hazardous example: I have an induction range which has no physical controls but has a touch interface which requires various combinations of tapping, holding and sliding fingers. To say nothing of the fact that this is useless for people who have significant visual impairments, how am I supposed to turn it off if there's an electrical fire because a pot boils over or something? Is the expectation that I reach into boiling water that potentially has current running through it and hope to tap my fingers in the right place? Am I supposed to try to yank the power? Or is the expectation that I just walk outside and call the fire department?
Cost; touch interfaces are cheaper.
Though also I would wonder if bad market research was a problem. I bet if, 10 years ago, you showed someone a traditional VW interface, or a touchscreen thing, they'd go "oh, cool, touchscreens". They might feel differently if they actually _used_ the thing, but if you skip that bit of the research... It's fairly common that companies make changes based on what customers _say_ they want, because customers are not necessarily good at realising what they _actually_ want until they experience it.
It's not just that touch interfaces are cheaper. It's that you can decouple the interface design and feature set from the manufacturing schedule and shorten the overall development.
While I get that I also think it's a bit odd because how much has actually changed about the basic required set of buttons needed to operate a vehicle in the last 20 years? Most of the differences I see are down to trim levels and companies already had the solution to that with panels that weren't on the main cluster of dash controls. My low trim Golf has a couple obvious panels near the shifter where different optional things would live; seat heaters etc.
I guess, that only new things are: 1) driving assist things 2) drive mode select (sport, comfy, etc) 3) and HUD change (trip a, trip b, etc) 4) voice command button 5) regen braking control (EV only)
1 may be one the same button as cruese control
2, 5 may be on shifter knob panel
3 and 4 are the only new buttons on steering wheel
1 is all over the place depending on what your car has; my wife's car has lane keeping and blind spot monitors and those live in a knockout panel down and left of the steering wheel.
2 I've usually found in the buttons near the shifter
3 I'm not sure what you're referring to? If it's the little screen generally between the speed and battery/rpm display those controls are usually on the steering wheel in my experience.
4 Steering wheel, in every car I've seen it in and that's often standard across the models
5 This one I've only had one experience with and that's my wife's Kia Niro EV and those are on what would be shifter paddles in a car with a gear box.
The number of buttons on steering wheels between my decade old gas Golf and my wife's few year old Niro EV are shockingly similar though presented and arranged differently. Both have 4 buttons and two directional pairs (audio control for skipping on one, volume on the other, cruise control speed on another and one dimension of the hud paging on the last) though the Niro has the pairs as rocker switches that can click for one extra button I suppose.
Also you can use the same touchscreen for different vehicles and the manufacturing of that is always the same or if there is variation it is over smaller numbers of parameters: maybe a bigger or a brighter touchscreen.
I think of an initiative GM had, I think circa 2000, to standardize branding across all their vehicles and notably use the same buttons from the bottom of the line compacts up to flagships like the HUMMER, Cadillac, and the GMC Suburban. Sensitized by media coverage whenever I looked at these buttons sitting in a GM car or looking through the windows I felt that it diluted the higher end brands.
You could integrate the buttons into the touch screen controller. They don't need to connect to physical relays in the device to activate functionality, they can be every bit as "soft" as the touch screen itself, but actually provide haptic feedback on use.
That's one of the ways in which it is cheaper, yes. The touchscreen choice was made rationally, we just disagree on our priors ;-)
Everyone: I never wanted a screen
Also Everyone: I will never buy a car without CarPlay / Android Auto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CarPlay (March 10, 2014)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Auto (March 19, 2015)
They only want the screen for the stereo and backup camera, not anything else. It's easier to update a car from 2004 say to have Android Auto than to fix one made in 2024 that doesn't have it. $400 aftermarket stereo from crutchfield..
I would say that 2005 was peak car, except 2000 is slightly better because they had not yet gone nuts with serialized components.
(another reason is that direct inject fuel injection hadn't taken over yet, it's a disaster)
Screens are mandatory, because backup cameras are now mandatory.
No, 10 years ago everyone was complaining that their BlackBerry was faster to type on than an iPhone (or maybe that was 12 years ). I don't think touchscreens being a pain to use is a new revelation.
That’s nearly 20 years ago. Approximately no-one had a blackberry 10 years ago.
To align this more precisely - 2015 was the year of the Blackberry Priv (I used one for a couple of years) and, being an Android phone, felt like kind of a last gasp for Blackberry.
They've still got QNX.
They might feel differently if they actually _used_ the thing
That has to be a big part of it... especially if the customers' reference point is modern touchscreen cell phones (high quality displays, fast, etc).
But, the touch screen in my Honda is NOTHING like my iPhone. It's slow. It's not a good display. The software package is lackluster. It has a "apps" page, but there's no app store for crying out loud!!!
At least the screen is only for radio stuff and a few car monitoring things. The HVAC is still manual buttons.
What customers say they want is a faster horse.
> I'd love to know what the justification for replacing them in the first place was.
It isn't hard to see, tbh. Think about the controls in a Tesla from a few years ago. They had physical controls for drive selection, turn signals, cruise control/TACC, cruise control distances, volume, next and previous track, seat controls, and manual overrides for the automatic wipers. The things that were used a little less were on the touch screen, with automation attempting to mitigate the downsides of this. This largely consisted of climate, manual overrides for the automatic headlights, and things like suspension settings.
So, what has VW made better here? Well, they have physical controls for turn signals, drive selection, volume, next and previous track, etc. They appear to use the touch screen for much of the climate control and entertainment settings, including appearing to retain the much maligned touch settings for seat heaters.
I'm not convinced that this is better. By contrast, my Nissan has driving settings like lane centering and seat heater controls on physical buttons... right next to my left knee where they are nearly inaccessible while driving.
TBH, the whole debate around this needs to be recentered around actual ergonomics and less around touch vs physical.
> By contrast, my Nissan has driving settings like lane centering and seat heater controls on physical buttons... right next to my left knee where they are nearly inaccessible while driving.
I can beat that.
2011 Prius. USB-A port is inside the center console at the bottom of the back vertical interior panel.
You have to lift the center console lid, move all of the crap you've stored inside the console away from the lower rear of the compartment to reach the port, then by feel (unless you want to turn your head 100 degrees to the right and look down while driving) attempt to slot the USB cable into the receptacle.
> touch screen … climate
The climate controls should be physical buttons. Touchscreen climate controls tend to be giant messes requiring multiple interactions and often (hi, Tesla!) have controls in unpredictable locations. And fine-tuning the climate while driving is not exactly unusual.
Of course, physical buttons can be awful too. I’ve been in a Mercedes SUV where the A/C state is controlled by some bizarre split physical buttons and 100% of front passengers surveyed are entirely unable to confidently figure out what they do even after reading the test and contemplating for a while.
Changing temperature takes 0.5 seconds on Tesla. Yes you take eyes off the road. For 0.5 seconds.
You can buy buttons if you have disability that makes it difficult to use touchscreens.
For decades, people have been able to change the temperature in their vehicles in less time and without taking their eyes off the road. Why defend an obvious regression?
Tesla fans sung the praises of other stupid ideas like the Highland's indicator buttons and the Plaid's 'yoke', both of which were silently shelved after buyer dissatisfaction.
Yeah, I think Tesla from a few years ago was the sweet spot. A small number of multifunction physical buttons for all the things you need while driving. I've driven a number of cars over the years with a mess of physical buttons like VW is introducing, and the result is that I've never actually used them because it's too complicated to locate the right button while driving. So usually I either just don't use the features in those cars, or end up having to stop to figure how to adjust some basic ass thing.
>> much maligned touch settings for seat heaters
I hate sitting around with a cold butt waiting on the infotainment system to boot...
My Whirlpool cabinet-mounted oven has a touch screen dead center right above the door. Better not open that door for any reason, or steam will condense on it and turn it off / automatically change settings. It technically disables the touchscreen when the door opens (another huge PITA, how many times have I tried to turn it off or do other things with the door open) but that doesn't help when the screen is still steamed up after being closed.
The number of times I've got gone back to check something and it was ruined sitting 200deg lower than it should have been is more than I can count.
Similar for cooktops - I’ve seen IR-reflectance-based touch controls go haywire due to dimmable overhead lights, and heard of frustration with capacitive controls going haywire from liquid splatters.
There are some very real benefits to touch interfaces in cooking (primarily ease of cleaning a solid flat surface, and manufacturers don’t need to worry about moisture ingress), but it’s pretty hard to make one that actually consistently works in a way that won’t accidentally burn your house down when your cat walks across the cooktop in the middle of the night. I’m personally going to stick to knobs and buttons in the meantime.
> it’s pretty hard to make one that actually consistently works in a way that won’t accidentally burn your house down when your cat walks across the cooktop in the middle of the night.
Regardless of how the controls work, you can make a cooktop that, functionally, will not set your cat on fire: use an induction stove. Unless your cat ends up in a pan or your cat is ferromagnetic, the stove won’t heat it :)
My oven has a knob on it for temperature. That's it. It's been working just fine for 30 years.
Oh, and a switch for the light.
I think in context, Tesla was having quite the success story in the 2017-2022 time period, and their big screen and frequent software updates was getting a lot of attention. A lot of the stories around then were:
* Tesla infotainment is fast, responsive, good software
* Other OEMs struggle to compete in this space
* Other OEMs have software updates that require dealer visits
So the OEMs tried to emulate having a big screen UI and shoving more functionality into software, so they can update it.
Not to say Tesla gets all the credit, or that OEMs didn't start leaning on screens more and more before then. As screens got cheaper, customers demanded bigger screens, and OEMs felt like getting rid of buttons and shoving the functionality in the screen UI was the best way to appease their customers.
"CUSTOMERS demanded bigger screens" That's a bold statement...
I know I'd be one of them.
A big and higher definition screen provides a ton more context from the navigation's map with wider sidebars that can contain more information, while also providing more contrast and better legibility.
Usual Android auto screen sizes and resolutions feel to me like the difference between looking at a 32" monitor and an early 4.5" LED mobile screen. Too small for context, low definition, and not enough space to display additional useful information (so you don't have to touch the display every 5 seconds).
> A big and higher definition screen provides a ton more context from the navigation's map with wider sidebars that can contain more information, while also providing more contrast and better legibility.
As someone with a 2003 Golf (with a tape deck) I find the screen on my iPhone sufficient to get me to where I want to go. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Many of them do. My aunt bought a new car last year and was bragging about how big the screen was. She seemed confused that i thought a big screen was a downgrade.
Why would you not want a thing in your car that you’d want in your home? *slaps hood* This baby’s got four toilets!
/s
In the states I've lived installing a big screen like that in your car is against the law. Unless the manufacturer specified it as original equipment. So yes, a bigger screen is a selling point
People that wouldn't buy it, aren't customers :)
> I'd love to know what the justification for replacing them in the first place was.
There were two converging factors: number one is that there was a time where it was considered a sign of sophistication / progress. Definitely a case of form over function, but remember this was the era when everything Tesla did was cool and everyone was chasing them.
The second factor is cost. Physical buttons are expensive to design, certify and manufacture (most people don't have a notion of how high the durability bar is for everything that goes into a car interior). Once you have to have a touchscreen anyway you can (theoretically) remove almost all physical controls.
Touch controls are frustrating in general. But in this case, I don't think there is a safety issue from electric fire because of a spill. For generic turning it off (as in stop producing heat, not break the electrical circuit), isn't that just removing the pot on an induction stove?
Apple doesn't document how their iphone touch interface works. I have to use google to tell me how to do things. I don't want to have to use google while driving to figure out what the interface is.
If changing temperature is life-or-death situation for you - pull over.
If you are on a highway - driver assist is probably enough. In city you can fiddle while waiting for traffic lights.
Again, this assumes you are particularly mentally challenged and car has very poorly designed controls. Majority of people haven't got an issue with it.
First they put screens in for navigation because people were using dash mounted ones. Guess it felt logical to move the entertainment and info in there too (infotainment) and then came the EVs and the goofy tech era of cars. Late 2010s was peak automotive - most modern cars are like tacky appliances inside now.
Maybe not the answer you are looking for, but rumor has it that engineers at VW were well aware of points like those you raise. However the CEO at that time, Herbert Diess, outspoken admirer of Musk/Tesla, pushed for touch interfaces anyways.
I must assume the justification was "it is cool". especially considering they also placed capacitive touch "buttons" on the steering wheel. Those are the worst of both worlds in every case imaginable.
Manufacturers sometimes change things that already work, just to separate the "old technology" and the new. When people want a completely new car, they expect things to be different and new, even if they are worse.
I believe Toyota did this frequently in their Prius models, where things were different from mainline Toyota just because, like the center-mounted speedometer and the joystick shifter.
> I'd love to know what the justification for replacing them in the first place was. I can't think of any device, appliance, etc. I own whose UX is _better_ for not having physical, dedicated buttons or switches and instead having a touch interface or buttons which require a complex series of presses or chords.
I can't speak for other manufacturers, but having lived with a Tesla I can say these are some justifications, beyond cost:
- Standardization. With some exceptions where hardware is different, once you've driven one Tesla you can drive any Tesla. I love physical buttons too, but I don't love finding the drive mode buttons in a different place every time I rent a car, or trying to figure out how this one does the windshield wipers, or headlights, or radio tuning, or parking brake, or whatever.
- Simplification. Along with the mandate to reduce physical controls, Tesla also pushed toward making everything automatic. I never have to think about my headlights (and they dim in a circle around any detected vehicle in front of me), and I don't have to think much about drive modes either. It does a good job of automatically picking the correct direction when you tap the brake, and has a good mechanism for auto-switching between forward and reverse as you manipulate the brake and wheel.
- OTA updates. When something isn't working out for people they can make adjustments. They can also add new features (AI assistant, more automation) without mounting new buttons.
There are some silly choices, like the glove box (which is tiny and not very useful anyway) requiring a voice command or the touchscreen. And some people don't like the touchscreen vents (I do, surprise surprise). But most of it makes good sense.
It's cost savings. I'm a UX designer, a friend of mine works at an electric vehicle startup. I asked and it was unambiguous. The kinds of buttons that go into a vehicle aren't like the raw components we buy on amazon for hobby projects. They go through much more rigorous testing to be resilient to hours of use, extreme temperatures, etc, and are commensurately more expensive. Those mediocre touchscreens are cheaper than the BOM for all those fancy buttons and dials, which might each have their own control board or group bus, etc.
I'm not sure whether this is also true for your induction range. Certainly on generic table lamps and such, the touch-activated buttons are the hobby slop we'd buy from amazon.
Anyway, I've never really heard anyone offer performance, likeability, or usability as a reason for touchscreens in cars. Glad to see the industry get rid of them, at the decadeslong speed you'd expect from a dinosaur industry with a regulatory forcefield.
It’s also a lot easier on the production line if you don’t need a new set of control knobs and blanks for each vehicle that comes by based on how it’s been spec’d.
But that’s the issue. Grey suits in boardrooms with no passion for driving making decisions based on cost and homogenizing manufacturing amongst the car lines.
For example someone at VWAG thought it was a good idea to replace the 911 key with a button, and dials with a screen. Why? Cost and stupid tech fantasies fueled by EV manufacturers and Apples next-gen CarPlay nonsense.
>I can't think of any device, appliance, etc. I own whose UX is _better_ for not having physical, dedicated buttons or switches and instead having a touch interface or buttons which require a complex series of presses or chords.
Phone.
It may be better in an overall-compromise sort of way, but a touchscreen is not better for typing. I still miss the BlackBerry, and basically just stopped bothering to do any real text entry on a phone after keyboards went away.
People who buy things disagree, in aggregate.
They have no meaningful choice. To the degree that this does represent consumer preference, however, what it tells us is simply that touchscreen phones are preferred overall: it does not follow that touchscreen keyboards, specifically, are preferred for text-entry tasks.
You could make the same fallacious argument about cars when they all took buttons away and there was scant choice
I'd be first in line to buy a smartphone with a physical keyboard if a company was selling one which wasn't a Kickstarter or hobby project.
Sure, just like that famous small screen phone everyone wants but then no one actually buys.
I used flagship keyboard smartphones as long as they were offered. I literally voted with my wallet.
The idea that, because we aren't willing to pay $700 for a garbage tier "smartphone" with spotty support and basement level specs is somehow evidence that we don't actually want keyboards on our phones is bad faith.
Before smartphones I was buying feature phones with full keyboards too, including things like the Samsung Alias 2.
Meanwhile, folding phones, despite being a niche, are getting real attention by manufacturers, because it's a "new" gimmick and can drive sales.
Like what the sibling comment said: money. It's cheaper to produce one type of screen module and deploying that one type across car models that different kinds of switches. Also it was some kind of USP; to public perception of touch screens equal luxury during iPhone boom. Even though the software implementations were left to be desired ie. nothing was buttery smooth
> I'd love to know what the justification for replacing them in the first place was.
Schadenfreude maybe after watching people interact with their UI. I regularly drive in an ID4 and it's hilarious how terrible the whole experience is from a user UX point of view.
The only customer that matters to them are new car buyers, who are easily swayed by salesman and shiny objects.
I specifically bought the model of induction stove I have (LG Studio) due to physical knobs for the burners.
100% speculation, but:
to me it feels like a cost cutting measure needed for Tesla to survive. Elon and his reality distortion field made it look like a touch screen (and no controls) are superior - and all the car companies started mimicking it out of fear to miss out on something
FWIW: induction ranges have sealed tops. There are no paths to get a high voltage from the AC input to the range top, no matter what boils over, and if you break things such that there is a short the relevant GFCI failsafes will shut it off long before you work up the courage to try to touch the controls.
Safety is in fact the big selling point of the device. The surface doesn't get above food temperature. If you boil a pot over, move the pot and just wipe it up with a rag, just like you would spilled tea or whatever.
That's not to say there aren't human interface issues with relying on capacitive sensors[1], but safety surely isn't one of them.
[1] Actually "boiling over" is in fact the shortcoming: what happens is that your sauce spills over the controls and causes the sensors to glitch, which the device detects as a failure and shuts down before you can wipe it. Then you have to reset all the temperatures.
I have an induction range with touch controls, and I'll tell you they are the most frustrating thing about it (other than half my old pots not working, but that was a one-time hit).
Why are they frustrating? Because every time I have to clean the stove top (which is after most uses) wiping the controls results in activating them. Sometimes things boil over or spit out hot fat while cooking and you need to clean it up right away (or it will get cooked on like welded steel) and you end up switching the simmer on the back element to high and drop the oven temperature by 100 degrees. A zillion beeps and cute jingle tones don't help, they just contribute to sensory overload.
It's a great cooktop but I would prefer physical controls that are not on the cook surface.
Some induction ranges use magnetic dials for control to solve this problem.
I like these. Also some way to rotate the pot while holding modifier key would be pretty cool.
So you would replace an obvious and one handed control with an arcane two handed gesture? Why?
Cool is generally bad in UX design.
GFCI for a 220V / 50 amp stove didn't enter the code until like 2020. My county hasn't even adopted that. It's unlikely any random person you encounter lives in a place with a GFCI controlled stove.
Also the breaker itself is like $130+, plus slightly higher chance to nuisance trip, so fat chance any builder is putting that in voluntarily.
Most people install induction stoves as part of a larger kitchen or home reno. If you're switching over from gas you probably didn't have a 50amp 220V circuit anywhere near the stove. But kitchen renos have to bring the kitchen up to code, so if you're bringing in an electrician anyway to redo all the wiring, might as well put in a circuit for the induction stove, and code requires that it be on a GFCI.
The folks who just want a drop-in replacement are probably not getting induction - they're the ones who complain about the necessary electrical upgrades being too expensive.
That seems to be what Impulse is targeting - standard size drop in inductive with a lot of high tech features (for the price) and a ludicrous battery, so you don't need to upgrade the wiring (since you don't cook 24x7 after all.) No ideas if the numbers work out, but they're definitely aiming at a perceived gap...
Yeah, my new induction range after a kitchen microwave fire is on, I think, a 40 amp circuit. But the whole kitchen electrical (and, indeed, much of the house) was being redone anyway.
Pretty much all (American?) cars have gotten rid of most physical buttons, it's not just VW. I assume it's cost.
I assume this as well. I hope we get a trend of customers/reviewers looking at a touchscreen-heavy cars and saying "you guys really cheaped out on the interior, eh?".
Dealerships love selling extended warranties. "If that screen breaks, you'll have to pay $1800 to replace it!"
Money
Ultimately, yeah. But specifically I think it's a combination of saving money directly on the bill of materials and assembly, and saving money on design flexibility (heck, you can probably do the entire infotainment design process at the last minute and flash it onto the cars after the entire assembly).
That's almost always the answer for big corporations run by MBAs.
The car has to be scrapped when the UI hardware fails.
You can live a LONG time without a working ... radio tuning knob, if the other 99.9% of the controls work. Or if the right passenger door lock button fails, really who cares. But when the central control of the entire car fails, its scrap.
Very profitable for the manufacturer.
Occurs to me that this is likely one of the reasons car manufacturer warranties have really gone into the crapper.
One of the problems with fixing problems is that by fixing them, you're demonstrating to customers that problems can be fixed, and you risk setting the expectation that problems will be fixed. This puts pressure on management to fix more problems, and management generally finds this problematic.
Though if you don't do it, someone eventually decides to start a competing company, fix all the problems, demonstrate that they can be fixed, take all your customers, and put management out of a job.
Yup, that was one of Steve Job's principles: he recognized that someone was going to do something better and take your market share — so it is best if you cannibalize your own market share before they do.
I will never not talk about how bonkers it was that Jobs got up on that stage in 2005 and launched a complete replacement for the iPod mini, at the time the best-selling portable music player and it wasn't even close.
How many other execs would have the courage to do that vs letting the current thing (microdrive player) settle and holding the new thing (flash memory player) in reserve to launch only in response to a competitor gaining traction?
Not if your company buys the competition out before they become a threat.
No guarantee that they or their investors will be willing to sell to you, and in some cases it means that management in the upstart ends up taking over the acquiring company, as with the Apple->Next, Disney->Pixar, and Time Warner->AOL mergers.
Market competition should _already_ be providing that pressure.
For your sentiments to be true several important parts of the pipeline and market need to be dysfunctional already.
> This puts pressure on management to fix more problems...
It's a good thing when consumers put pressure on corporate management. That's free market economics working efficiently.
Seems like a trend in the right direction - Subaru's doing the same for their 2026 models. Still too much shit on the steering wheel in my opinion but at least there are physical buttons/knobs for the climate system that don't require multiple touch screen button presses;
https://www.caranddriver.com/photos/g64477839/2026-subaru-ou...
What in particular do you want to avoid on the wheel? My thought is it's a perfect place for jet-style HOTAS controls, for the same reason; no moving your hands from the wheel, and driven by tactile feel and physical location.
I don't want any buttons on the steering wheel, except the horn.
I don't want a screen at all, but reversing cameras are now mandatory so that one is probably not going away.
I like the "return to real buttons" trend but it's less about buttons and more about the appropriate physical controls for the operation being performed. The control itself should both indicate current status and provide for changing it. For example, things that are "on" or "off" should have a switch with distinct "on" and "off" positions, not a single pushbutton that toggles. Temperature or volume or blower speed should be dials or sliders that move between two physical end points. If you have to repeatedly push or hold an "up" or "down" button and look at a display to set the temperature that's suboptimal. Moving a slider or dial where the physical position corresponds to the actual setting is so much better.
The type of buttons but also the inconsistent behavior. Buttons with an indicator light for on / off state for instance (vs an actual physical toggle or switch), some times stay on when you start the car again, others reset to default. I get there are some regulatory requirements around this too, but still annoying.
I want more things on the steering wheel. Anything the driver should reasonably be operating while the vehicle is in motion should be on the wheel or immediately surrounding it, IMO.
My objection to stuff on the steering wheel is that in my experience the buttons are often multifunction. I.e. a "+" and "-" button that do different things depending on a mode that is selected with some other button. Takes too much thinking while your attention should be devoted to driving.
My Mercedes is absolutely terrible at this. Having owned it for a couple of years now I still have no intuition about what most of the steering wheel buttons do. On the other hand, they get cruise control right: It's a simple stalk on the steering column. Up for faster. Down for slower. Easy to find and operate without even a glance off of the road.
If there were a few carefully chosen single-purpose buttons on the steering wheel I could maybe get on board. But if there are too many or they are multifunction then it's cognitive overload.
It sounds like, if I understand correctly, your core objection is poorly-designed steering-wheel controls.
Yes, but also controls for things that should not even be controls. I can select---from the steering wheel---how many seconds the interior lights stay on after I close the door. Why? Just pick a reasonable number, and don't ask me to think about it. Or if you must, put that setting somewhere out of the way so I don't accidentally fall into it when I'm driving. Or better yet, give me a switch specifically for the interior lights that I can control manually. The cars back in the 1970s did a better job with this than today's cars do.
> I can select---from the steering wheel---how many seconds the interior lights stay on after I close the door.
I don't mind this feature is somewhere deep in the menus of the driver settings area. However, if you're tripping over settings like this either the car is poorly designed or your routinely delving into settings areas you really shouldn't be in while driving.
It's well organized which is nice (cruise control on the right, media, etc on the left) but there's over 20 different buttons/functions there. At very least, X-Mode, Trip odometer reset, phone hold button, audio source button aren't worth the prime real estate.
I don't use my phone at all while driving so all of the phone buttons could go away in my car. I hate audio assistants, so that button could go away too. The dash control switch could be on the dash.. etc etc. I'm not a UI person and I'm sure some committee fought over every square inch of that space, but just personal preference.
That actually looks really nice. I like my '22 Outback a lot except for the dastardly climate controls on that fucking touchscreen.
VW's head of design announced this months ago, and spun it as listening to customer feedback, choosing to return to features people "love". I remember at the time being a bit annoyed by the level of spin.
In reality, for Europe at least, their hand was forced by Euro NCAP via their safety tests. They announced it a couple of years ago but it starts now. No car that has just a touchscreen, instead of physical controls, will be awarded a 5-star rating. I don't really know to what extent people take note of the NCAP ratings these days, but they certainly used to be a very big deal to car buyers (for example, in the late 90s, the rating given to the Rover 100 effectively killed it overnight).
The NCAP ratings make physical controls essential for the most basic functions (e.g. indicators) and strongly encouraged for others (e.g. climate control).
So obviously the same goes for other manufacturers shouting about doing the same thing - don't swallow their hype about how much they love your feedback.
> physical controls essential for the most basic functions (e.g. indicators) and strongly encouraged for others (e.g. climate control).
In what cars are indicators not a physical control?
Question aside, I definitely agree with the shift back to physical buttons. My new car has a touch screen for climate control and I loved it, for about a week. And now I hate it because it just adds confusion and distraction when driving
I remember going to buy a new car in 2015. My girlfriend had a Honda Fit from a few years prior and I loved driving in it. Felt so roomy given the tiny size. Went for a test drive in one and every single button was digital. Not even a volume knob, just little touch sensitive buttons. Ended up buying a Mazda 3 and Honda eventually switched back to physical buttons for most things.
Surprising to see companies still learning this a decade later.
In all car reviews, driver impressions and forums, there is near universal and near unanimous preference for physical buttons for common control like volume and climate control. It is beyond me why anyone would experiment with something that is like 100 year old tech and loved by people.
I hope Apple Carplay and Google Android auto can also take over other car control such as volume and climate control. Later someone can build uniform hardware buttons and knobs that I can place on my steering wheel and it can use the phone to control those features.
Most car manufacturers made this mistake because they started mimicking the then leader for innovation (and customer satisfaction), Tesla, too much.
General cautionary tale: just coz a company is successful, doesn't mean it's doing _everything_ right. Plenty of folks who love their Teslas would prefer a few more buttons (and door handles on the inside, etc) if given the choice. Could say similar things about some choices Apple made.
I own a Tesla, and I agree.
1. What Tesla did right was put a big screen in the center of the car, and then actually think about the UX, and how to improve the software to avoid having to fiddle every other minute with controls on the screen (e.g. climate control is usually amazing, I rarely touch the temperature). What other companies did was just put the screen and slap on sub-par software without much regard for UX, so of course it sucks, even if you have the big screen.
2. Yes, I'd have loved a couple extra buttons, perhaps programmable. My main gripe for instance is/was the air re-circulation (used to live in a country with lots of tunnels), but I'm sure others would have liked some other button. I'd have been very happy to have 3-4 software-programmable buttons for the most used functions.
> What Tesla did right was put a big screen in the center of the car
I would disagree with that. You do not need a big flashing distract-o-tron in the middle of the dashboard.
Cars should have exactly zero screens.
> I would disagree with that. You do not need a big flashing distract-o-tron in the middle of the dashboard.
Except my car's screen is not distracting: I set it up for my destination, I give it a glance when needed for navigation, and I basically don't touch it until I'm done driving, because (second part of the previous comment) the UX is so well done that I don't have to. Worst case, voice control works well enough for e.g. changing playlists and songs or changing destination mid-trip.
> Cars should have exactly zero screens.
People have been attaching tomtoms and mobiles to the windscreen for the past 30 years anyway to solve exactly the same problem (navigation), and they were always inferior solutions to a well done integrated screen: detaching on a bump, leaving forever-smudges, having to update all maps offline, removable meaning easier to steal, limited functionality, ..... So I disagree. I'd rather have governing bodies evolve to take screen UX into account at regulation: most cars with screens couldn't have been sold.
> Cars should have exactly zero screens.
Backup / 360 view cameras and navigation? I'd argue those are a lot safer than no camera looking backwards and fiddling with maps / phones.
CarPlay is wonderful and Google Maps on a display is a hell of a lot safer than paper maps.
The display dims adequately , and is far less distracting than competitors , who usually have multiple displays and flashing lights. Especially luxury brands who do the above and have "bejeweled" decorative LEDs all over the cockpit.
Tesla has the most subdued interior of every brand on the market.
But why do you want a massive glaring floodlight shining in your face when you're driving at all?
The screen is not useful.
sure, I would prefer 90s interfaces if I had the choice, but given the products on the Market , Tesla's attentiveness to the driver experience ( low LCD brightness, moderate contrast UI, reducing demand on the driver) exceeds all competitors by a large margin : better than luxuries, better than German cars.
I don’t think they were following Tesla. It’s a trend that affects everything, including washing machines. Tesla is a mere symptom
Washing machines next. A total stupid idea to put capacitive touch on it. Just lean over the counter and it simply resets the wash program to re-run the past 3 hours of progress. Can't think of operating it with wet hands.
This horrible touchscreen-only situation always reminded me of a similar fashion trend in the mid 80s... digital speedometers and "automatic" seatbelts. Both looked great in a magazine, showroom, and the Knightrider TV show, but were suboptimal in real life.
Thankfully no one back then had the absurd idea to force them into every single car model, and eliminate choice for the next ten years.
Real cars have buttons. If I had the money, I would buy this one
https://www.caranddriver.com/photos/g63743843/2023-ineos-gre...
Great.
But make climate control 3 knobs: Fan speed + off, temperature and output ports. Put the AC button inside the temperature knob, and the 'recirculate' button inside the output ports knob.
With the radio have a push on/off volume knob that starts up at the SAME volume as always (i.e. relative, not absolute) and NOT the previous volume. The volume knob should have some resistance to it. Opposite that have a tune knob for precise tuning, and pressing that gets you into setup and navigates you through it. This should have the same resistance, but the outside has some indents so you know it's not the volume knob. Have 6 preset buttons and 3 'banks' with a single 'next bank' button. pressing and holding a preset will save it with a beep for confirmation. On the steering wheel: up/dn for radio should be seek, not next/previous preset. There are 6 nice big buttons for presets but when traveling seek up/dn is the main way we change music.
On the door have the rear view mirror controls, and above that have a knob for dashboard light brightness.
2008 Honda Fit was close to a perfect car. https://www.carsdirect.com/honda/fit/2008/pictures/interior
While we're dreaming, just have an interchangeable panel. Allow 3rd parties to make whatever dials etc. the customer wants. And if it were up to me I'd also get rid of the screen entirely and only have a HUD for navigation. It will never happen, let alone become mainstream, but dreaming is nice sometimes.
Basically what Tesla does - near perfect touchscreen, but also easy to add third party buttons.
I was imagining a console that's at easy arms reach that's fixed into interior and don't require taking eyes of the road. The S3XY buttons look pretty cool, but they don't seem to be able to give you the resistive feel of something fastened to the interior. The Knob provides something like a console, but it seems pretty limited in how many tactile options it provides and you still need to take your eyes of the road. A number of simple dials with tactile clicks and fixed positions provide a user interface that don't require visual confirmation.
And touchscreens are another visual distraction. I think they're a contributor to the increasing vehicle accident and mortality rates. Ideally, nothing should take your mind/eyes off the road. A HUD for navigation and dashboard guages/alerts is about all anyone 'needs' in terms of display, but in the end it's about what individuals want, human lives be damned.
> increasing vehicle accident and mortality rates
Except they are decreasing...
> HUD
Except HUD is kinda worse than center console: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13698...
(I say kinda because you still get a bit of peripheral vision from HUD. Traditional dash behind steering wheel is undoubtedly worse - this has been proven decades ago).
> Except they are decreasing...
This data says otherwise. I'm certain pedestrian mortality has been increasing, and by the looks of this graph it looks like 'other road user' deaths are trending up too. If you have data to support your claim, keen to see it.
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/road-users/pedestr...
> Except HUD is kinda worse than center console
The glance time might be affected by a lack of contrast? Or perhaps the novelty of using a HUD? It's possibly right, but I'd want to see more study on the 'why' it's worse and whether that's a technical thing.
US seems outlier while rest of the world fatalities are decreasing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
This also needs to be divided per miles driven as those are constantly increasing.
Finally, my guess pedestrians are disproportionately more at fault here - mostly impairment (meth, fentanyl), but also smartphones and headphones in particular. Drivers are mostly distracted by phones mostly, not by adjusting climate controls for 2-3 seconds.
> US seems outlier while rest of the world fatalities are decreasing
Europe can be explained by pedestrianisation of cities, congestion taxes, separated bike lanes that encourage bike use, vehicle safety standards that—at least until recent loopholes have emerged—have been keeping dangerous vehicles off the road. Even still, if you look at that graph you'll notice a little uptick in the last 5 years, curiously around the time that screens became more prevalent, but also...
> my guess pedestrians are disproportionately more at fault here - mostly impairment (meth, fentanyl),
A-pillar sizes and bonnet heights have all been increasing, reducing visibility of pedestrians. Sounds like a larger factor to me. People have been getting high and drunk behind the wheel for decades, but maybe it's more prevalent now?
> not by adjusting climate controls for 2-3 seconds.
That's really all it takes if a kid decides to chase after a ball on a side street. You might have seen them before they ran from one side past behind an occluding object and emerged on the other, with not enough time for automated systems to respond (if they respond). A lot can change in 2-3 seconds, and I'd be surprised to hear an experienced driver say otherwise.
I think I've said as much as I can.
> That's really all it takes if a kid decides to chase after a ball on a side street
Thats how long it takes to glance at rearview mirror, your partner, your kids in the back or you know... button based climate controls.
> Europe can be explained by pedestrianisation of cities,
It can be. But also can be explained by lack of zombies in the streets.
Going back to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... - fatalities per 100k population has been decreasing for a while, even since smartphones and trucks went mainstream.
We've decided that using trucks as gender-affirming care is more important than the lives of vulnerable road users. Denmark should see that as a hint.
Heh. FWIW gender-affirming care has been out of vogue lately everywhere around the world, not just US.
Truck issue feels like imported here in NZ. We don't even have f150 here, most popular car is hilux and raptor which are about same height as my people mover.
Excellent vehicle but feels like driving an empty beer can at speeds over 80 mph.
> have a tune knob for precise tuning
Who the hell still tunes a radio in 2026.
Third world countries. We do.
I know first world countries come first, but you asked.
In the last three years, there have been two times when we traveled, rented a car, and were given a Volkswagon.
Both times, the touchscreen-only controls were such a pain in the butt that we vowed we would never purchase such a car. It was a timesaver, because in that period our family has gotten two new (to us) cars, and our experiences with the rental Volkswagons allowed us to exclude an entire manufacturer from consideration.
If they haven't re-broken their interiors by the next time we look for a new car, I guess we'll have to consider them again.
What did you go with instead? Mazda?
No, we wanted full EVs. Mazda doesn't make any, only hybrids. We wound up going with Chevrolet in both instances.
The Equinox EV is one of the better EVs to offer AWD out there right now, matching the range of a Model 3 at a decently better price and obviously massively better UI. Slower charging is the only real downside.
And a used pre-2020s Bolt is a really excellent value, because they are insanely cheap (under $15k) and due to the whole catching-on-fire thing they all had their batteries replaced in the last few years, which means you get a much newer battery than the mileage/age of the car would suggest. The Bolt is replacing a much older Leaf, so bumping the range up to ~200 miles from ~70 is a huge upgrade for us.
One reason I just bought a 2025 Miata, is that has physical buttons for almost everything. Even the touchscreen can be operated with physical buttons. That and the manual transmission, makes it feel almost retro. It does have a lot of alerts like lane change monitors, but it doesn't bother me too much.
We were thinking of getting the ID.Buzz, but the lack of physical buttons was a big turn-off(our newest car is a 2015). Looks like they aren't even doing a 2026 Buzz, so hopefully we see a 2027 model with physical buttons again.
I am happy to see this and hope it spreads. A lot of us, IMO, would pay more for physical buttons - which is really a way to go about this, even though logistically it's problematic. If you want physical buttons, pay for it, if not, go with digital capacitive touch. I think cars should be like airplanes - physical controls, able to be felt and pushed without taking eyes off the road. The digital buttons far too often require my attention to be diverted, or pull over.
I’m not sure if the GUI in that image is real or a placeholder, but I really like what I see.
Reminds me a lot of the skeuomorphism from classic iOS and WebOS, but cleaned up with elements of modern “flat” designs.
Perhaps I am a very small minority, but.. I really miss skeuomorphism.
From what I’ve read it will be real and is supposed to evoke the early VW Polos. I believe you will be able to switch between that and a more „modern“ look
The (digital) gauges are interesting too, like a throwback to VWs of yore.
I thought so too, they reminded me of the speedometer and analog clock (lol) in the '81 Rabbit I had in high school.
This is not a production system yet. Also, as someone who suffered VW/Cariad developed UI since 2021, it's going to suck balls.
I suffered similarly but I think the latest software (>5.0) solved most of the issues and I don’t notice the software anymore at all (which I take as a positive - I.e., it just gets out of the way)
I'm not sure we're even on same versions. They appear to push different branches on different platform revisions.
Mine still cold boots/watchdogs every time you start the car in what I suspect a Patriot-style fix of numerous issues. It still has confirmation dialogs over confirmation dialogs (e.g. when selecting CarPlay you get to confirm your choice three times). Voice input is still unusable: the only thing it reliably recognizes is when I tell it to fuck off (and it scolds me for that). Door locks/keyless became more unreliable, which I frankly doubted was even possible. Everything is lagging, especially after cold boot: getting to entering nav destination after you sit in the car takes an eternity.
I was disappointed to see those images. The headline vastly overstates it IMO. "Some buttons on steering wheel, center console still entirely one giant touchscreen" is not "bringing back physical buttons".
It's a shame too. I drive a 2016 VW GTI and it's an absolute joy. The last era of VW worth any consideration. Small touchscreen that shows current playing track, or carplay/map, but still with physical controls for volume and AC. I was glad to see Doug DeMuro shred them for the electronics in the newer model.
I'll be driving my 2016 car and 2008 truck into the grave, at which point I'll replace them with something of the same era or older. There are some enticing ways to die in a fiery car crash, but eating a median while trying to finger stab a mid ass ipad knockoff for control of the defroster is not among them.
I have a similar model (2015 VW GTI, manual transmission) and I'm so glad I bought one before they ruined it. I will also be driving mine until it falls apart.
Be generous ... no one is expecting this headline to mean a complete reversion to 1960's dashboards and full button control.
A nice balance of buttons and screen is just fine ... (imo).
Whether this specific example is great or not remains to be seen - but I appreciate the direction.
1960s!? I want a reversion to 2016 controls. That's not that crazy.
I don’t want screens in my cabin.
This is a very good move.
Next, they need to make the buttons more physically distinguishable, instead of panels of identical buttons
The dashboards of older pre-1990s cars had a wide variety of buttons, switches, and knobs, all with different locations and feels. Of course today's designers would see this as an unclean mess driven more by manufacturing considerations than "design" considerations, but it was a much lower driver workload to operate those "messy" controls. The different position, size, shape, and feel of each control allowed easy operation by just feel, without taking eyes off the road.
In contrast, the all-the-same rows of buttons on modern cars are still hard to operate after familiarization; which one is the front vs rear defrost?
Moving many buttons to the steering wheel overcomes many of these limitations, but again, rows of identical buttons do not help. Consider a Formula One steering wheel with 20+ controls. They are 100% custom and can be made any way they want. They make the OPPOSITE of identical controls — they are all different and brightly colored.
The point of driver cockpit design is NOT some clean asthetic.
The point is to use every available mnemonic device so a driver under heavy workload can recognize the controls instantly and reliably.
[0] https://www.wired.com/2014/05/formula-1-steering-wheels/
[1] https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/f1-explains-how-f...
[2] https://medium.com/formula-one-forever/the-nerve-center-of-a...
Great, I bought a 2024 Mazda 3 Premium Turbo over an Audi RS3 or VW Golf R in part because it had all physical controls and the touchscreen functionality is automatically disabled over 10mph. It's a great car, and between the simple button/knob driven UX and the HUD, I can make changes without looking away from the road while driving, which just plain makes sense for a car. The Tesla idea of putting a big tablet as your only interface to the car was stupid and insane from the moment it was done, it's shocking it took this long to return to sanity. Let's hope other manufacturers follow suit.
You were shopping a Mazda 3 Premium Turbo vs an Audi RS3? The Audi is almost twice the HP and double the cost of the Mazda. I'm not sure physical buttons would really be my driving consideration between those two cars.
Yes. I was shopping all available compact sedans and hatchbacks with AWD and turbocharged motors. My budget was wide and I enjoy spirited driving, I would have loved for the RS3 to work out, but it didn't for several reasons but the primary was that the interior UX was pretty awful.
That's a pretty frustrating market segment to shop for in the US these days, given there are so many good options that just aren't sold here. I was looking for similar cars early last year and quickly ruled out Golfs (and a variety of others) over the total lack of actual buttons. So annoying. I wound up with a Mini Clubman—another fun premium compact that's now no longer being made.
Yeah, I also considered a Mini then, and just took my wife shopping for her new vehicle. She also likes smaller cars so we considered getting her a 2026 Mini Cooper S but they've gone the other way and done almost everything on a single center-screen, there's no actual instrument panel anymore, but there is a HUD at least in the higher trims. Ultimately this was a huge turn-off for her, and we ended up getting her a 2025 Lexus ES350 (which I realize is quite a bit larger vehicle than a Mini Cooper).
When I vehicle shop, my budget isn't endless, but it's fairly uninhibited because I keep cars for an average of 10+ years and I like driving and want it to be an experience I enjoy. That said, companies just aren't making cars I like much anymore. I /loathe/, utterly /detest/ crossovers, and that's the vast majority of new vehicles being brought to market. Even vehicle lines that I previously liked, such as the BMW 3 series, have become enshittified in weird ways that dilute the core concept of that particular vehicle line. I'd love an E92 M3 w/ DCT but made in 2025/2026, but that's not made anymore and I think the current G80 M3 is a much worse car in every way that matters to me, even though the S58 is in some ways a better engine.
It's really disappointing and frustrating trying to find a decent vehicle these days.
Ironically people are constantly surprised every time this comes up that I cross-shopped a Mazda 3 vs an Audi RS3, but if you put aside some of the cost difference (which isn't as large as you think, it's 50% more, not 2x the price), Mazda is trying to up its game and move into the Japanese Luxury space to compete with Lexus, Acura, and Infinity rather than the other Japanese brands. Some issues aside, I think the execution on the interior of the Mazda 3 Premium is pretty great, especially at its price point ($40k base).
My current car took the fully touch experience approach (except for the usual stalk controls) and while I love the rest of the car, I despise the interface.
I’ll be in the market for a new car soon and I am only considering ones with touch buttons for HVAC. It’s not worth getting into an accident trying to change the temperature.
Volume and HVAC physical buttons are an absolute must for me.
I was given a rental once from a dealership who was doing warranty work on my truck. It was one of those weird months in the midwest, where the temperature could be 80 or 30 depending on the day, and this day just happened to be 30. I realized shortly after I got onto the road that it wasn't getting any warmer, because A/C was on. There were no buttons to turn it down or off, only a touchscreen, so I just did the 15 minute drive home of shame in 30 degree weather with the AC blasting. That was all it took to make me swear off -ever- buying a car without physical buttons.
Bad idea. I am a strong proponent of a 0% Button, 100%voice controlled car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8
I'm involved in the development of the voice assistant for the VW Group and I find it pretty good honestly. You can control quite a lot via voice and it works pretty reliably.
Ha, I was about to respond "unless you're Scottish" and link to this sketch!
You guys don't have any humor, do you?
I knew what this was going to be before I even clicked on it.
As an aside, a lot of "talking" lifts in Glasgow appear to have a Polish accent.
Next, replace the incomprehensible icons with text.
Wish I could get that ID.Polo hatch in the US.
The speedometer and rev counter are ugly as sin.
And still no temperature dial. They achieved near perfection 20 years ago:
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
This has a few other issues to me compared to many similar dials.
It’s unclear what the temperature numbers actually mean if this isn’t an automatic climate control system (or is in manual mode).
The part that rotates also appears to be symmetric, which means one may need to find the white marking to decipher where the dial is pointing. That can be even more difficult in a dark environment than trying to read a display.
Yes, not perfect, but MUCH better than their current version of touch-screen only climate control, which is an exercise in frustration. "Relative perfection" :)
The numbers are centigrade, which for the local market is mostly very obvious and widely understood. 22 is roughly room temperature, so it's good that's at 12 o'clock. This model doesn't have auto climate control.
> which means one may need to find the white marking to decipher where the dial is pointing
You hand can feel the angle the dial is pointing. It was a non-issue for me. the white is illuminated softly at night, and one very quick glance can confirm the position anyway.
Anyway, I'm contrasting to this modern VW abomination: https://www.discoverauto.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2... . Try to feel where the slider is set to on that interface... :D Or quickly enable the rear/front demister options...
> The numbers are centigrade, which for the local market is mostly very obvious and widely understood. 22 is roughly room temperature, so it's good that's at 12 o'clock.
I'm aware of centigrade, I've lived in places that use centigrade. :) My issue is that absolute temperature markings don't seem appropriate for a manual climate control system that isn't matching a temperature. Here, the traditional blue/red-style markers or similar are probably more informative.
> You hand can feel the angle the dial is pointing. It was a non-issue for me. the white is illuminated softly at night, and one very quick glance can confirm the position anyway.
Fair, if it's clear with some tactile difference and is visible at night that seems quite alright!
Then you’ll be glad to know that they will offer a range of designs (or skins, I guess) including one based on retro VW speedometer designs. [0]
[0] https://youtu.be/8u_8ohSpOh4
What does the leftmost button in your example do? The tall one with a drink on it.
Exactly what you think - pops out a cup holder
D'uh, thanks! That did not occur to me at all to be honest. But it does make sense.
Yeah, I liked this interior better when it was made by Pontiac, circa 1989.
But it’s not a rev counter, is it?
It's still ugly though, isn't it?
They need to bring back the VR6. It was fantastic you could get an engine that sounded that good in a small useful hatchback car.
I am pretty sure that many car brands will discover that this can be a selling point and reconsider the cost/ux tradeoff.
Is there any maintained list of all cars that have physical buttons?
That’s a great step, now if they would just do one that respects your privacy and doesn’t track your every move, I’d buy one.
They are bound by the GDPR, which automatically puts them ahead of every American or Chinese manufacturer.
E.g. Tesla, even in Europe, is pretty blatantly ignoring privacy laws and is used to surveil the population: https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/tesla-waechtermodus-f... (paywall)
VW was also bound by emission standards, yet Dieselgate still happened.
I would be very surprised if it didn't have some kind of "heavily-restricted debugging interface, only available to select VW engineers, which provides a limited set of fully anonymous vehicle diagnostic metrics" - which in practice is of course used to sell trivially deanonymizable data to anyone with a few bucks to spare.
From 38c3
https://reynardsec.com/en/volkswagens-bad-streak-we-know-whe...
"The data, which includes detailed location information and even vehicle owner details, was left exposed and unprotected on the internet for an extended period of time."
Wir wissen wo dein Auto steht Volksdaten von Volkswagen
https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-wir-wissen-wo-dein-auto-steht-vo...
Dieselgate essentially happened due to the interaction of the EU and US emission standards. EU emission standard got lowered until it wasn't physically possible, without reducing the machine power, which the market doesn't want. Thus, they introduced test mode, which does have the emissions actually allowed, but is worse in all other aspects. This worked in the EU, because the tests environment is defined and no other tests are performed.
The US regulators wouldn't have cared about higher emission levels as all cars in the US have them anyway, but the cars were still introduced with the EU specs. First because otherwise they would need to remeasure all the car emissions and second, because even as the real emissions would still be low by US standards that would have questions why the same car has different emissions in EU and US. That plan however didn't work out, as the US doesn't do tests in a controlled environment, but while actually driving. Thus, the scandal started becoming public. That is the official part.
The following comes from an "industrial expert", that held a guest lecture at our university: This whole thing was actually done with knowledge (and silent agreement) of the EU regulators, as they aren't dumb and know what is physically possible. However they were still forced to act once this became public in the US, as the politicians and the general voter don't like regulators doing there own thing against the law. Also this was done by a VW supplier, which is basically the only shop in town, so of course this wasn't specific to VW.
So in my opinion, blaming VW, while legally correct, is actually kind of dumb. At last a bit anecdotal evidence: We also did the update for our car. Of course we tried to delay it, but eventually the car would have lost it's street legality, so we needed to do it. And afterwards the car is louder, has visible emissions and smells (more). (No, this isn't even a car from VW or any other company of the same business group.) Thanks. Sometimes the best option would have been to just keep quite and stick to gentlemen agreements.
>VW was also bound by emission standards, yet Dieselgate still happened.
Sure, but it is not like they just got away with that (ironically other manufacturers who did essentially the same thing, did mostly get away with it).
>I would be very surprised if it didn't have some kind of "heavily-restricted debugging interface, only available to select VW engineers, which provides a limited set of fully anonymous vehicle diagnostic metrics" - which in practice is of course used to sell trivially deanonymizable data to anyone with a few bucks to spare.
The GDPR allows you to receive a copy of all data a manufacturer has about you, "trivially deanonymizable" is by any reasonable interpretation of the GDPR personal data. Of course you can believe that VW and other manufacturers are secretly ignoring laws (again) and of course evidence for that would be hard to come by, but it it did come out it would be a massive scandal, with a massive criminal investigation.
In general, do you want to have minimal laws protecting your privacy and manufacturers blatantly not caring about existing laws and individuals having no recourse or do you want strict laws protecting your privacy with manufacturers facing heavy sanctions, when they ignore those laws? The choice seems pretty clear.
You're assuming that VW is following the GDPR.
In 2024 when they got hacked it turned out they were gathering (and "lost") a great deal of user data that they weren't supposed to.
https://cybersecuritynews.com/volkswagen-data-breach/
I don't think that VW were punished for that breach; the GDPR has no teeth.
I drive a VW but I won't buy another.
Tesla is also „bound by GDPR”.
This doesn't seem like a particularly good reason to not buy a car. Either you need one or don't.
Removing network connectivity from basically any new car is trivial, often as simple as pulling an easily accessible fuse.
Removing network connectivity from basically any new car is trivial, often as simple as pulling an easily accessible fuse.
I'm guessing that you haven't actually done this on "basically any new car".
If you had tried, you would know that there is no fuse dedicated to "network connectivity". It is typically tied in with other, often essential functions like the engine control computer --- specifically in order to thwart a simple disconnect.
What I have seen done is to tear into the right roof pillar and cut the wires going to the antenna on the roof. But this is usually not without consequences as well such as a perpetual error code display and/or the radio, navigation or entertainment functions stop working.
I've done this on a W222, a W223, a continental GT and an Urus. On each of those cars it was as easy as disconnecting the antenna, on none of them did I have to tear into the roof pillars.
I've never seen an antenna that was difficult to disconnect, on the super simple end you have something like the W222 where you can literally just pop out the antenna cover on the roof and just remove the antenna module inside.
>But this is usually not without consequences as well such as a perpetual error code display or the radio, navigation or entertainment functions stop working.
Well sure, I do have cars without GPS because I was lazy. Carplay still works fine, so can't really bother to do anything about it.
Add a whole ton of Fords to the list. The cell modem is just a module you can unplug on a lot of them to no ill effect.
Yeah, I seriously doubt that there's a single car with which this would actually be difficult to accomplish.
Even if you can't pull the modem or the sim card (less common now) directly, you can certainly always find and disable the antenna connection.
Any decent shop will be able to do this for a reasonable price.
> Carplay still works fine, so can't really bother to do anything about it.
That largely depends on the specific vehicle. I’m surprised that there wer no negative effects in pulling the telematics fuse on a W223, less surprised on a W222.
I just pulled the antennas on both of those, I don't think there's an easily accessible fuse that wouldn't cut off a bunch of other stuff.
> If you had tried, you would know that there is no fuse dedicated to "network connectivity".
Depends on the car. On modern Fords, it’s the TCU fuse.
> What I have seen done is to tear into the right roof pillar and cut the wires going to the antenna on the roof
Nonsense. Only a fool would do this, rather than simply disconnecting the antennas from the back of the module.
Manufacturers almost universally use FAKRA connectors for quick and error-free assembly on the production line.
Only a fool would do this, rather than simply disconnecting the antennas from the back of the module.
Depends on the car. It some cases, this is not simple. Accessing the connections means disassembling the dash.
Yes, but no vehicle in the world requires you to go around chopping up cables.
Hart innovation , yet I would never ever drive a car like a Tesla without head up display. That’s ludicrous. If you have ever done a risk assessment of any kind you know why .
Great, my 20 year old car is now avant-garde!
Another announcement back in March 2025:
* https://etsc.eu/volkswagen-to-reintroduce-physical-buttons-i...
Related to Euro NCAP mandating physical controls for certain functions, "including indicators, hazard lights, sounding the horn, operating windscreen wipers and activating the eCall SOS function"?
* https://etsc.eu/cars-will-need-buttons-not-just-touchscreens...
Honestly this doesn't look better. You still have a large touch screen, but now you also have > 20 buttons on the steering wheel. Capacitive (no touch feedback) ones at that.
The actual fix would involve simplifying the driving experience. Adding 30+ buttons to the steering wheel and 25+ to the console does not improve the situation.
The bar should be whether the operator can keep their eyes on the road while operating the controls. And when getting into a new vehicle, how easy can they find common controls like mirrors, climate, parking brake, cruise without consulting the manual.
I rented a Highlander which did have nice physical controls, but many features were buried in cryptic menus. The auto steer feature, which dragged and pulled steering in corners, and aggressively applied braking , was buried under 3 levels of menus labeled "RTSS", "SCS", "Advanced".
Capable drivers don't need cornering and braking assist. It's $2k+ worth of useless components , for a worse driver experience.
Now, please get rid of the giant screens in the center console and make turn-by-turn on HUDs the default option for navigation.
Ok great! Now the real test begins. Will it sell? Will it outsell its competition? Those answers are up to you! I would not buy this just for the buttons.
Some day they will need subscriptions to run their cars because the only way to interact with cars will be voice to an AI running on a remote server.
I say they because I hope I am gone by then.
UI and UX have decline dramatically in the last 10 years across the board. Most of this can be attributed to hamfisted security measures and data collection/dark patterns to abuse consumers. But why cars? I only drive rentals, so I deal with a different car almost every time, and the lack of simple, physical buttons is a straight up safety hazard.
Considering GM is going headfirst the other direction, along with removing carplay support, I'll be looking for a something else. Especially a "disconnected vehicle" at some point where it includes no cell interface or one that can easily be yanked.
Oh boy, oh joy! Common sense has returned.
Wow, the steering has you dual-wield gridded T9 keypads while driving? Talk about missing the forest for the trees on safe driving.
Nobody would spend the whole day typing on a virtual keyboard, so that change makes a lot of sense to me.
Maddening to know that most of these vehicles will never hit American shores.
Good god,that is an ugly steering wheel.
Dashboard screens are so cringe, I’d be happy if they were banned outright. I want dials and dim indicator lights for the console, and knobs and buttons that have the dual purpose of interface and display on the dash. This is a machine, not a video game, everything should be in service of making the driver look out the windshield.
Modern cars are absolute shit, the UI on my 30 year old Camry feels amazing by comparison to any car that I’ve driven that has come out since 2010.
Maybe you don't need so many buttons.
Maybe don't have so much distracting shit in the car.
Now bring back the standard transmission.
Well done, VW ... they still have issues but I'll take that one on the plus side of the ledger.
The Tesla-fication of the dashboard has been such a shit automotive direction over the last decade and I'm relieved other manufacturers (not just VW) have woken up from the Musk fever-dream.
A good balance of screen and physical buttons is just fine, thanks.
Magnet buttons and dials sliding over a screen?
[dead]
Unfortunately in the case of VW it is just one more thing that will break.
Much better than having a user interface that unreliably works to begin with. I'd rather have to replace a button after 5 years than having to use their shitty touch garbage that has what feels like a 75% false negative rate.
I don't disagree but they'll try to profit off it in this way, is all.
Armchair designer rant: this is just as fucked up as totally touch or totally capacitive. Use 2-3-4 "infinite wheels" with different touch feelings and audio feedback to control by spatial memory and touch the most important and used features needed when driving. Combine it with clickable wheels on the steering wheel a la Tesla and IMO you have the best of both worlds. But going back to the shitload of identical-to-the-touch buttons with just an icon on it to differentiate them is WRONG.
Too little too late, let's also not forget the diesel emissions scandal.They deserve what happened to them.VW and BMW innovated by trying to push subscription models on heating seats and such down our throats.
I entered a 150k € Mercedes two weeks ago and the display looked very similar to a toy display I got for my godchild.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_manufacture...
What happened to them is that they're still #2 globally and make 5.5x as many cars as Tesla.
The market, where I live anyway, has largely forgiven VW for the diesel thing. Probably every fifth or sixth car I see in my city is a Volkswagen, and lots of them are recent models.
It's absolutely not too little too late for them.