Volkswagen will restore physical buttons to the dashboard in its latest compact car, part of a wider move away from touchscreens.
In a particularly retro touch, the new ID Polo will even have a volume dial.
For a decade or so, automakers rushed to replace knobs and switches with screens, Autoblog noted in October, but users largely disliked them: Controlling the air conditioning, for example, required delving through submenus while driving, which was both difficult and dangerous. Research found that using touchscreens took longer and distracted drivers.
Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and VW have all announced plans to return to more tactile controls, and US and EU regulators announced last year that cars with touchscreen controls could get worse safety ratings.
How is this the most upvoted news? The US liberally just went to war with Venezuela.
My guess? Because people are getting overwhelmed with Trump shit so like to be reminded of the olden days when news like this meant little to nothing.
Yesss, now i can replace my 2016 car that still had buttons! (Not that i will… or need to…)
Great. Now (for cars in general) remove all the unnecessary computerization nobody asked for and have a physical link between the throttle, transmission and the pedals. That’s sure to help with all the sudden unintended acceleration issues that also cause drivers to be unable to shift into neutral because the computer (a single point failure) decided to shit the bed.
Nature is healing?
Not till we have robust, strong, public transit and walkable communities and the majority of personal cars are gone.
So long as I can keep my sports convertible for weekend cruising (350Z Roadster Touring 6MT in Daytona Blue), sign me the fuck up.
Natura is healing indeed.
Touchscreens are so dangerous. Glad to see buttons coming back.
I’m almost surprised pedo elon didn’t make literally everything touch screens in his death traps, right down to the brakes and steering
Good. Now put round headlights on your new electric vans. They’ll look even better.
Who knew that would happen eventually after sensor screens failed time and time again at worst possible moments?
US and EU regulators announced last year that cars with touchscreen controls could get worse safety ratings.
Yeah that’s the real reason they’re moving back it’s got nothing to do with the complaints from the customers because they’ve been ignoring those for over a decade. They just know that people won’t buy their cars if it receives a substandard rating.
But hey I’ll still take the win.
they have to
it’ll be a law in china in the future
And EURO NCAP (who make safety ratings for cars) have said they’ll stop giving 5 stars, if a car has no physical buttons for essential controls (i dont reclal what they believe is essential though)
apparent it’s
turn indicator signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, and the horn
That’s weird, no car has those in the touch screen. Dumb steering wheel placement, sure (tesla), but still physical.
It’s not that weird IMHO. Anything driving related should be a button or a stalk, like EuroNCAP is saying. All non-driving related stuff can be on screen, which I believe is fine. Personally, I think people have been driving the wrong vehicles, or drive older vehicles, when they say that they can’t use HVAC controls on a touchscreen. It’s not that much more different than a button, in most cars it’s in a dock on a touchscreen, easily accessible. I also strongly believe that you don’t use the HVAC buttons as much on newer cars, because the systems have become so much better, that’s probably also what the manufacturers see in their data when deciding for their new designs.
The touchscreen hate is a little blown out of proportion IMO. People that drive Tesla’s hardly complain about the touchscreen, mostly about the removal of stalks. I also don’t hear people complaining in newer BMW’s and other more luxury brands, even though those brands use touchscreens for a lot of stuff these days.
I meant I find the announcement weird, because there aren’t any cars currently to have those controls listed as touchscreen buttons. And the emergency lights already has to be a physical button, at least in the EU.
Maybe it’s about preventing those features…
Yeah perhaps. I can imagine that the indicator buttons on Tesla’s was the final straw to take this action, before other manufacturers started pulling of weird shit like that.
Ferrari did it before Tesla, just slightly more logical.
I also object to the hazard light button in my Tesla. While it’s great that it’s a physical buttons, it’s not tactile - I can’t use it without taking my eyes off the road
Buttons that you can use without looking at them, please.
On my old car, the temperature dial had a notch, and you could set it to heat/cold by whether it was left or right of center, now it’s a free-spinning dial. Old fan control was a dial with stops, now it’s two buttons with no tactile distinction. Old vent selector was a dial with stops and I knew the foot/defrost setting was one from the top and the foot/body setting was one from the bottom, now it’s a single button same as the fan buttons that cycles through all the options. If I want to change anything, I have to wait until I’m at a red light or something so that I can look down and fiddle with it. I used to be able to do it all blind.
One of my cars has climate control with a knob, so I have to look at the (small) screen to see what the temperature is.
My other car has a hot/cold knob that I can just crank all the way to the stops. It even turns the A/C full blast on full cold.
I prefer the latter.
My car is like that, you can adjust temperature without looking at the screen, and the temp knob has detents every half a degree.
It’s good to see manufacturers going back to physical controls for key functions.
In the old car, it was an analog system. These systems are digital in newer cars. So while you may get a knob or button, it’s still sending digital signals. That’s why there’s no distinction when you turn the knob, because there literally isn’t a distinction.
to be fair, it’s an encoder and the distinction is in the “direction” of turn. they could indeed make it both an encoder and tactile but where’s the profit in that?! :p
Good. Hate touchscreens. It never fails that as you are going to touch something, you will hit a bump and miss. And that’s after taking your eyes off the road to find the button or dig through 4 menus to find it.
Time for some cassette futurism design!
My pencil is ready
EDIT: This is not a euphemism
My PEN IS working.
Unironically I want this so bad, I’m one of those Gen Z guys who grew up around old tech but I love my clunky 1970s-1990s tech. There’s just something viserally satisfying about sloting in a tape.
I added a old radio with a Minidisk player into my car when the radio died
Fucken hell the fuck did you find a minidisk player? That’s unironically awesome, though whenever I see minidsiks I think of Starship Troopers.
I meant no irony either and I can point at one good reason for cassette futurism design: the soundscape.
8-track would be interesting. ;)
I hope regulators pay attention to technology this time instead of just reacting.
My car has controls with no physical buttons but I can control with voice assistant. Technically that means I can do it without taking my eyes off the road but it’s physical buttons are much better
This seems like an obvious improvement and I kind of want everyone who thought otherwise to be banned from working in decision making roles.
It’s way cheaper and easier to not have to source the buttons. The bean counters saw Tesla get away with doing it on the touchscreen, so they figured they’d get away with it, too.
I think you just move a lot of cost and resources towards software instead of actually making it cheaper.
Yeah, never mind the additional casualties caused by distracted drivers.
Tesla has the highest crash rate of any manufacturer. In particular, rear ending other cars. It’s the stupid touchscreen.
Maybe. Not disagreeing but I’ve never seen data to support that, have you? Some people blame it on self-driving, some blame it on the higher performance, and yes the touch screen is plausible. But we need to know. That accident rate is too high to be guessing.
Unfortunately my experience supports all of the above
- self driving is continually improving. I trust it much more than previous iterations but I don’t trust it. In my latest test the only dangerous thing it did in two hours was to stop at a yellow light. Technically correct but the idiot behind me expected to drive through. I also took over four times when I wasn’t sure it was going to do the right thing
- in my first drives I had to see its acceleration - was surprised by it enough to experience fear
- there are shortcuts to the common screen controls but it’s not always easy to discover them. Voice control works well for me so far
Source?
I’m not a journalist. Search it. Start here, https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2025/02/11/tesla-again-has-the-highest-accident-rate-of-any-auto-brand/
It’s a function of touchscreens, high acceleration rate and very heavy vehicles which are difficult to stop in rain and snow.
If VW made a car that randomly exploded every time it went over 40 miles an hour they would still sell it if in some way that saved the money.
Imitating the trending brand or model, including their terrible design decisions. It drives me nearly insane that so many companies do this. Look at how many companies have been copying Apple’s horrible hardware design decisions over the last few decades. SMDH
It’s cheaper to use one screen. They make the decisions based on profits and not anything else. They’re only changing things back because of safety issues.
not quite - they’re changing things back because they think they will make less money if they don’t, as a result of safety ratings being affected by their shitty cheaper screen design
that’s a bit more clear than the way you worded it, which could be understood as they are choosing to do this of their own volition because they think that it is safer and the best decision
I know that’s what you were trying to say, but that last sentence just needed clarification, because I want this to be very clear that they do not give a fuck about safety, they ONLY give a fuck about making money. also see: blinding LED headlights
ID.BUZZ with physical buttons, 4WD and an upgraded heat pump (the current one is designed for ID.4 sized cars) would be the perfect car for me.
The ID buzz needs significantly more range for me to consider it.
How much range do you need? My Chevy Bolt has a range of ≈350 miles, and it’s rather mountainous around here.
The id buzz has notoriously bad range, even worse than advertised, I think real world testing puts it a bit over 150 miles on a charge
AFAIK it’s partially due to it being built on the ID.4 chassis
