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.
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