Manufacturers are slowly starting to listen to what car journalists and owners have been complaining about for almost a decade: Cramming all the car’s functions into a touchscreen is an inferior solution to having dedicated physical controls for key tasks.
Among the manufacturers known to be switching back to buttons is Volkswagen, whose latest vehicles have gone touch-control-crazy with functions either buried inside a touchscreen menu or relocated to an annoying haptic feedback panel.
We’ve known for a while that Volkswagen was considering putting back some buttons in its cars, but the manufacturer never officially acknowledged this. Now VW’s design boss, Andreas Mindt, has admitted to Autocar that this approach was a mistake and that the automaker is backtracking on this trend.
“From the ID.2all onwards, we will have physical buttons for the five most important functions—the volume, the heating on each side of the car, the fans and the hazard light—below the screen,” Mindt told Autocar. He added, “They will be in every car that we make from now on. We will never, ever make this mistake anymore. On the steering wheel, we will have physical buttons. No guessing anymore. There’s feedback, it’s real, and people love this. Honestly, it’s a car. It’s not a phone.”
But why can we not have button phones as well? I miss tactile feedback.
Postal service PostNL uses them, so I happen too see them from time to time.
Good. Now make the touchscreens in cars illegal.
Nah man. There are uses for touchscreens in cars. Just don’t put everything there, and especially don’t put anything you’d need to use while actively driving in there.
But being able to have dynamic user interfaces is very useful for plenty of non-directly-driving-related features.
Alright. Just make it illegal to operate any touchscreens while driving.
And make it the responsibility of the car manufacturers if the touchscreen is used, because they clearly induced the accident, that would quickly make them stop making touch screens be needed for things you should not look away while driving
This is incredible news because that means my future GTI will have buttons.
I just hope they’re smart enough not to put a 1200kg battery in it 🥹
!cassettefuturism@lemm.ee brace for the flood!
Touch screens in cars has always been a fuckin’ stupid idea, and I say that with the sincerest hope that nobody died because they had to look at the touchscreen to know where to tap to change the radio station because commercials came on
Someone has died due to a touchscreen. A woman had a Tesla which you put in park forwards or reverse with a touchscreen. She’d always had trouble with it and got it wrong and reversed into a pond. That meant the power went out so she couldn’t open that door. To get to the emergency escape handle you have to remove the speakers in the doors. So she drowned.
The kicker? Her husband was a millionaire and he immediately put out a statement absolving Tesla and musk from any wrongdoing.
Billionaires, both of them, I think.
This is going to be unpopular but I quite like the buttonless UI in my car (6 year old swasticar). I recently bought a van and it’s so distracting.
Buttons are all over the place and I have two screens to monitor. Honestly, I spend more time looking at the controls in the van ghsn the car.
I’m getting rid of it soon and I’m not looking forward to that part.
Once you start remembering where the buttons are you get to the advantageous part which is using the controls without ever having to take your eyes off the road.
That’s what I do 99% of the time with my car. The scroll wheels and voice commands work well.
About fucking time some damn sense around here.
They cant just be buttons. They have to be well thought out buttons. My old toyota had 3 big round knobs for the heater controls. Could adjust it without even looking. My new Toyota has heater control buttons but they’re tiny and arrayed in a row like a tiny piano. There is no space between each button and they all have the identical tactile feel. Have to take my eyes off the road for a few seconds just to find what I need.
Nah you should make the steering wheel also a touchscreen, that would be smart. 🙃
Swipe left to go left. Swipe right to go right. Pinch to accelerate. Say in a clear voice “Please begin braking” to decelerate.
Display ads in the meantime.
Say Yaah to accelerate, and Whoa to slow down.
Now that I think about it, cars could totally add a slot for SIM cards and be a phone and roaming wifi if they wanted to.
they do
Mine has an embedded one and I cannot change the provider, I am basically stuck. Luckily i can make hotspots from the phone and car can access the internet through my phone
It is not only safety - stupid screen is eating the battery for no reason.
The screen consumes orders of magnitude less energy than what it takes to move the car. It’s not even worth taking into account.
There used to be a concern of lights draining a car battery preventing it from starting the ignition, but nowadays all the lights are LED so it’s many times more efficient.
The power consumption of a tablet is next to nothing compared to the power it takes to move an EV.
Yeah.
iPad battery capacity: 25-41 Wh
EV battery capacity: 30,000 - 200,000 Wh
That’s Stellantis. It’s the same company that’s building cards that are now showing ads when the car stops at a red light.
VW is not Stellantis. VW is VW AG (often humourously called VAG).
This is VW, they aren’t Stellantis, they are actually bigger than Stellantis, aren’t they?
Indeed.
The VW group trades places with the Toyota group for largest in the world.
Nothing to do with the euroNCAP guidance that came out earlier in the year, of course.
I’ve been assured that tHe MaRkEt will solve everything, though!
Just keep hoping for that invisible handjob.
Nah I’m sure that carmakers being forced to do this only factored in a little bit.
Only because buttons are cheaper than fines of course.
Now wait a second! Hold on! Let’s get one thing straight here…
…buttons should also return to phones.
Dedicated fingerprint unlock like the Pixel 5 would be nice to see again.
I’d settle for reasonable ports
Bring back the Blackberry.
And maybe introduce the blueberry!
As long as I don’t have to buy it, sounds good to me. Options are good.
I like the full screen size. Slide out keyboards are GOAT.
Thank the lord.
