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.”
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I used to work with big companies collecting IoT data. 90% were collecting telemetry without knowing why. Or having business goals they could easily achieve in other ways, without hoovering everything and violating our privacy.
The rest were doing it so they could sell it to data brokers and make money.
None of them were trying to push privacy as a competitive advantage.
None of them were trying to push privacy as a competitive advantage.
This is why I don’t have a new car. I’m hoping I get one where I have access to my own data (in eg. Home Assistant), and the manufacturer doesn’t.
3rd party stereos in classic cars seems to be the only way to get that.
Yep, that’s basically what I have.
I’m ready to buy a factory new car, when I find one where the data is mine.
It’s too bad LocalMotors never really worked out. It could have been an open source car company, but instead it was a weird designed by committee expensive car.
Factory cars these days are so locked down that in order to replace some sensors or controllers you have to log into a paid (like sometime $30+ an day) online portal to enable the new part. It’s super fucked.
nymea.io was one of the few who were full private, but I think they got bought out or something
The thing the vast majority doesn’t care about and that doesn’t prevent them from buying cars and that you’ll have to live with unless you just keep driving your old car forever?
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But then how will you know where the nearest Arby’s is on your commute
My favorite place to buy and use drugs!
It’s so weird how not a single person here can just say “cool, this is good”.
Sometimes things can just be good.
Trust is earned, and automakers have done nothing but the opposite for an entire lifetime. There’s a reason everyone was so desperate for Tesla to be the little guy rebel. It didn’t work out though :(
Yes, but a corporation complying with the law is sadly what passes for good news in the US these days.
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Yes, but this is not one of those times.
Imagine someone poops on your doorstep, and then removes half of it.
You can say it’s good that they removed some of it, but that’s probably not the point you would want to make.
Great, now unfuck the car I already have
Would be hilarious if they recalled them and superglued buttons over the touchscreen interface.
Step 1: Make insanely stupid design decision to save $2
Step 2: Sell reversal as an upgrade
Now wait a second! Hold on! Let’s get one thing straight here…
…buttons should also return to phones.
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.
Whoever thought touchscreens were a good idea for a console needs to be shot
They are grat for things that benwfit from havibg flexible touch anywhere interaction like maps.
They suck for anything you want to touch without looking away from the road, like temp controls.
Honda still including buttons and knobs for climate controls was a huge factor for my last purchase. A few brands were instantly rejected because they had climate controls in the touch screen and I had already hated that experience from rentals and my in law’s cars.
Finally!
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).
Does this mean VW’s won’t 15" touchscreen monitors plastered to the dashboard anymore? Or are they keeping that and just putting buttons under it?
!cassettefuturism@lemm.ee brace for the flood!
Thank you!
(Though, to be fair, I’m not sure how much they deserve to be thanked for undoing a change that should never have been made in the first place.)
Ehh, they were promised that full self driving was only a few years away. If that had been the case, touchscreens would be perfectly fine. But a decade of “only two more years, we swear” later, it’s time for the manufacturers to get back to work on AM instead of FM.
Wouldn’t it have been better for them to wait until cars were fully self-driving? I suspect they were just trend-chasing.
Who is “they”? Nobody made that bullshit promise except the Nazi in Chief.
“They” is the car manufacturers. And yes, they were promised by Apartheid Willy Wonka.
And they fell for it. Partly because this happened back in like, 2010, when tech still felt promising and fun and partly (mostly?) because they wanted to.
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.
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.
This way the new VW tanks will be easier to handle.
Thank fucking god.
Good. Now make the touchscreens in cars illegal.
