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.
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.
Nature 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
Who knew that would happen eventually after sensor screens failed time and time again at worst possible moments?
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
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.
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.
Good. Now put round headlights on your new electric vans. They’ll look even better.
VW cars are just so fucking behind it is laughable.
And you know what? So is Polestar/Volvo.
Don’t buy Chinese. Byd doesn’t even have 1 pedal driving.
While Tesla is still by far the most advanced tech car, you need £10 subscription to their network to get full use of their app. The likes of Korean manufacturers are really closing in the gap.
Porche is very unfortunate, Taycan is genuinely a lovely car, my best driving experience in EV… But they’re flawed in one crucial way… Thief magnets! Be it your lights or the car itself, not only are they prone for very low skill attacks, insurance is insane on them because of it.
Merc and BMW I think are just overpriced. While they’re not bad, they’re poor value for money.
I got no experience with Lucid or Rivian, but having chatted with genuine owners and watching reviews, they seem to be gunning for tesla at much higher price without delivering. Lucid software is plagued with bugs to this day.
Happy to answer any questions about EVs, it’s genuinely a fascinating scene and I’m lucky enough to be in dealership heaven, if a car manufacturer exists in the UK, I have a dealership 10 min away from me. I would suggest people to just go out and test drive! An hour or two of driving brand new car and having sales people kiss your ass, many got some good coffee.
Porche by far was the best “buying” experience. I was told to bring it back whenever as long as it’s back before closing. Only manufacturer to do it. Tesla offered overnight test drive which is also neat.
The swasticar manufacturer has the most advanced tech car?
Their cars are a joke. Opening glove boxes through menus. Getting rid of almost all buttons to just install a giant monitor in the middle?
And don’t get me started about their full self driving robo taxis next year since ages ago. At no point in time (even before the rest of the world caught on that Elon is a complete moron) was buying a Tesla a good idea.
Ah yes, robo taxi is what makes the car bad?
You’re not interested in an answer. You’ll just rewrite reality to fit your narrative. You can hate Elon and tesla all you want, doesn’t change the facts. As someone once said, science cares not about your opinion.
The car is bad because of it’s inherent design flaws and bad UX.
Robo Taxi, “not so full self driving” and similar things don’t make the car bad but show the practices Tesla uses to lure people into buying a car. By promising features they can’t deliver. Same with Tesla Semi, new Roadster, etc.
About hating Elon. Hate is a strong word but he is clearly a faschist moron. That doesn’t make cars technically bad but I’d like to hear some arguments how a moron being in charge helps the company make better cars.
And regarding science, there are some papers that show that cars with screens are way less safe because you have to look away to interact with it and that “glorified cruise control” too because you should pay attention because the car has too many flaws but in practice people stop paying attention.
So your response to “I don’t care about taxi that’s not going to be available to me” is to bring a truck to the discussion?..
Then you ramble on preferences and bring cruise control into this like every other car doesn’t have those and the screen being worse in 90% of the competition doesn’t exist, but that makes tesla bad?
Give me a fucking break, like I said, you’re rewriting reality. Go to Ford, I’m sure the screen being so far down at thigh level makes it so much safer! Or porche with their haptic screen? Or maybe let’s look at MG with everything behind hidden behind 4 menus? Oh while we’re at it! How come every car is now advertised as “its quick to turn off lane assist! Just takes few taps or dedicated button!” How about they make the lane assist actually work and not piss off the driver?
There were several cars I went to test drive where they turn it off before I got into the car.
But hey, Tesla has so many flaws! Not like they’re the most efficient and don’t need to have 30% bigger battery… No no no, that’s fine, we’ll ignore it, right? Because let me check notes… Ah yes, glove box is opened through screen. Pack it up boys, Tesla is done for. This guy came in and vaguely pointed irrelevant things to win the argument about personal cars.
Have you ever actually used one? Been inside one?
I’ve heard tesla drivers complain about a lot of things but the infotainment console is far above what other manufacturers do. Thats not because it’s great, it’s because other manufacturers are just worse. 🤷
Any car manufacturer who removes the instrument panel from right infront of the driver and placing the instruments in the infotainment system deserves to fail.
I don’t disagree with that portion, but the actual software is good. Don’t get me wrong theres a LOT of shitty design decisions with Teslas, but again a lot of manufacturers seriously struggle with infotainment systems not being complete shit.
They’re not interested.
Robo taxi on the other side of the planet is meant to sway my opinion on the car…
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.
If you just leave the climate control set to a temperature that you find comfortable then the car will heat or cool as it needs to, to achieve that temperature.
I know cranking it over to hot or cold probably makes you feel better but it won’t make the engine warm up any faster or make the aircon cool any more.
Yes but I want the absolute maximum heat or cool it can provide, starting immediately. Even if the air coming out is only slightly warmer/cooler it’s still warmer/cooler.
I can always turn it down later.
Most car ac systems are either on, or off. They don’t have variable compressor speeds. They cool at maximum until they reach the temp you set then they switch off. If the temp rises again then they switch back on.
A non EV cars heat is provided by the coolant that circulates through the motor. Nothing you can do will make the heater heat up faster.
Nothing I can do? If I drive my car at higher rpms, wont that make the engine hotter thereby also heating the coolant faster?
Yes that is true, I assumed everyone knew that 90% of engine wear occurs during the warm up period so you’d be foolish to ever run the car harder than needed in that period.
I was referring to turning up the heat to full or anything you can do in the cab as the poster seemed to think he could get more heat from the old analog systems faster than a standard climate control system.
Even if they do, feedback systems generally run full blast until they just about hit the target number, then tweak it from there.
My understanding of climate control systems is that it does only provide maximum heat or cool. There’s a temperature sensor in the cabin that tells the car when it’s at the right temperature, but until that point is hit, it is heating or cooling as much as it can.
The only difference between climate control and traditional a/c is it knows when to stop and when to turn on again
Your understanding is wrong. I’ve tested the output air on both settings in the winter. Max heat had like a 30° difference. The engine doesn’t want to pull that much heat unless necessary because it reduces fuel economy when the block isn’t saturated. So unless you specifically ask for 110° air, it’s going to give you 80°
It’s shocking how many otherwise educated people don’t understand how a thermostat works.
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
Hope our current car holds out long enough for those buttoned cars to arrive in the used car market.
Exactly what I’m saying.
Touchscreens in cars was a terrible development. The natural haptic feedback of physical buttons is a must, while operating a vehicle.
Touchscreens are wonderful in a car, just not for basic functionality. You can pry my Android Auto out of my cold dead hands.
The mini-map and cameras are nice on touchscreen too.
You can have Android Auto without a touchscreen. My newish Mazda has joystick like controls for the screen.
The Mazda rotary dial is awesome. It does 90% of what a touchscreen does, and voice control or a passenger can do the rest. If it can’t be done with three or four clicks of the wheel or Siri, then pull over safely and use the phone.
My old car had an aftermarket touchscreen CarPlay headunit, and I much prefer the buttons and dials on the newer Mazda. Borrowing somebody else’s (usually newer) car with a touchscreen feels like a massive step backwards.
Sadly it looks like they’re also falling for the touchscreen b.s. on the ‘26 year vehicles, big L for safety.
Yeah there is a lot of fuss about the cx5 turning to touchscreen and people hating it (in literature, not sure on the experience side yet). I have a 2020 and like the setup it has for sure.
Seems even more distracting than a touchscreen.
It’s not a joystick per se, it’s a tilting knob, kind of like a 3D mouse. Older Benz models had the same setup, it’s great.
Still requires you to stare at a screen while guiding a 3000lb slab of steel in public.
Up to a point. The rotation wheel has tactile feedback, it works really well in practice.
Touchscreens are good for context-sensitive controls. They don’t make sense for basic controls that should always be available.
I’m fortunate that I have a good touchscreen for use with Android Auto + physical buttons for things like HVAC and volume.
Then there’s me who disables that every time I get into a work car with it. I’ll just put my GPS in the cup holder, thanks.
Phone holders are wonderful in a car. Get rid of the built-in touch screens entirely.
Phone integration with the car is handy. Bigger screen + integrated controls. I have volume controls on my steering wheel and a button to issue voice commands to Android Auto.
A $200 tablet and $50 holder is much more capable than the built-in touch screen. The built in touch screen is adding more $2500 to the price of the vehicle.
The built in touch screen is adding more $2500 to the price of the vehicle.
Others will say that touch screens are replacing physical buttons to reduce cost. So which is it? Touch screens add big cost or touch screens reduce cost?
/Not aimed at you, since you didn’t assert conflicting info
cost != price.
The costs involved with that touchscreen are in the tens of dollars, and much lower than the myriad physical hardware it replaces. The costs of producing the car are considerably lower. The price manufacturers charge for that vehicle are considerably higher.
Try to replace a defective touchscreen: the charge for the proprietary replacement screen is more than a flagship phone, but provides fewer capabilities than a budget tablet.
I recently fixed a phantom/ghost problem in my GMC acadia by replacing the touch glass for about $100. It was easy peasy. Had I taken it to the dealership, I assume it would have been a $1000 repair as they would have replaced the whole head unit rather than just the warped glass.
I’m not going to speculate on the cost (or price) differential, but due to the requirement for backup cameras, screens have been required in cars for almost 10 years now (in the U.S. , no idea about other vehicle markets). However, these need not be touchscreens.
You can pry my Android Auto out of my cold dead hands.
Yes, that’s the idea after your distracted driving caused fatal accident. Exactly!
Not like I can watch movies on the thing, bub. It’s navigation and 99% of the time my audiobook player. Which, guess what, I control from my steering wheel. And it’s an audiobook. What’s there to be distracted by?
And it’s an audiobook. What’s there to be distracted by?
The audiobook? The answer was contained in your question. The result varied by type of drive though. They improve drivers during boring drives and well:
Overall, braking times to hazards were higher on the complex drive than the simple one, though the effects of secondary tasks such as audiobooks were especially deleterious on the complex drive.
I thought I saw another study some yesteryear about spacial reasoning tasks demanded by some audiobooks (describing a scene, what a building looks like, where it is etc) impaired spacial reasoning while driving. While music doesn’t use spatial reasoning hardly at at all. That’s why I stopped using audiobooks while driving, but I can’t find it so maybe I’ve been lying to myself all along.
The takeaway: boring drives secondary tasks could be good. Complex drives secondary tasks could be bad. I’ll stick with music but be more readily muting it for potentially interesting interactions. In a use the secondary task to keep focus and identify the hazard, once identified mute secondary task to react to the hazard.
But I play focus games while driving anyway. I don’t indicate out of habit: I reason if there’s someone to indicate to, then decide whether to indicate. I find it forces observations and space/speed reasoning to infer whether my changing direction presents a hazard to someone somewhere.
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
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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
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.
Thanks to these visionary titans of industry we’ve now got 10+ years of used cars with HOT GARBAGE interfaces. Guess they learned their lesson eventually but the used market is screwed for a long time.
Before buying our latest, the family sat down and defined the minimum physical controls a car needs to have; functions that are used often while the vehicle is actively moving.
- Aircon
- Lights
- Cruise
- Media
Wipers, maybe. Automatic wipers are annoying, but deemed not a dealbreaker as long as the others above are present.
It was shocking how many makes/models did not even meet the bare minimum.
Automatic wipers are annoying
Are they? I like mine - not having to operate my wipers manually like some kind of peasant.
