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.
Who knew that would happen eventually after sensor screens failed time and time again at worst possible moments?
Hope our current car holds out long enough for those buttoned cars to arrive in the used car market.
Exactly what I’m saying.
Time for some cassette futurism design!
My pencil is ready
EDIT: This is not a euphemism
Why can’t it be both?
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.
Ebay, although it is a Japanese version of headset so you have to get a fm frequency shifter to make it work with US radio st
I meant no irony either and I can point at one good reason for cassette futurism design: the soundscape.
8-track would be interesting. ;)
Good. Now put round headlights on your new electric vans. They’ll look even better.
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
That’s more than enough for daily commuting, though.
You don’t buy an ID.Buzz for commuting though. It’s for adventure! So low range is a problem in this one case.
Ya, it is but not for 70k+.
Yesss, now i can replace my 2016 car that still had buttons! (Not that i will… or need to…)
That touchscreens in cars are still allowed while using a phone is not?
You are supposed to look at the road, yet we have roadside billboards.
You are supposed to go the speed limit but it is safer to follow the flow of traffic if everyone is speeding.
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. 🤷
They’re not interested.
Robo taxi on the other side of the planet is meant to sway my opinion on the car…
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.
Excellent
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.
Even if they do, feedback systems generally run full blast until they just about hit the target number, then tweak it from there.
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.
It’s shocking how many otherwise educated people don’t understand how a thermostat works.
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°
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
Removed by mod
Finally, some good fucking cars
Peak control design
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.
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
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.
Ferrari’s implementation is also simply better. Button on the left for left indicator, button on the right for right indicator. But still, it’s not great to use on roundabouts. The reason nobody cared when it was added to Ferrari’s is because it’s not a mass produced product. EuroNCAP score doesn’t really matter for Ferrari and other sports car manufacturers anyways. They could have a 1 star rating and still be sold, because the car isn’t about safety.
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.
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
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
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.
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
