VW Is Putting Buttons Back in Cars Because People Complained Enough
Customers and critics alike have raked VW over the coals for its "frustrating" interiors.
Yeah I really hope other car makers follow because I fucking hate touch controls in cars with a burning passion. It's idiotic and not safe at all.
Same goes for kitchens. Give me real buttons and knobs and not these abhorrent touch panels that refuse to work every third time. A good quality kitchen appliance is identified by high quality knobs that last for decades.
I pumped gas at a brand new Shell station over the weekend. The controls for the pump was one GIANT touchscreen (I'm talking probably 12 inches wide by 36 inches tall). It was fucking PAINFUL to use. Every touch took 2-3 seconds for the action to happen. Da fuck is wrong with a regular pump and regular buttons that just work!?
Biggest problem is that they cheap out on the tech parts. Nobody complains that an iPad has a touch screen, cause it works. But an appliance tends to have a crappy UI, running on a crappy touch screen, powered by a crappy CPU.
If they just used quality parts, it'd probably be fine, and the only issue would be expensive replacement for an entire assembly, instead of small, cheap parts that can be fixed.
In general high quality things tend to have physical buttons and knobs as opposed to touch screen devices.
Instead of turning into e-waste after 5 years or less they can last for the next 30 to 50 years.
How many smart thermostats have become obsolete because their service providers stopped providing cloud services for them?
I just tore apart a working thermostat that almost 80 years old now (to understand how it works) and in perfectly working condition. It uses the physical properties of the materials inside to measure temperature (a coil of metal expands and contracts causing a pendulum to move clockwise or counterclockwise). Suspended at the top of this pendulum is a small vial of mercury containing two electrodes. When the pendulum is far enough counterclockwise the Mercury slides in the vial and bridges the electrodes, turning the furnace on, when the pendulum is far enough clockwise the mercury slides to the right and no longer bridges the electrodes.
When you set the temperature on the thermostat you are changing the default position of this pendulum. Meaning that it has to move more or less distance for the bead of mercury to bridge the circuit.
It's brilliantly simple and will continue to work essentially forever. The physical characteristics of the materials involved won't change.
I was boiling pasta earlier and my fucking stove turned itself off and engaged the child lock because water splashed onto those controls. THREE TIMES!
I’ve had this piece of shit literally ruin dinner before. It’s amazing how it can be both really nice and really fucking useless at the same time.
Agreed, it's true for most devices. They're often finicky, don't offer anything in terms of feedback (Except maybe for a beep that is identical for all button presses) and they don't last.
I'm really on the fence when it comes to kitchens because a) you actually have time to look at what you're doing -- if you need to lower temperature suddenly the better option is to take your pan off the stove, anyway and b) touch controls are trivial to clean.
What I can't stand though is scales manufactures being so cheap as to not even have capacitive buttons but re-use the front left/right feet as sensors for the interface. On the upside the thing was dirt cheap and actually comes with an USB-C port to charge its LIR2450 cell.
Nah I just got new ovens and a hob and they are sleek and easy clean and work like a charm.
I like touch panels but don't mind physical buttons.
It's idiotic and not safe at all.
Not to mention completely useless in places where you need to wear gloves when driving.
I got a new car two years ago, and physical buttons were one of the determining factors.
How about others leading?
From march 20
Good. Touchscreens are the most unsafe feature added to vehicles in decades. It's honestly mind boggling how it was allowed in the first place.
Easy, because regulations don’t mean anything anymore.
Headlights that blind you in the day and literally block all vision of the road at night, road legal trucks which bumpers that START at the hood of my car, all around limo tints on literally every car, people disabling their rear lights for some idiotic reason…
And that doesn’t even begin to mention the drivers themselves, so fucking self absorbed, tailgating, cutting you off for fun to get to the same light.
I’ve literally had a stream of cars going around me on street roads and so many dumbasses just follow the stream that I literally cannot safety accelerate because they’re all cutting me off bumper to bumper.
You should start carrying a gun if not already. The conservatives have successfully rotted western society.
Had me until the politics, but I agree. These fucking headlights nowadays are incredibly dangerous, especially on these lifted garage queens.
The government has literally prevented cars that prevent you from blinding another car on the road from coming to the US market. Cars come in with active LED arrays and they have to be disabled to sell in the US.
https://www.newsweek.com/nhtsa-roadblocking-headlight-technology-that-could-save-lives-1811354
Headlights that blind you in the day and literally block all vision of the road at night,
Illegal in the EU, Xenon and later LEDs always needed automatic height adjustment (it doesn't suffice to do it once because cars change angles continuously). Lots has changed in the last 20+ years, though, speaking of VW: How about high beams all the time unless there's something that could be blinded, then switch them off locally but keep the rest bright.
road legal trucks which bumpers that START at the hood of my car,
all around limo tints on literally every car,
Illegal.
people disabling their rear lights for some idiotic reason…
Illegal.
And that doesn’t even begin to mention the drivers themselves, so fucking self absorbed, tailgating, cutting you off for fun to get to the same light.
See the thing is that if you build your infrastructure in a way that requires people to drive cars you can't just take licenses away from asshats.
Headlights that blind you in the day and literally block all vision of the road at night, road legal trucks which bumpers that START at the hood of my car, all around limo tints on literally every car, people disabling their rear lights for some idiotic reason…
pretty sure all of those are illegal around here, with exception of the giant compensators.
It sounds like you too, might live in a heavily populated metropolitan area of Nevada, USA. Lol
people disabling their rear lights for some idiotic reason…
That might be people with daytime running lights not turning on the lights. My car will turn on the headlights as soon as I take the parking break off (MT, an auto would likely do it when put in drive), but the dash and rear lights don't turn on unless I turn the dial.
They are a lot safer now that we have LKAS and ACC and FCW systems. But that’s moreso in spite of the touchscreens.
Replacing the buttons with a tablet has always been a cost saving measure on Tesla's part that was marketed as "futuristic", physical switches and dials made of plastic and metal as well as the underlying components will never be as cheap or as easy to wire as a simple touchscreen control. Other car companies followed suit, because Tesla made a method of reducing their own manufacturing costs hip, so many of them jumped on it.
But, Tesla tablets were designed with the belief that this cost saving is possible because of the delusion that full autonomous self driving is possible with existing hardware through software updates. When self driving didn't happen after a decade of trying, people realized how inconvenient and dangerous it is that the only way to adjust the AC, stereo volume, and sideview mirrors while driving is through a tablet with no tactile feedback. So now, we are finally seeing that trend reversing.
Especially when the buttons move around in the GUI after an update so you accidentally press the wrong ones, or end up having to search the menus while driving.
Perhaps this could change when we have mainstream tactile displays, but until then buttons will always be better.
I don't think autonomous driving had anything to do with the initial choice. It might be a reason now, but I don't think it was the initial driving factor.
You left off it being marketed as clean and minimalistic. I think that's different enough from futuristic. Some people love that aspect, some outright hate it. (Edit and I mean this in a looks fashion, not a functionality one)
Also, Tesla's button replacements actually do work more or less reliably. The other manufacturers decided to save money by adding a potato instead of a potent CPU that powers the screen in the middle of the console.
"Finally a use for all these leftover 1st gen Kindle Fire CPUs!"
In practice though Tesla has buttons for the controls you need while driving.
Cruise control/lane keeping/cancel is a lever
Indicators, flash high beams is a lever
Park is a button
Windscreen wiper single wipe is a button, same button is window wash
Set speed is a scroll wheel, volume is a scroll wheel (and a touch control on the passenger side)
Navigation is on screen keyboard, but you should stop to change navigation, or have a passenger do it
Climate control heats or cools towards your target temperature, heated seats and steering wheel are automatic or touch screen, but you know you need them before you get in the car
What more would you want physical controls for?
I had huge reservations towards Tesla's control system, but in reality, I got used to it in a week. And I'm loving how clean and sleek the dashboard is otherwise. What I don't understand is the car makers who include a huge tablet AND a dozen gadgets around the dashboard. That's worst of both worlds.
The fact that they needed to receive a lot of complaints to reconsider makes me wonder - do they even do any kind of usability testing for their products? Anyone who even sat in a car with only touchscreen can tell you the experience is not comfortable.
And I don't think it's just about the price of physical buttons. Buttons are a selling point right now, they could charge a small premium (not in the thousands but ~$200 certainly.
It’s probably a cost issue. Running one wire harness to a touch screen is a lot cheaper than running a wire to every button in a car.
It's also a "We can charge $900 for this $80 touchscreen when it fails in 5 years because your car is a brick without it" issue.
I hate the fact that you’re probably right about that reason.
Besides cost, we should probably at least entertain the idea that we are a vocal minority. I'd be completely unsurprised to find out that the majority of people hardly ever touch the controls that got moved to touchscreens and, if they do, they don't really care - they can set them before they set off, or do it while driving and wobble all over the road, but hey everyone does it so what does it matter?
Oh they KNEW what they were doing and just didn't give a fuck.
We need a People of Walmart equivalent for this bullshit. Start finding the designer/engineer/manager responsible for this garbage and shame them publicly.
How does this stuff pass any kind of Accessibility regs?
Now take away subscriptions.
I'm looking at you, everyone.
SAAS is the greatest scam of the 21st century.
I say there are some fair applications of SaaS. If you use a product that requires servers to be running, paying a recurring cost for however long you need the software is fair.
That being said, mandatory SaaS on a physical product with upfront cost is decidedly shitty. Especially when it’s a 50k car.
SaaS is great for business-to-business products. Sucks ass for everything else.
Companies love subscriptions, customers hate subscriptions. Subscriptions it is.
I'd love to get a fitness band, but fuck all the subscriptions to access all their features.
It's impossible, just like it's impossible to tell game companies to stop doing microtransaction.
Can we complain more about subscription paywalled car functions then?
What?!? Pictures Under Glass turns out not to be the most desired solution for controling your car? Who could have guessed? /s
They're fine for certain things on an evolving menu etc, but not anything where a tactile sense might be needed to avoid distraction. A lack of volume knob is the thing that pisses me off the most in many vehicles, including my own.
Also, power should be a physical cutoff and NOT a soft button for head units. The one of my car is a software toggle and when the system started glitching, froze and also put out high volume noise with no way to kill it except to shut off the vehicle when I could safely do so
Yep a good rule of thumb is probably "If you aren't comfortable with having it disabled when the car is moving, don't make it a picture under glass". Managing playlists is a thing you can expect people to do when stationary, touchscreen is fine, skipping a song is done while driving, make it a button.
My '16 Prius has a pretty good balance between touchscreen and buttons. The only thing I don't care for is having to use the touchscreen to change radio presets, but I usually stay on the same station anyway.
This was a wonderful read, thanks
Thank god. This is literally the worst thing about my car (apart from the lane assist trying to kill me).
I found that a homicidal lane assist, have a really good effect on my alertness. Before lane assist I could relax and almost doze of, but with lane assist I don't dare to relax for a second since I know it will try to murder me the first chance it gets. So, I guess that is why people say lane assist prevents accidents.
Wait, you don't mean dozing off while driving, right?
Lane assist on the golf tried to murderise me recently even though I was driving on a road without lane markings
Lane assist on the golf tried to murderise me recently even though I was driving on a road without lane markings but I keep it on because it stops me from killing myself on this one bridge I have to drive over
My car lets you turn off lane assist, it's the collision avoidance that I can't turn off that is trying to kill me. Randomly I'll be driving along when an alarm sounds and it tries to swerve off the road. It's fucking infuriating and dangerous and despite many of us complaining to the manufacturer you can't turn it off.
The capacitive touch buttons under the screen on my ID4 don't light up, so they're literally invisible at night and completely useless.
Do you have more unlit buttons than the volume and climate strip that I have in the Multivan? I believe we share that same strip and it's ironic that the power button on there is actually lit! However as it only does two things and there's feedback on the screen when you touch it, I haven't had any of the issues people have complained about. Plus those functions can be accessed elsewhere.
I don’t want a touchscreen in my fucking car. That is all.
I don’t mind a touchscreen. Apple CarPlay/Android Auto are really nice.
I just also want physical controls for everything the car needs to do to be a car, like climate control or wipers or shifting. And also physical controls for play/pause, skip, volume, and tuning.
Touchscreens can do a lot to enhance the car experience, but they cannot replace physical buttons.
If it's the kind of thing that it's not reasonable to expect that people will stop by the side of the road to do, it should be buttons. The rest can be touch.
So for example setting a destination on your navigation interface is fine to do via touch screen, but starting/stopping swipers or changing audio volume is not.
I'd go as far as mounting a full size qwerty keyboard on the steering wheel. Although we'd somehow have to deal with the shrapnel grenade situation as soon as the airbag hits it.
But if I'm gonna go out, having WASD forever embedded in my forehead is kinda metal.
Seems the novelty VW engineers had to be reminded of the first item in the Unix philosophy:
Make each program do one thing, and do it well.
Buttons already had this. Each single button did one and only one thing: Turn a feature on or off, or in the case of the radio, switch stations.
We didn't need complicated menus to navigate. Press the appropriate button, and voilá. It was simple. It worked.
Who the fuck came up with the idea of having to use touch menus? I have no idea, but I really hope they got fired.
the more important thing here is that you can find and press a button without looking at it
I get what you're saying, up to a point. But you really don't want the dashboard to look like the average TV remote either.
would take TV remote over touch display any day, those things are horrible in so many ways, lack of tactile feedback and having to confirm it registered the input is literally a lethal hazard because it's another reason people aren't looking on the road while driving
Have you ever seen an airplane cockpit? Those things are crowded and confusing. A car, on the other hand, is simple enough that the average person gets used to all of the button, knobs, switches and dials in a few days.
Why? It's not an art peice hanging above your desk. You're putting from over function.
I mean, I get a bit jealous when I see the cockpit of an F1 car. So many knobs, buttons, and switches and they don't even have climate control or entertainment systems.
That level isn't necessary with daily drivers, but I'd rather have physical buttons for any action I'll want to do while moving and zero latency for any action that physically positions something like my seat or mirrors.
I like how you can get a ticket for using your phone while driving, so automakers decided to replace your tactile radio, where you don't need to look at it to operate, with what is basically a giant touchscreen phone in your car where you need to look at it to see what you're doing instead of feeling what you're doing.
I test drove one, and the touch buttons were ass, but nobody mentions the lag. There's ZERO feedback, do you press the button again and watch the screen show you turn the thing on and then back off.
I would NEVER buy a car with touch controls based on this experience. It was horrible.
I wonder if that's a lingering effect from the auto chip shortage from 2020 (limited choice lead to using processors less powerful than they'd like), or just the general shitty quality common when companies try to add features outside of what they are familiar with? Maybe combined with hiring shitty developers that want to run a full browser stack when they need to be doing embedded real-time programming instead?
I swore I would never buy a car with a touchscreen, but I ended up with a Toyota with no noticable touch lag and physical controls for everything important. The steering wheel buttons also replicate all phone- and radio-related functions that are on the touchscreen.
The wife's Honda (a few years older) has too many physical controls. For example, I'm fairly certain you could turn on heat for the driver and rear passenger-side, and air conditioning for the passenger and rear driver-side, if you really wanted to.
Oh yeah, honestly, I don't mind the controls on a touchscreen as you get immediate feedback on most, if not all cars, but for some reason on that GTI, the touch buttons on the dashboard and wheel didn't work for me at all.
This is actually very good news for car manufacturers.
Touch crap was cheaper but sold a new tech so => price increase
Buttons are old tech so no new investments or tech development but they are more complicated => price increase
Thank you! I've been making this argument a LOT with recent discussions on kids not understanding keyboards and controllers because their lives are full of touchscreens.
Touch isn't "the future". It just absolutely flooded the market.
You think they don't just charge more because they can, like every other industry lately?
They 100% do! But the marketing departments always likes to have "solid" arguments at hand.
How else can they organise fairs and conferences where they can lament about how poor the automakers are and how pressure from are pulling prices down so automakers cannot compete.... how they have to fire people and move production in poorer countries where people can be treated more like slaves... how profits are so low that they have to use the same jets with the same removed twice!
You want buttons back because they're easier to use
I want them back because I think car interiors look bland without them
We are not the same...alright I also want them back for the first reason aswell.
Safer to use.
Carmakers did this to copy Tesla, not realising that Tesla did it to save themselves a few bucks and to hell with the person who suffer a degraded or unsafe driving experience as a result. Witness how Tesla even removed indicator stalks, making it all but impossible for people to safely and legally navigate a roundabout. Who cares if someone crashes, because it's all about the bottom line.
not realising that Tesla did it to save themselves a few bucks
I guarantee you they realized that and likely did it for the same reason.
I'm reading this as "VW is putting buttons back in cars because they reckon the EU is going to slap them for making dangerous cars"
That would be funny, but it's more likely because they are about to go under if they don't change something up. Doing one of the most requested this seems like a good start in that direction.
Where with "going under" you presumably mean "doesn't overtake Toyota and stays the 2nd biggest car company world-wide". That's by number of cars, by revenue VW is in first place.
I'd say it's more a case of "yeah we should've guessed that how Tesla does things is just hype".
I'm hoping by the time I need a new car, this insanity will have passed, allowing me to skip it. It's like everyone skipped Windows Vista.
By that time they will start selling monthly subscriptions to use the buttons or they will revert to a regular touchscreen
Finally.
Finally people are starting to see that touch screens or any other touch surfaces don't belong into cars.
As I’ve said elsewhere, touchscreens are fine in cars for functionality that isn’t something cars already had.
I don’t need a dedicated button for the Now Playing screen on my podcast app. Or for Points of Interest in my Maps app. But I would still like to use those things in my car the way I have become accustomed to.
But I do want physical buttons for everything I’ve always had physical buttons for.
My current car (a 2022 Ford Escape PHEV) has actual buttons and dials for climate control, media controls, etc. Everything you want to be able to do without looking. But it also has a nice touchscreen to support Apple Car Play/Android Auto.
This is the proper balance, I think. Let the car continue to function as a car without the touchscreen, but the touchscreen should be available for the luxury elements a car can provide.
Real buttons in a car are good because you don't have to fucking look at them to know what you're doing, unlike a god damn touch screen, so your eyes can remain on the road.
Sanity prevails at last!
Thank god.
Touchscreens in a car never made any sense.
i like buttons
I might be the one of the weirdos that want buttons back on phones as well lol. 💀 I loved keyboards.
Keyboards were so nice when you wanted to accurately input characters without putting your faith in auto-correct. God help you if you need to input something not in its dictionary like someone's name.
My biggest annoyance with Gboard is that my muscle memory is so tuned with it and it has GIF search built in...but it keeps wanting to correct random words to whichever is closer: celebrity name or a brand name or something. -_-
Here you go: https://www.unihertz.com/
EDIT: Typo
Wait, an actually unique smartphone manufacturer and they're not impossibly expensive and aren't locked in to Europe?
How did this happen without me noticing? Cool!! Nice share! Now I want them to put daily drivable Linux on it and I'm insta-sold!
(So far I merely put up with the duopoly of mobile OSs. I don't enjoy them lol)
I was also a Blackberry baby. But I can type faster now with Swype + autocorrect compared to buttons. I do, however, want my camera shutter button back.
Judging from reviews, people are avoiding VW now because of really shitty infotainment systems...
Oh look they sre following in Hyundais footsteps
I've always wondered how these things happen. Clearly a massive car manufacturer should have some kind of a feedback group about what will potentially go into new vehicles, right? I can't imagine anyone enjoying getting distracted from the road, to navigate between piano black plastic, and laggy nested touchscreen buttons
Car manufacturers are the epitome of slow ass waterfall product development. They commit to a dashboard / infotainment solution that will last for 4-5 years. VW basically started following Tesla in 2019-2020, and realized it sucked, and they’re now going back. Changing course in 3-4 years is actually pretty “quick” for a vehicle manufacturer.
And what’s funny is that a lot of the agile methodology in software development comes from Toyotas factories
The first focus group to try out a touch screen in a car was like "ooh, novel!", then they didn't have a second focus group ever after. The end.
Touchscreens in Cars, a short story.
Tom Paris was right.
A great reminder that your voice does matter. Apply it other things as well, and things can actually improve...
A big part of why I chose my Mazda is so I didn't have touchscreen everything.
Imagine paying the same price for a car that lacks the technology of:
I mean id still buy it because I prefer cars that are not so impractical, but it's a shame that it still costs practically the same.
Conceptually, a smart screen sounds like a good idea, but the implementation is bad.
And I'll continue complaining about stuff, nothing will stop me, not even getting what I want!
The squeaky wheel gets the greese!
as my dad would say, “you’d complain if you’s hung with a new rope”
Reason why I love my Subaru is that it still has buttons for almost everything, yet still has Android Auto.
This is why I chose Mazda. No touch screen at all, just a display for Android auto.
my 1st gen yaris has a space for a 1din radio, but there's a 3rd party frame that lets you get rid of the casette player (you read that right) and allows for a 2din radio.
buy one of those pioneer radios, throw some blaupunkt widebands in there, and i have a top of the line entertainment system.
i want to drive that car forever...
Not the new ones. They're all touch screen and it's soooo slow to start up and do anything, including HVAC and heated seats. My friend's new Outback has it and it's not good.
I have a '22 Crosstrek and most options are buttons with a large screen I use with Android Auto. I would hate HVAC and heated seats integrates into the screen because I love mine being buttons, switches, and dials. Plus, I can control most of the screen features from my steering wheel.
I wonder if people who took the decision to put the touchscreens even drive.
and to add insult to injury, I couldn't turn the heater on countless times because the climate portion of the OS was unresponsive. Other times, it would simply say that the function couldn't be performed at the time. Why? No idea.
This is the main problem, not something about the UI being wonky. That my AC can freeze not because of the radiator but because of a shitty UI system? That's insane.
The telematics on EV VWs was designed by someone who lost a bet.
Main reason I canceled my ID4 reservation
Thank god. End this shitty touchscreen fad. I have problems reading things too close, so the buttons/knobs in my 10+ year old car are a lifesaver.
I'd rather have a "non-touch" screen with buttons in a car. Just to show info. And be it right in front of me.
Wait, they care about what we want? That doesn't sound right.
VW really actually does care a lot. It's just early market data on EVs (because Tesla cheaped out) pointed to people liking the screens. Now that ordinary people are going EV there is a lot more feedback available on this being a bad idea.
Cool I like buttons
Edit: Why is this post yellow?
yellow? give us a screenshot of what you see.
Don't eat it.
*because they sell really bad, even in germany
there should never be a fucking touch screen menu in a car for any reason
Maps? Android Auto / CarPlay? Gotta have the screen anyway for the mandatory backup camera.
We can have both! Physical buttons for everything that doesn't actually benefit from having a display, (like music or heat/ac), touch screen for the rest.
Just like my 2019 Hyundai Ioniq. Buttons for the car stuff and a touchscreen for media, calls, navigation, backup camera, etc. If the touchscreen were to shit the bed I'd still have a fully functional car minus the backup camera.
Infiniti not updating their interior since 2014 is starting to feel like a good thing as other brands abandon buttons.
Nice to know VW is returning to sanity
Everyone else is going to start putting analog clocks in the dash again.
God I fucking need that. One of my cars didn't use a big enough variable to hold the GPS time adjustment. So it's off by an hour randomly about 9 months out of the year. My other car is just old enough that they don't have an update for the radio to fix the time since the last time they moved daylight savings around.
God I miss the analog clock in my Q. The G feels so much fancier
VW has made a lot of bad decisions
Now if they'd just sell the baseline Golf or wagen Golf in Canada, I'd consider buying another VW!
I wonder if they can also make a vehicle not near the bottom of the reliability rankings next?
Lol, careful, you'll waken the VW mob. They don't like to hear what garbage VWs are.
Can't give me one.
It appears there has been a few that caught this. I was surprised they were so far down the Consumer's Report list for reliability as it was but honestly I don't really think of the brand that much as it's something my parents owned when I was a little kid then they moved onto Toyota and domestics.
It's not to say others are better. I've was surprised by Ford's decent down the list but not by Jeep's continued place down there and I've owned many Jeeps.
Good news
Progression is regression in this issue, thanks people!
When I bought my Tiguan the dealer was pushing really hard for me to get a 2022 which has just come in. It was the first year to have capacitive steering wheel buttons. I told them to find a 2021 or I'm looking at something else. I think the car market was still a little slow at that time so they made it happen to get a sale.
Now only if I could complain enough that my recall on my Atlas gets the passanger air bag fixed. Got told in April that nobody can ride in the passenger seat because the air bag might not deploy. Still no ETA on when a fix will be available. What a BS company.
I gotna letter from Toyota that says I will get another letter later because the car might be dangerous for my health and safety without saying what it is and now I have to drive my car not knowing what could happen.
It's been more than a month and I still don't have any other letter with information and/or resolution.
Thanks Toyota, I already am a very anxious person and now I have to rrive everyday with the knowledge my car has something dangerous to it but don't know what.