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.
This is horrible. People i think tend to equate the poor user interface that a lot of traditional car makers have, with the general idea of a touchscreen. I have 4 buttons on each side of the steering wheel and everything else is touchscreen (or voice command), my air-conditioning controls have a shortcut interface on the screen. I almost have a panic attack getting into a car with all physical controls, at worst in my car I’m searching through the one screen, not hunting through a field of obscure symbols with no standardisation on where anything is, and all those little lights.
If you’re having to spend so much of your trip accessing all those physical controls in a modern car, whilst driving, then your car is poorly designed.