Volkswagen is planning to return to physical buttons in its future cars instead of tactile sliders and switches on touchscreens to control vital functions such as climate control. Andreas Mindt, the automaker’s head of design, told Autocar that the company will “never, ever make that mistake again” and promises to combine physical controls for volume, heating, fan speed, and alarm activation under a touchscreen for all cars, starting with the ID 2all model, which will be released next year.
Mindt also says that the decision to bring back physical buttons was based on customer feedback. “To be honest, it’s a car. It’s not a phone, it’s a car,” says Mindt. “We realized that.”
Volkswagen isn’t the only automaker to have an epiphany recently about the benefits of physical over digital. Last year, Hyundai said that focus groups “felt stressed, irritated, and angry” when they could not control something in critical situations. Hyundai and Kia have relied on touchscreens in their electric vehicles, such as the Hyundai Ioniq 6 and Kia EV6. Meanwhile, in China, Xiaomi offers accessories to customers so they can add their own physical controls.
The trend toward digital interfaces was started more than a decade ago by the Tesla Model S with its impressively large center touchscreen. Gradually, the company removed other physical controls, such as transmission levers and turn signals. The latter was revived in the new Model Y and may return to the Model 3.
Volkswagen’s changes come at an interesting time, as next year the EU’s New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) is set to introduce new rules requiring cars to have certain physical controls to achieve a full five-star safety rating.
And this goes against the grain of some car company executives, including Rivian’s head of software, Vassi Bensaid, who called buttons in cars an “anomaly” and predicted that everything would soon be controlled digitally by voice.
