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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Describing volume dials as “retro” is setting a very low bar for what can be considered retro. Also, it should have been super obvious to car makers from the start that using a touchscreen for almost everything was a really bad idea! As others have pointed out, you need to be able to control the car without having to take your eyes off the road for more than a couple of seconds.
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.
Peak control design
Who knew that would happen eventually after sensor screens failed time and time again at worst possible moments?
I wish they sold this model in the USA. We need a good selection of compact models
Please bring this to North America. Please god.
Nope. Trucktards won the war.
Now get rid of point-source quasar LED headlights. OK, we get it, science now allows us to get every electron in every atom to emit bazillions of photons every picosecond. That’s nice. Like AI, we don’t need it and no one asked for it.
I agree with all of this except the end.
People absolutely asked for AI. I hate it, but it’s false claiming it wasn’t desired. Tons of people in STEM fields dreamt about it for years.
The people wanted actual reasoning AI, not generative AI. They didn’t expect us to devote most of our nominal economic activity toward a few big tech companies to get it. They didn’t expect them to assert that text generators are ‘reasoning’ and when called on it declare that it’s not reasoning as humanity has known it, but here’s some buzzwords to justify us claiming it’s a whole new sort of reasoning that’s just as valuable.
Even though it’s not intelligent at all, chatGPT seemed groundbreaking when it arrived. Big promises were made and implausible amounts invested, and it doesn’t really seem to have gone anywhere since. It’s the same thing, just a bit better.
And I’d be more ok with LLM technology in general if not for:
- The rampant copyright infringement
- The overcommitment of financial and actual resources
In and of itself, ok a neat little trick with some utility so long as it isn’t taken too seriously.
Well… We still don’t have AI. We got language and picture generators…
Wrong. See the Nobel Prize to Google Deepmind team.
Prediction and pattern recognition is not general AI. This is just what LLMs and image generators do. They find plausible continuations starting from a noise to better fit the disired outcome. They don’t have real contextual knowledge about a domain. To them everything is just numbers that can be manipulated until they fit better. They don’t just instantly know the correct or incorrect answer because of a deeper understanding on the matter.
And I never said we did, so what’s your point?
Tons of people in STEM fields dreamt about it for years.
Not a native English speaker but “dreamt” is past tense, so they stopped dreaming, implying they stopped because now we have “AI”.
If they used to dream something that they are still dreaming about, it is still “dreamt” in past-tense.
If I still “play” baseball every day, and I referring to a game, I say “I played baseball,” because it is in the past. You would not say “I play baseball game last week” even if you are still currently playing baseball.
Make sense? I mean this politely too, you mentioned English not being your first language.
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I’m in STEM and have published a few AI based papers. I don’t want this in my house, car, or healthcare.
That’s great, and I am also in STEM and agree with you. But we’re only two people.
Yeah and I’ll counter-vote one of you.
I’m familiar with the use and the limitations of LLMs so I’m familiar with use cases where it adds value and where it should not be allowed
Realistically the biggest issue for consumers is privacy: most of the generally available LLMs hoover unprecedented quantities of personal data. But they don’t have to. There are choices that respect your data
There’s an underlying dystopian theme here that goes beyond LLMs and voice assistants where the technology for collecting personal data keeps getting more intrusive far beyond the nightmares of the general public. They have no idea how much they are losing and the harm it can do
I agree 100%, but the fact still stands that plenty of people absolutely want it, even if they don’t understand and are wrong about what it is.
the fact that blinding headlights are rated as “safer” is a prime example of how fucked up vehicle regulations and evaluations are
it also creates the opportunity to see just how much of a jackass the average person is - if you flash your brights at them because you can’t fucking see, they’ll turn their high beams on back at you. and you can see posts all over the internet where people love flashing people back, like there just isn’t any defense for that behavior. and the funny thing is that it often doesn’t even make a difference, because the high beams are no brighter than the low beams, they’re just aimed higher - so if the low beams are already hitting you in the face, turning the high beams on isn’t going to hit you more in the face
I asked for it. Brighter lights are safer. Seems to be a US problem, apparently most states either don’t have technical inspections or they don’t test the headlights. Adjust them correctly and it won’t be a problem. But “Muh freedumbs”…
It’s a problem in the Netherlands as well. Many cars have lights that are too damn bright.
We need to go even farther, not go back.
Brighter headlights are better for safety to allow drivers to see more …… but clearly humans can’t be trusted with them. Active matrix headlights are the best answer.
I find it fascinating to drive with high beams on, but watch a dark spot in my headlights follow oncoming cars so I don’t blind them. Everyone should have them
The car I drive now is the newest car I’ve ever owned. It’s a 2006 Suzuki Grand Vitara, V6 AWD. I like everything about it. I’ll keep it running as long as I can.
This is what a car should look like inside. Everything in reach, physical knobs I can set without looking, no distractions. Peak design:
No internet account required, of course, which also means they can’t nerf my car from the other side of the planet, or charge me for 50 more HP, or heated seats. The most sophisticated display is the red LEDs that tell time, outside temp, and real time MPG. Also, I like having a car I actually own, Suzuki doesn’t want anything to do with me, and I don’t want anything to do with them. It was a one-time transaction, like a hooker and a john. We’re not in a fucking life-long relationship.
Cars should not be this inside. While I agree it’s cool and futuristic, it is not practical. Form should follow function, everything about this is the opposite:
Wow that’s a very cool looking cabin on the Suzuki!
We had an Opel Vectra from the same year, with leather cabin and manual 6 shift gear. We really liked that car, and would have kept it longer. But safety regulation required some pretty expensive repairs to keep it legal, and the yearly tax on petrol cars that don’t have high mileage is becoming pretty significant here in Denmark.But our VW ID.4 is a far cry from as bad as the EV you are showing.
Everything required for everyday driving has buttons and levers like traditional cars.
VW is already doing it pretty well IMO, improving further on it to include for instance air condition is nice, but no biggie IMO.
But again your Suzuki look REALLY nice. 😎
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
Tangentially relevant. Anyone seen the new Microbus? It’s appalling. They gave it angry headlights like every other stupid generic car on the market. A hideous grille. And it’s got a giant flatscreen tv for all the interior controls. All in a 60s throwback vehicle specifically chosen for its nostalgic character. How do these people get promoted into decision making roles???
is this the new one? It has the angry headlights lmao
How do these people get promoted into decision making roles???
Never forget the VW emissions scandal. These cats are all about the bottom line; re-packaging nostalgia in only the most marketable way is exactly how and why.
I saw it in person at the weekend, and tbf it did look kinda cool, but I am not a car guy
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
Time for some cassette futurism design!
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.
My pencil is ready
EDIT: This is not a euphemism
My PEN IS working.
8-track would be interesting. ;)
If they’re undoing changes that customers hate, maybe they’ll get rid of automatic stop-start too?
How does this automatic start stop work that you don’t like? And what brand of car is your experience with?
I have a VW ID.4 and I have no idea what you mean? If I use adaptive cruise control it will stop if the traffic stops, and it will start again automatically when traffic moves again. Working exactly as it is supposed to.
However if I don’t want that, I can touch the break at any time, which obviously disables cruise control, and release the break to roll slowly forwards like a traditional automatic in drive gear position.
Or if I hold the break for a short while, it will engage auto hold, and only go forwards again if I use the speeder.
Auto hold can be disabled if I don’t want it. But I like the feature, as I’m used to drive a manual.Everything works perfectly and intuitively, I’ve only had the car for a month, and it’s so nice to operate compared to an older car.
If I don’t want the adaptive cruise control, that too can be disabled, and it will work like a traditional dumb cruise control.
Edit: The post I responded to is apparently about start stop of the engine, which was in no clear, especially since automatic start stop of the car is a common feature of modern cars, just saying start stop in no way indicate the engine more than the air condition.
I’m used to driving a car from 2008, but I borrowed a friend’s 2021 Subaru Forester and there the engine just shuts off after the car is stopped for a few seconds, even without any sort of cruise control. The engine turns back on when I let go of the brake, but I find the noise, the vibration, and the delay of the startups irritating. There’s no way to get the feature to stay off - it defaults to on every time the car starts and it will eventually turn back on while you’re driving even after you’ve pressed the button to turn it off temporarily. I find that especially irritating. (IMO it’s simply not OK for a car to do something after I’ve pressed the button telling it not to do that.)
Well IDK if VW is better in that regard, what I do know is that it’s to save fuel, and ICE cars are on their way out anyway. So it’s kind of a moot point to talk about improving on them now IMO.
No, this is a feature that cuts the engine off when you’re at a stop. Then the engine re-starts when you try to accelerate again. Or if the AC needs to kick on. Or if the car needs literally anything. It’s jarring, and it’s little more than a gimmick that manufacturers used to improve gas mileage in testing.
And you know, reduce unnecessary emissions
OK that’s very different from start/stopping the car, which is an actual function of modern cars. He should have specified he was talking about the engine.
That’s not the feature they’re talking about.
Which I suspected, so I started out asking what the “feature” actually is!
Turns out it is NOT automatic start stop of the car, but of the engine. Very poorly formulated post IMO.
That was a federal regulation that Trump undid. Won’t get rid of it on your car, but it will for future cars.
Really? I wonder what model year will have cars available without it. I was thinking of buying a new car but I can wait.
Complaining about making less pollution. And demand improvements on ICE cars that are going obsolete.
Wake up FFS! This is not the 90’s.
