Learning from Scout, which is also under the VW umbrella:
would be nice seeing them doing it instead of talking about it
I mean, that’s step 1? It’s not like they can do an instantaneous cutover, they’ll need to figure out what’s vital enough to deserve buttons, come up with a design/layout for that, find a supplier for them, get them in, start assembling the cars with them… Honestly they’ve probably already done a lot of that behind the scenes already before saying anything publicly. Point is, it’s not like there’s a button in the factory to start making cars with buttons instead.
Too bad, i liked the way it was going… in my experience 80% of the buttons are unnecessary, provided of course that the automation is well thought out .
That 20% though…you want that to be physical.
Aw, just when they were about to get rid of the steering wheel, shame.
That’s very positive.
It’s been a long time since I looked but I hope most cars still have physical buttons/controls for all important functions! Besides being easier and faster to use, without them if a touchscreen malfunctions (hardware or software) everything is gone and you wouldn’t be able to drive the car. Then there’s the tracking and spying, and sometimes bugs and UI changes after updates–and now ads!?# Cars are becoming as enshittified like everything else now.
Are we gonna have to physically roll down our windows again?
Good
This may in part be motivated by new guidance from NCAP, which will from next year require that all new cars have physical controls to earn the highest safety ratings.
Whatever the motivation though, I’m glad for it. Getting rid of buttons was always a dumb idea and I’m happy to see pushback.
I guess they forgot to add air conditioning and volume to the list of vital controls…
Hyundai (motor group) and some time later VW group announced that they are bringing physical buttons back.
March of 2023
As it turns out though, sometimes the old ways are best. Hyundai certainly thinks so, as it has pledged to employ real physical buttons in products to come.
December of 2023
https://insideevs.com/news/701296/vw-physical-controls-to-return/
Fair :)
It wasn’t dumb from corporate perspective, which is why they all gobbled it up like junky hoovering on piles of white dust.
You know how expensive it is to mold unique dedicated physical buttons for every function and then wire them all over the place? Or just slap single touch display and cram all the shit into that single display. You code it once and use it on all models. Corporates were already counting the money saved there. Until it backfired because everyone hated it, reviewers criticized it and now it’s finally also criticized by safety agencies.
Cars cost way too much for me to care about this excuse.
Yeah, but what about the value that saving money created for the shareholders?
Not my problem.
Cars cost way too much for me to care about this excuse.
Not their problem
You can even have that single display collect so much car user data and sell that too
Physical controls don’t change this.
Without actually knowing how much constructing the physical buttons cost, I would guess that the real savings are in process optimization - if all you have for the interface is a screen, then you don’t need to have the interface design done before constructing the car - you can parallelize these tasks.
Insufficient as far as justifications go, but understandably lucrative.
sure, but they could have programmed a stick with haptic feedback to help navigate the screen so you can navigate radio, gps, contacts or whatever else while driving. Slower than touching or the old buttons but as safe as old buttons.
This is probably not a universal experience, but buttons are often faster. Not a car example, but my Garmin Venu watch was a touchscreen and it sucked compared to my Garmin Fenix which is 100% button controlled. I also type way faster on a tactile thumb board than an on screen keyboard.
You know how expensive it is to mold unique dedicated physical buttons for every function and then wire them all over the place?
Not expensive. You don’t have to “wire them all over the place”, you just put them on a PCB and connect them to the nearest CAN bus, or similar.
They’d basically already be doing that for the touch screen, and may well be using similar controls under the hood, where the physical buttons send a command to the computer to do a thing, in lieu of a mechanical connection.
One more connector, one more cable in harness, more coding, more cad time, more manufacturing time and more testing.
If it comes out to 20 dollars per car and you multiply it by 50000 a year for a relatively popular model there is a nice bonus for the ceo. Oh, and the price to consumer increases at the same time.
More coding?! Are you serious? Over a touch screen!
Also, extremely easy to test.
If it comes out to 20 dollars per car and you multiply it by 50000 a year for a relatively popular model there is a nice bonus for the ceo.
Or you could just raise the price of the car by $20 since you’ve just added thousands in value?
I mean shit, let’s take the seats out of the car! Bam! Just saved you billions, right? /s
As well as the pure cost saving there was also the notion that it was a futuristic look that would sell, and so boost profits that way, too.
And probably it did sell and market well - for a while.
I feel that consumers had become too trusting of carmakers - after all, cars have been getting better and better in terms of their usability for decades, so when carmakers went touchscreen everything, the first instinct of the average consumer would be to trust it and assume it represented an improvement.“They wouldn’t do it if it was worse, right?”
And so people buy the fancy futuristic car with no buttons, and only after driving it for a month does it sink in how much they truly hate it, and that they got sold a lie.
So there was always going to be that one generation of touchscreen-everything, before the people who got burnt by it are now the ones thinking “I won’t buy anything again that doesn’t have some buttons!”
Now get rid of the touch screen entirely. Mark my words, the first electric car unveiled as a totally analog experience will be incredibly popular.
Hopefully they can hit some middleground so we don’t end up back in the crazy button-hell that cars used to be. Having a billion buttons is equally as bad as having none.
I’ve never had this problem because I’m too poor to afford a car new enough to not have any buttons lmao
Same, I’m hoping “ol’ reliable” will last another 200k-500k miles so I won’t have to decide if I want to ride around in a privacy invading, poorly designed smart automobile, or if I’d rather just ride my bike everywhere. To be fair, my car is only around a decade old, but it’s old enough to be missing most of the smart tech, and none of the car’s functions tie in with the stereo.
Definitely set aside a repair fund and watch YouTube videos on how to do maintenance and common repairs on your vehicle. If its Japanese, the motor and transmission should hold on. But you’ll need brake rotors/pads, tie rods ends, struts, stabilizer links, etc. along the way. Its way cheaper if you buy your own parts and do it yourself. Good luck keeping your ol’ reliable going!
That’s me as well. We have two cars, and both are old enough to drive. We need to replace them, but I’m holding out as long as I can.
I swear I‘ve read this headline like 4 times in the last month in this very community.
Thank you! Now bring back physical keys too!
The very definition of the solution looking for a problem that one.
Oh look I don’t have to put the keys in the ignition that saved me a whole tenth of a second. Of course now it’s possible to lose my keys in my own car.
hoping the whole industry follows after, please subaru go back to the climate control buttons
revolutionary
Unbelievable levels of ingenuity.