The move is part of move away from touchscreen controls, which drivers complained were tedious and dangerous to use while driving.

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.

  • bus_factor@lemmy.worldEnglish
    271·
    3 days ago

    It’s way cheaper and easier to not have to source the buttons. The bean counters saw Tesla get away with doing it on the touchscreen, so they figured they’d get away with it, too.

    • x00z@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      I think you just move a lot of cost and resources towards software instead of actually making it cheaper.

      • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish
        6·
        3 days ago

        Tesla has the highest crash rate of any manufacturer. In particular, rear ending other cars. It’s the stupid touchscreen.

        • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          3 days ago

          Maybe. Not disagreeing but I’ve never seen data to support that, have you? Some people blame it on self-driving, some blame it on the higher performance, and yes the touch screen is plausible. But we need to know. That accident rate is too high to be guessing.

          Unfortunately my experience supports all of the above

          • self driving is continually improving. I trust it much more than previous iterations but I don’t trust it. In my latest test the only dangerous thing it did in two hours was to stop at a yellow light. Technically correct but the idiot behind me expected to drive through. I also took over four times when I wasn’t sure it was going to do the right thing
          • in my first drives I had to see its acceleration - was surprised by it enough to experience fear
          • there are shortcuts to the common screen controls but it’s not always easy to discover them. Voice control works well for me so far
      • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
        5·
        3 days ago

        If VW made a car that randomly exploded every time it went over 40 miles an hour they would still sell it if in some way that saved the money.

    • Cricket@lemmy.zip@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      Imitating the trending brand or model, including their terrible design decisions. It drives me nearly insane that so many companies do this. Look at how many companies have been copying Apple’s horrible hardware design decisions over the last few decades. SMDH