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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
Cars cost way too much for me to care about this excuse.
You can even have that single display collect so much car user data and sell that too
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.
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 :)
Not sure how they were able to remove so many buttons in the first place and not be marked down on safety. Suddenly trying to find a demister on a touchscreen menu while in motion was never a great idea. Surprisingly, Volvo off all companies have been one of the worst for this. That’s why I like Dacias, little tech = little to go wrong.
I mean it was a great idea of you wanted to reduce costs while also increasing the price of the vehicle.
And it looks nice.
And Volvo went from this:
To this:
Which is quite the change…
OTOH now we will get to enjoy dashcam videos of car rollovers where the driver is like, Where’s that playlist… OH GOD OH SHIT !!!
Now, take out the bullshit that’s tracking you and sending the information back to them to sell, and we’ll be doing something great
That’s why I love brands like Hyundai. Never got rid of the knobs.
Honda as well.
Subaru went all in on the touch screen and it suuuuucked.
Yep. And mazda has physical climate button/knobs, with a physical dial to control the infotainment (it’s pretty convenient, if a bit of an older design on most of their vehicles).
I consider it space-age. I haven’t driven a non-Mazda that seemed as well thought out and functional. I wish I could rip one out and put it on my non-Mazda car. I breath a sigh of relief that my partner didn’t buy the Honda with a long finicky touchstrip to control the volume instead of a knob.
Which Honda had the touchstrip instead of a knob?
I don’t doubt one might exist, just haven’t run into one yet.
Its been a few years, but I think it was a Honda Fit.
Mazda is a physical dial by default, but if you want to you can go into the settings and enable the touch screen. Best of both worlds.
Thats the reason they dont have me roped into payments right now
My uncle’s outback looks like a video slot machine, and everything had to be done through the touchscreen. But to add insult to injury, the Subaru touchscreens are super slow and unresponsive, so they feel like they aren’t working.
Yup, that was my experience with the in laws Ascent.
I got in right before Subaru went that way and ended up with the best of both worlds: a touchscreen for CarPlay and knobs for…everything else. I still have knobs for the radio if need be.
Plus it’s a six speed manual (Crosstrek).
I get a flyer from the dealership every other week asking if I want to “upgrade.” Sorry, fellas, nothing you have is an upgrade to me. You can’t get a manual gearbox here any more.
You can’t get a manual gearbox here any more.
Another factor contributing to the discontinuation of manual transmissions is the increasing emphasis on safety features and the integration of advanced driver-assist technologies.
Ew.
It’s frustrating because “the consumer” doesn’t want manuals, yet car makers add all these things that keep people from paying attention to the road making it - in my opinion - too easy to get distracted. I like that I can’t hold my phone in my hand and drive because I need to shift.
Last summer I was in Ireland, and I was peeking in a few cars on parked on the side of the road just out of curiosity. Almost every one was a manual, it seemed like. It’s not that we COULDN’T have fun, manual cars here. But Americans are lazy.
I have a Hyundai ioniq 5 and it definitely has touch buttons for some of the things, like climate control.
We got the new Kona and besides the touchscreen we have all the buttons.
I have now a tucson and I can tell you with all the stupid an superfluous buttons everywhere that I need te press each time I start the car it is definitely not adding tot the security on the road.
So, you’re saying that a touchscreen where you have actively look at because you don’t have any haptic feedback is saver on the roads?
That’s very positive.
I’ve never had this problem because I’m too poor to afford a car new enough to not have any buttons lmao
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.
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!
Not out of the goodness of their own hearts mind. It’s probably more because Euro NCAP are going to be deducting score for not having physical essentials in 2026.
Nah, this „news“ is from early to mid last year. Their designers simply took notes and realized touch screens suck for a vehicle.
And I doubt they’re much more expensive.
Thank you!
I don’t care what the reasoning is behind the decision (customer feedback vs. changes to safety ratings), I’m just glad it’s happening and I hope all manufacturers follow suit.
This has been my gripe with new cars ever since I found myself needing one in 2022. Everything I looked at had a huge infotainment system front-ending climate and cabin controls. Want to turn your steering wheel heat off mid drive? Ha! Tap this specific spot on this screen 3 times and hope the car doesn’t bounce while you’re doing so or you’ll accidentally turn something else on. Want to use voice controls? Joke’s on you, they only work 50% of the time.
God forbid something happens to the control board (which costs thousands of dollars to replace if you’re outside warranty), because then you’re completely hosed.
You know what always worked without fail? The buttons in my 2005 Corolla.
I literally did not buy/straightout refused to buy new Golf because of this crap. It does not get simpler than that: other producer got my money, VW group did not. Period.
Volkswagen should be forbidden to produce anything. There were even touch-SLIDE commands on the steering wheel. God only knows how many lives were lost in accidents, because someone ‘‘touched’’ something and switched something off or on. Horrible.
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 swear I‘ve read this headline like 4 times in the last month in this very community.
Learning from Scout, which is also under the VW umbrella:
Even without the new EU regulations on this, I bet VW was already planning on doing this. The widespread backlash to the non-illuminated capacitive touch controls on the newest Golf GTIs/Rs was significant. I wouldn’t have bought one of those, and a Golf R is basically my dream car.
I dunno. Cadillac has been doing this for decades and show no sign of stopping. I had them in my Chevy Volt and they were infuriating.
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.
Thank you! Now bring back physical keys too!
