Technology

Yeah I really hope other car makers follow because I fucking hate touch controls in cars with a burning passion. It's idiotic and not safe at all.

Good. Touchscreens are the most unsafe feature added to vehicles in decades. It's honestly mind boggling how it was allowed in the first place.

Replacing the buttons with a tablet has always been a cost saving measure on Tesla's part that was marketed as "futuristic", physical switches and dials made of plastic and metal as well as the underlying components will never be as cheap or as easy to wire as a simple touchscreen control. Other car companies followed suit, because Tesla made a method of reducing their own manufacturing costs hip, so many of them jumped on it.

But, Tesla tablets were designed with the belief that this cost saving is possible because of the delusion that full autonomous self driving is possible with existing hardware through software updates. When self driving didn't happen after a decade of trying, people realized how inconvenient and dangerous it is that the only way to adjust the AC, stereo volume, and sideview mirrors while driving is through a tablet with no tactile feedback. So now, we are finally seeing that trend reversing.

The fact that they needed to receive a lot of complaints to reconsider makes me wonder - do they even do any kind of usability testing for their products? Anyone who even sat in a car with only touchscreen can tell you the experience is not comfortable.

And I don't think it's just about the price of physical buttons. Buttons are a selling point right now, they could charge a small premium (not in the thousands but ~$200 certainly.

Now take away subscriptions.

I'm looking at you, everyone.

Can we complain more about subscription paywalled car functions then?

I just hope they stop treating car interiors like living rooms. It's like they forgot that people are busy driving in the first place.

What?!? Pictures Under Glass turns out not to be the most desired solution for controling your car? Who could have guessed? /s

Thank god. This is literally the worst thing about my car (apart from the lane assist trying to kill me).

I don’t want a touchscreen in my fucking car. That is all.

Seems the novelty VW engineers had to be reminded of the first item in the Unix philosophy:

Make each program do one thing, and do it well.

Buttons already had this. Each single button did one and only one thing: Turn a feature on or off, or in the case of the radio, switch stations.

We didn't need complicated menus to navigate. Press the appropriate button, and voilá. It was simple. It worked.

Who the fuck came up with the idea of having to use touch menus? I have no idea, but I really hope they got fired.

I like how you can get a ticket for using your phone while driving, so automakers decided to replace your tactile radio, where you don't need to look at it to operate, with what is basically a giant touchscreen phone in your car where you need to look at it to see what you're doing instead of feeling what you're doing.

I test drove one, and the touch buttons were ass, but nobody mentions the lag. There's ZERO feedback, do you press the button again and watch the screen show you turn the thing on and then back off.

I would NEVER buy a car with touch controls based on this experience. It was horrible.

This is actually very good news for car manufacturers.

Touch crap was cheaper but sold a new tech so => price increase

Buttons are old tech so no new investments or tech development but they are more complicated => price increase

You want buttons back because they're easier to use

I want them back because I think car interiors look bland without them

We are not the same...alright I also want them back for the first reason aswell.

Carmakers did this to copy Tesla, not realising that Tesla did it to save themselves a few bucks and to hell with the person who suffer a degraded or unsafe driving experience as a result. Witness how Tesla even removed indicator stalks, making it all but impossible for people to safely and legally navigate a roundabout. Who cares if someone crashes, because it's all about the bottom line.

I'm reading this as "VW is putting buttons back in cars because they reckon the EU is going to slap them for making dangerous cars"

I'm hoping by the time I need a new car, this insanity will have passed, allowing me to skip it. It's like everyone skipped Windows Vista.

Finally people are starting to see that touch screens or any other touch surfaces don't belong into cars.

Finally.

Real buttons in a car are good because you don't have to fucking look at them to know what you're doing, unlike a god damn touch screen, so your eyes can remain on the road.

Sanity prevails at last!

i like buttons

Thank god.

Touchscreens in a car never made any sense.