All future Volkswagen models will feature physical controls for the most important functions, design chief Andreas Mindt has said.
The German firm has been criticised over the past few years for moving many of the vital controls in its cars from physical buttons and dials to the infotainment touchscreen. Volkswagen also introduced haptic ‘sliders’ below the touchscreen for the heating and volume and it started using haptic panels instead of buttons for controls mounted on the steering wheel.
More recently, the firm has reintroduced physical steering wheel buttons and Mindt said it is committed to reintroducing physical buttons, starting with the production version of the ID 2all concept that will arrive next year.
“From the ID 2all onwards, we will have physical buttons for the five most important functions – the volume, the heating on each side of the car, the fans and the hazard light – below the screen,” said Mindt. “They will be in every car that we make from now on. We understood this.
“We will never, ever make this mistake any more. On the steering wheel, we will have physical buttons. No guessing any more. There's feedback, it's real, and people love this. Honestly, it's a car. It's not a phone: it's a car.”
Mindt said VW will continue to offer cars with touchscreens, in part due to new legal requirements that, as in the US, will require all cars to feature a reversing camera.
“There are a lot of functions you have to deliver in certain areas, so the screen will be big and you will find a lot of HMI [human-machine interface] contents in the depths of the system,” he added. “But the five main things will always be on the first physical layer. That’s very important.”
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It seems like the car industry is learning from customer feedback.
For some years manufacturers appear to have been in a race to the biggest dispaly that they can strap on a dashboard, just so they can say 'well, you should buy our car as it has a 13" display, the other manufactuerer's offering only has a 12" display.'
Now they are realising that people would rather have a smaller dispaly that doesn't try to replace simple controls that don't distract one's driving when being used. icariin Switzerland
They need to get the huge iPads off the center stack.
I have an iPad Pro and do not need it while driving.
It's almost comical.
Glad I sold my VW investments after it became clear that the unions and the board were after Dr Diess' head, the only one who chose to read the writing on the wall and tried to do something sensible about it.
VW is toast. I doubt even their attempt at grabbing part of the (non existent) EU "rearming" budget by going back to defence contracting origins will save them. Good riddance anyway.