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.
US and EU regulators announced last year that cars with touchscreen controls could get worse safety ratings.
Yeah that’s the real reason they’re moving back it’s got nothing to do with the complaints from the customers because they’ve been ignoring those for over a decade. They just know that people won’t buy their cars if it receives a substandard rating.
But hey I’ll still take the win.
Nature is healing?
Not till we have robust, strong, public transit and walkable communities and the majority of personal cars are gone.
So long as I can keep my sports convertible for weekend cruising (350Z Roadster Touring 6MT in Daytona Blue), sign me the fuck up.
Nature is healing indeed.
Good. Hate touchscreens. It never fails that as you are going to touch something, you will hit a bump and miss. And that’s after taking your eyes off the road to find the button or dig through 4 menus to find it.
they have to
it’ll be a law in china in the future
And EURO NCAP (who make safety ratings for cars) have said they’ll stop giving 5 stars, if a car has no physical buttons for essential controls (i dont reclal what they believe is essential though)
apparent it’s
turn indicator signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, and the horn
That’s weird, no car has those in the touch screen. Dumb steering wheel placement, sure (tesla), but still physical.
It’s not that weird IMHO. Anything driving related should be a button or a stalk, like EuroNCAP is saying. All non-driving related stuff can be on screen, which I believe is fine. Personally, I think people have been driving the wrong vehicles, or drive older vehicles, when they say that they can’t use HVAC controls on a touchscreen. It’s not that much more different than a button, in most cars it’s in a dock on a touchscreen, easily accessible. I also strongly believe that you don’t use the HVAC buttons as much on newer cars, because the systems have become so much better, that’s probably also what the manufacturers see in their data when deciding for their new designs.
The touchscreen hate is a little blown out of proportion IMO. People that drive Tesla’s hardly complain about the touchscreen, mostly about the removal of stalks. I also don’t hear people complaining in newer BMW’s and other more luxury brands, even though those brands use touchscreens for a lot of stuff these days.
I meant I find the announcement weird, because there aren’t any cars currently to have those controls listed as touchscreen buttons. And the emergency lights already has to be a physical button, at least in the EU.
Maybe it’s about preventing those features…
Yeah perhaps. I can imagine that the indicator buttons on Tesla’s was the final straw to take this action, before other manufacturers started pulling of weird shit like that.
Ferrari did it before Tesla, just slightly more logical.
Ferrari’s implementation is also simply better. Button on the left for left indicator, button on the right for right indicator. But still, it’s not great to use on roundabouts. The reason nobody cared when it was added to Ferrari’s is because it’s not a mass produced product. EuroNCAP score doesn’t really matter for Ferrari and other sports car manufacturers anyways. They could have a 1 star rating and still be sold, because the car isn’t about safety.
I also object to the hazard light button in my Tesla. While it’s great that it’s a physical buttons, it’s not tactile - I can’t use it without taking my eyes off the road
Touchscreens are so dangerous. Glad to see buttons coming back.
I’m almost surprised pedo elon didn’t make literally everything touch screens in his death traps, right down to the brakes and steering
Who knew that would happen eventually after sensor screens failed time and time again at worst possible moments?
That touchscreens in cars are still allowed while using a phone is not?
You are supposed to look at the road, yet we have roadside billboards.
You are supposed to go the speed limit but it is safer to follow the flow of traffic if everyone is speeding.
Time for some cassette futurism design!
Unironically I want this so bad, I’m one of those Gen Z guys who grew up around old tech but I love my clunky 1970s-1990s tech. There’s just something viserally satisfying about sloting in a tape.
I added a old radio with a Minidisk player into my car when the radio died
Fucken hell the fuck did you find a minidisk player? That’s unironically awesome, though whenever I see minidsiks I think of Starship Troopers.
Ebay, although it is a Japanese version of headset so you have to get a fm frequency shifter to make it work with US radio st
I meant no irony either and I can point at one good reason for cassette futurism design: the soundscape.
My pencil is ready
EDIT: This is not a euphemism
My PEN IS working.
Why can’t it be both?
8-track would be interesting. ;)
ID.BUZZ with physical buttons, 4WD and an upgraded heat pump (the current one is designed for ID.4 sized cars) would be the perfect car for me.
The ID buzz needs significantly more range for me to consider it.
How much range do you need? My Chevy Bolt has a range of ≈350 miles, and it’s rather mountainous around here.
The id buzz has notoriously bad range, even worse than advertised, I think real world testing puts it a bit over 150 miles on a charge
That’s more than enough for daily commuting, though.
You don’t buy an ID.Buzz for commuting though. It’s for adventure! So low range is a problem in this one case.
Ya, it is but not for 70k+.
AFAIK it’s partially due to it being built on the ID.4 chassis
Now get rid of point-source quasar LED headlights. OK, we get it, science now allows us to get every electron in every atom to emit bazillions of photons every picosecond. That’s nice. Like AI, we don’t need it and no one asked for it.
We need to go even farther, not go back.
Brighter headlights are better for safety to allow drivers to see more …… but clearly humans can’t be trusted with them. Active matrix headlights are the best answer.
I find it fascinating to drive with high beams on, but watch a dark spot in my headlights follow oncoming cars so I don’t blind them. Everyone should have them
I met one of those cars the other day. Was absolutely fascinating watching the headlight matrix dim to not blind me. I am left wondering, how good it is at noticing bikes and pedestrians though.
Mine does not act on pedestrians
I haven’t been in a situation to see if it reacts for bicycles. It seems to react to lights, rather than shapes so it’s possible
the fact that blinding headlights are rated as “safer” is a prime example of how fucked up vehicle regulations and evaluations are
it also creates the opportunity to see just how much of a jackass the average person is - if you flash your brights at them because you can’t fucking see, they’ll turn their high beams on back at you. and you can see posts all over the internet where people love flashing people back, like there just isn’t any defense for that behavior. and the funny thing is that it often doesn’t even make a difference, because the high beams are no brighter than the low beams, they’re just aimed higher - so if the low beams are already hitting you in the face, turning the high beams on isn’t going to hit you more in the face
I asked for it. Brighter lights are safer. Seems to be a US problem, apparently most states either don’t have technical inspections or they don’t test the headlights. Adjust them correctly and it won’t be a problem. But “Muh freedumbs”…
It’s a problem in the Netherlands as well. Many cars have lights that are too damn bright.
I agree with all of this except the end.
People absolutely asked for AI. I hate it, but it’s false claiming it wasn’t desired. Tons of people in STEM fields dreamt about it for years.
The people wanted actual reasoning AI, not generative AI. They didn’t expect us to devote most of our nominal economic activity toward a few big tech companies to get it. They didn’t expect them to assert that text generators are ‘reasoning’ and when called on it declare that it’s not reasoning as humanity has known it, but here’s some buzzwords to justify us claiming it’s a whole new sort of reasoning that’s just as valuable.
Even though it’s not intelligent at all, chatGPT seemed groundbreaking when it arrived. Big promises were made and implausible amounts invested, and it doesn’t really seem to have gone anywhere since. It’s the same thing, just a bit better.
And I’d be more ok with LLM technology in general if not for:
- The rampant copyright infringement
- The overcommitment of financial and actual resources
In and of itself, ok a neat little trick with some utility so long as it isn’t taken too seriously.
Well… We still don’t have AI. We got language and picture generators…
And I never said we did, so what’s your point?
Tons of people in STEM fields dreamt about it for years.
Not a native English speaker but “dreamt” is past tense, so they stopped dreaming, implying they stopped because now we have “AI”.
If they used to dream something that they are still dreaming about, it is still “dreamt” in past-tense.
If I still “play” baseball every day, and I referring to a game, I say “I played baseball,” because it is in the past. You would not say “I play baseball game last week” even if you are still currently playing baseball.
Make sense? I mean this politely too, you mentioned English not being your first language.
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Wrong. See the Nobel Prize to Google Deepmind team.
Prediction and pattern recognition is not general AI. This is just what LLMs and image generators do. They find plausible continuations starting from a noise to better fit the disired outcome. They don’t have real contextual knowledge about a domain. To them everything is just numbers that can be manipulated until they fit better. They don’t just instantly know the correct or incorrect answer because of a deeper understanding on the matter.
I’m in STEM and have published a few AI based papers. I don’t want this in my house, car, or healthcare.
That’s great, and I am also in STEM and agree with you. But we’re only two people.
Yeah and I’ll counter-vote one of you.
I’m familiar with the use and the limitations of LLMs so I’m familiar with use cases where it adds value and where it should not be allowed
Realistically the biggest issue for consumers is privacy: most of the generally available LLMs hoover unprecedented quantities of personal data. But they don’t have to. There are choices that respect your data
There’s an underlying dystopian theme here that goes beyond LLMs and voice assistants where the technology for collecting personal data keeps getting more intrusive far beyond the nightmares of the general public. They have no idea how much they are losing and the harm it can do
I agree 100%, but the fact still stands that plenty of people absolutely want it, even if they don’t understand and are wrong about what it is.
I hope regulators pay attention to technology this time instead of just reacting.
My car has controls with no physical buttons but I can control with voice assistant. Technically that means I can do it without taking my eyes off the road but it’s physical buttons are much better
Tangentially relevant. Anyone seen the new Microbus? It’s appalling. They gave it angry headlights like every other stupid generic car on the market. A hideous grille. And it’s got a giant flatscreen tv for all the interior controls. All in a 60s throwback vehicle specifically chosen for its nostalgic character. How do these people get promoted into decision making roles???
How do these people get promoted into decision making roles???
Never forget the VW emissions scandal. These cats are all about the bottom line; re-packaging nostalgia in only the most marketable way is exactly how and why.
is this the new one? It has the angry headlights lmao
I saw it in person at the weekend, and tbf it did look kinda cool, but I am not a car guy
The concept looked cool and they talked about releasing it for the last 20 years but the proportions on the outside of the production version are all wrong.
Excellent
Yesss, now i can replace my 2016 car that still had buttons! (Not that i will… or need to…)
Great. Now (for cars in general) remove all the unnecessary computerization nobody asked for and have a physical link between the throttle, transmission and the pedals. That’s sure to help with all the sudden unintended acceleration issues that also cause drivers to be unable to shift into neutral because the computer (a single point failure) decided to shit the bed.
