I own an ID.4, the "car" part of the car is fine, but the controls inside are by far the most unpleasant I've ever used. 60% of the time I want to turn the fog lights on, it registers as "Defrost Max" that is right next to it. The worst offender by far though are the windows controls. Instead of four buttons like most sane cars, you have 2 buttons as well as a capacitive "Rear" toggle. That toggle is both incredibly easy to activate by accident and impossible to use with glove.

I can't fathom how someone designed these things and though, yep, this is a good experience. At least the car has wireless CarPlay so I can ignore the terrible VW software.

"New Euro NCAP tests due in 2026 will encourage manufacturers to use separate, physical controls for basic functions in an intuitive manner, limiting eyes-off-road time and therefore promoting safer driving."

To give a very concrete and potentially hazardous example: I have an induction range which has no physical controls but has a touch interface which requires various combinations of tapping, holding and sliding fingers. To say nothing of the fact that this is useless for people who have significant visual impairments, how am I supposed to turn it off if there's an electrical fire because a pot boils over or something? Is the expectation that I reach into boiling water that potentially has current running through it and hope to tap my fingers in the right place? Am I supposed to try to yank the power? Or is the expectation that I just walk outside and call the fire department?

https://www.caranddriver.com/photos/g64477839/2026-subaru-ou...

In reality, for Europe at least, their hand was forced by Euro NCAP via their safety tests. They announced it a couple of years ago but it starts now. No car that has just a touchscreen, instead of physical controls, will be awarded a 5-star rating. I don't really know to what extent people take note of the NCAP ratings these days, but they certainly used to be a very big deal to car buyers (for example, in the late 90s, the rating given to the Rover 100 effectively killed it overnight).

The NCAP ratings make physical controls essential for the most basic functions (e.g. indicators) and strongly encouraged for others (e.g. climate control).

So obviously the same goes for other manufacturers shouting about doing the same thing - don't swallow their hype about how much they love your feedback.

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2024-...

Surprising to see companies still learning this a decade later.

I hope Apple Carplay and Google Android auto can also take over other car control such as volume and climate control. Later someone can build uniform hardware buttons and knobs that I can place on my steering wheel and it can use the phone to control those features.

General cautionary tale: just coz a company is successful, doesn't mean it's doing _everything_ right. Plenty of folks who love their Teslas would prefer a few more buttons (and door handles on the inside, etc) if given the choice. Could say similar things about some choices Apple made.

But make climate control 3 knobs: Fan speed + off, temperature and output ports. Put the AC button inside the temperature knob, and the 'recirculate' button inside the output ports knob.

With the radio have a push on/off volume knob that starts up at the SAME volume as always (i.e. relative, not absolute) and NOT the previous volume. The volume knob should have some resistance to it. Opposite that have a tune knob for precise tuning, and pressing that gets you into setup and navigates you through it. This should have the same resistance, but the outside has some indents so you know it's not the volume knob. Have 6 preset buttons and 3 'banks' with a single 'next bank' button. pressing and holding a preset will save it with a beep for confirmation. On the steering wheel: up/dn for radio should be seek, not next/previous preset. There are 6 nice big buttons for presets but when traveling seek up/dn is the main way we change music.

On the door have the rear view mirror controls, and above that have a knob for dashboard light brightness.

2008 Honda Fit was close to a perfect car. https://www.carsdirect.com/honda/fit/2008/pictures/interior

Thankfully no one back then had the absurd idea to force them into every single car model, and eliminate choice for the next ten years.

Both times, the touchscreen-only controls were such a pain in the butt that we vowed we would never purchase such a car. It was a timesaver, because in that period our family has gotten two new (to us) cars, and our experiences with the rental Volkswagons allowed us to exclude an entire manufacturer from consideration.

If they haven't re-broken their interiors by the next time we look for a new car, I guess we'll have to consider them again.

https://www.caranddriver.com/photos/g63743843/2023-ineos-gre...

I feel like there's just too many of them, seemingly with duplicated functionalities (multiple up/down buttons for different functions). This is just a guess, but I think there was a meeting where each business unit responsible for a particular function submitted what controls they need, and they just fitted them all, which is kinda bonkers.

Due to the sheer amount of stuff, you can't operate this without looking down, which defeats the purpose.

Also, despite having this many of them, I think some of them are still contextual, requiring you to look at a screen or press another button to make them do the thing you want.

While I applaud the effort, the implementation I feel is lacking.

Reminds me a lot of the skeuomorphism from classic iOS and WebOS, but cleaned up with elements of modern “flat” designs.

And still no temperature dial. They achieved near perfection 20 years ago:

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

It's a shame too. I drive a 2016 VW GTI and it's an absolute joy. The last era of VW worth any consideration. Small touchscreen that shows current playing track, or carplay/map, but still with physical controls for volume and AC. I was glad to see Doug DeMuro shred them for the electronics in the newer model.

I'll be driving my 2016 car and 2008 truck into the grave, at which point I'll replace them with something of the same era or older. There are some enticing ways to die in a fiery car crash, but eating a median while trying to finger stab a mid ass ipad knockoff for control of the defroster is not among them.

Next, they need to make the buttons more physically distinguishable, instead of panels of identical buttons

The dashboards of older pre-1990s cars had a wide variety of buttons, switches, and knobs, all with different locations and feels. Of course today's designers would see this as an unclean mess driven more by manufacturing considerations than "design" considerations, but it was a much lower driver workload to operate those "messy" controls. The different position, size, shape, and feel of each control allowed easy operation by just feel, without taking eyes off the road.

In contrast, the all-the-same rows of buttons on modern cars are still hard to operate after familiarization; which one is the front vs rear defrost?

Moving many buttons to the steering wheel overcomes many of these limitations, but again, rows of identical buttons do not help. Consider a Formula One steering wheel with 20+ controls. They are 100% custom and can be made any way they want. They make the OPPOSITE of identical controls — they are all different and brightly colored.

The point of driver cockpit design is NOT some clean asthetic.

The point is to use every available mnemonic device so a driver under heavy workload can recognize the controls instantly and reliably.

[0] https://www.wired.com/2014/05/formula-1-steering-wheels/

[1] https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/f1-explains-how-f...

[2] https://medium.com/formula-one-forever/the-nerve-center-of-a...

I’ll be in the market for a new car soon and I am only considering ones with touch buttons for HVAC. It’s not worth getting into an accident trying to change the temperature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8

I couldn't be more thrilled to see them taking this direction.

* https://etsc.eu/volkswagen-to-reintroduce-physical-buttons-i...

Related to Euro NCAP mandating physical controls for certain functions, "including indicators, hazard lights, sounding the horn, operating windscreen wipers and activating the eCall SOS function"?

* https://etsc.eu/cars-will-need-buttons-not-just-touchscreens...

The bar should be whether the operator can keep their eyes on the road while operating the controls. And when getting into a new vehicle, how easy can they find common controls like mirrors, climate, parking brake, cruise without consulting the manual.

I rented a Highlander which did have nice physical controls, but many features were buried in cryptic menus. The auto steer feature, which dragged and pulled steering in corners, and aggressively applied braking , was buried under 3 levels of menus labeled "RTSS", "SCS", "Advanced".

Capable drivers don't need cornering and braking assist. It's $2k+ worth of useless components , for a worse driver experience.

I say they because I hope I am gone by then.

Modern cars are absolute shit, the UI on my 30 year old Camry feels amazing by comparison to any car that I’ve driven that has come out since 2010.

Maybe don't have so much distracting shit in the car.

The Tesla-fication of the dashboard has been such a shit automotive direction over the last decade and I'm relieved other manufacturers (not just VW) have woken up from the Musk fever-dream.

A good balance of screen and physical buttons is just fine, thanks.

I entered a 150k € Mercedes two weeks ago and the display looked very similar to a toy display I got for my godchild.