Be careful what you wish for everyone. My Toyota Wish (no pun intended) has an absolute cluster of a button cluster (pun intended) for air controls. To change where the air comes out, you have to repeatedly push the same button and watch the LCD to see what you get. There's a button for windscreen defogging but it ramps up the fan slowly over about 10s or so so you end up trying to set it manually instead which means the same repeat pressing and watching the LCD. If the fan is off but warm air is wafting in the vents, you have to press "auto", turn the temperature knob down to minimum, then press "off". Nearly every action requires looking for visual feedback on the stupid LCD screen.
The Wish more likely suffers from being a car where they shoehorned in a screen to seem more advanced for the time, while keeping the physical controls.
Nowadays screens are being used as a cost cutting measure. It stands to reason that if an automaker reintroduces more costly physical controls it’s going to be to address the issue of cumbersome controls. Hopefully, anyway.
Requiring a driver to navigate a touchscreen while driving is a needless distraction. Bring back buttons and knobs, things you can feel without looking, things that don’t move with every app refresh.
Now if only VW would resume bringing small cars to North America. I’ve owned a few VWs, I liked them, but I don’t want a big car, much less an ugh truck, but that seems all they offer any more. I suppose the market has spoken.
> bring back buttons and knobs, things you can feel without looking
“Things you can feel without looking …”
Sadly, this refresh seems to miss this point. The photos look like a grid based keyboard on everything, instead of the tactile experience that means your eyes don't leave the road.
The buttons are likely to work better than the touchscreens, and when you look at what you press you'll actuate your intent every time, but you'll still have to look.
I still drive a VW from 12 years ago because it was the last with "old school" buttons and knobs. VW has been pre-marketing this change for several years now, but looks like they'll need a few more before going back to your point.
Sad.
> Now if only VW would resume bringing small cars to North America.
The VW EOS was one of the last hard top convertibles, while also being a small car and practical. The concept needs to exist, yet doesn't seem to any more — another reason for prolonging the useful life of one if you have it!
Too many vehicle manufacturers removed buttons to copy Tesla without thinking about why Tesla did it in the first place. Tesla removed those buttons because they were aiming for a low-cost driverless future with full self driving and automatic updates that change the feel of the car. If you put those features in a VW that doesn't regularly update and doesn't have consumer self driving program (at least yet) it doesn't really make sense.
The first version of autopilot that did anything that could charitably be called navigation wasn't introduced for another 8 years after this car and actual self-driving remains a distant goal 17 years later.
The aviation industry has spent decades researching cockpit design, running simulator studies, and learning from accidents. They still use physical buttons for critical controls. If touchscreen-everything was safer or better, they’d have adopted it by now. The main reasons cars are removing buttons are cost savings and aesthetics—not driver safety.
While aviation is the origin of UX design, I'm uncertain whether modern cockpit design is born out of UX or out of a resistance to change. For example, for fuel-efficient takeoffs, you need to go in and override the ambient temperature and air pressure sensors and calculate what an efficient fuel mix would be yourself.
Tesla is the one that started this and cost who knows how many lives. They are the ones who thought it would be great to re-invent the wheel and then when the moron execs at the other companies saw the hype they had to copy it.
Agreed about the signal stalk. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last I've seen the signal stalk is back in Teslas, at least in Model Y, but I believe in newer Model 3s as well.
But "gear shifter"? It doesn't really require a stalk.
When you start, you select either D or R. Not a big deal.
And when you stop, I think most (all?) EVs even automatically go to P and apply parking brakes when you stop.
I think that already covers 99% of driving for 99% of people.
This is excellent. I hope the market rewards them. Do manual transmissions next.
This is also a minor thing, but I also long for galvometer-based speedometers and tachometers. They're charming. You can keep the screens in the cluster, but just give me a mechanical dial and show me the engine RPM at all times even if it's a PHEV.
Could still advance on physical buttons though. Have a huge touchscreen- and the buttons just drive on it via magnets- having little displays on them. That way, a set can be fixed function- and others can migrate with the purpose.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 54.2 ms ] threadNowadays screens are being used as a cost cutting measure. It stands to reason that if an automaker reintroduces more costly physical controls it’s going to be to address the issue of cumbersome controls. Hopefully, anyway.
Now if only VW would resume bringing small cars to North America. I’ve owned a few VWs, I liked them, but I don’t want a big car, much less an ugh truck, but that seems all they offer any more. I suppose the market has spoken.
“Things you can feel without looking …”
Sadly, this refresh seems to miss this point. The photos look like a grid based keyboard on everything, instead of the tactile experience that means your eyes don't leave the road.
The buttons are likely to work better than the touchscreens, and when you look at what you press you'll actuate your intent every time, but you'll still have to look.
I still drive a VW from 12 years ago because it was the last with "old school" buttons and knobs. VW has been pre-marketing this change for several years now, but looks like they'll need a few more before going back to your point.
Sad.
> Now if only VW would resume bringing small cars to North America.
The VW EOS was one of the last hard top convertibles, while also being a small car and practical. The concept needs to exist, yet doesn't seem to any more — another reason for prolonging the useful life of one if you have it!
// EOS retrospective: https://youtu.be/qkU-UP-iTag
https://i.redd.it/ahxh0bmh7ka11.jpg
The first version of autopilot that did anything that could charitably be called navigation wasn't introduced for another 8 years after this car and actual self-driving remains a distant goal 17 years later.
But "gear shifter"? It doesn't really require a stalk.
When you start, you select either D or R. Not a big deal.
And when you stop, I think most (all?) EVs even automatically go to P and apply parking brakes when you stop.
I think that already covers 99% of driving for 99% of people.
This is also a minor thing, but I also long for galvometer-based speedometers and tachometers. They're charming. You can keep the screens in the cluster, but just give me a mechanical dial and show me the engine RPM at all times even if it's a PHEV.