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.
VW Is Putting Buttons Back in Cars Because People Complained Enough
Submitted 11 months ago by boem@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.thedrive.com/news/vw-is-putting-buttons-back-in-cars-because-people-complained-enough
Comments
squirrelwithnut@lemmy.world 11 months ago
highenergyphysics@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Easy, because regulations don’t mean anything anymore.
Headlights that blind you in the day and literally block all vision of the road at night, road legal trucks which bumpers that START at the hood of my car, all around limo tints on literally every car, people disabling their rear lights for some idiotic reason…
And that doesn’t even begin to mention the drivers themselves, so fucking self absorbed, tailgating, cutting you off for fun to get to the same light.
I’ve literally had a stream of cars going around me on street roads and so many dumbasses just follow the stream that I literally cannot safety accelerate because they’re all cutting me off bumper to bumper.
You should start carrying a gun if not already. The conservatives have successfully rotted western society.
Sculptor9157@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
While you have some good points, it seems you may be missing one in that if you are constantly getting passed in that manner, you are causing a problem, regardless of what is posted. Most western law systems have a provision against impeding the flow of traffic.
paradiso@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Had me until the politics, but I agree. These fucking headlights nowadays are incredibly dangerous, especially on these lifted garage queens.
nsfw_alt_2023@lemmynsfw.com 11 months ago
The government has literally prevented cars that prevent you from blinding another car on the road from coming to the US market. Cars come in with active LED arrays and they have to be disabled to sell in the US.
barsoap@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Headlights that blind you in the day and literally block all vision of the road at night,
Illegal in the EU, Xenon and later LEDs always needed automatic height adjustment (it doesn’t suffice to do it once because cars change angles continuously). Lots has changed in the last 20+ years, though, speaking of VW: How about high beams all the time unless there’s something that could be blinded, then switch them off locally but keep the rest bright.
road legal trucks which bumpers that START at the hood of my car,
all around limo tints on literally every car,
Illegal.
people disabling their rear lights for some idiotic reason…
Illegal.
And that doesn’t even begin to mention the drivers themselves, so fucking self absorbed, tailgating, cutting you off for fun to get to the same light.
See the thing is that if you build your infrastructure in a way that requires people to drive cars you can’t just take licenses away from asshats.
HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Headlights that blind you in the day and literally block all vision of the road at night, road legal trucks which bumpers that START at the hood of my car, all around limo tints on literally every car, people disabling their rear lights for some idiotic reason…
pretty sure all of those are illegal around here, with exception of the giant compensators.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 11 months ago
people disabling their rear lights for some idiotic reason…
That might be people with daytime running lights not turning on the lights. My car will turn on the headlights as soon as I take the parking break off (MT, an auto would likely do it when put in drive), but the dash and rear lights don’t turn on unless I turn the dial.
MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 11 months ago
It sounds like you too, might live in a heavily populated metropolitan area of Nevada, USA. Lol
jasondj@ttrpg.network 11 months ago
They are a lot safer now that we have LKAS and ACC and FCW systems. But that’s moreso in spite of the touchscreens.
kd45@lemm.ee 11 months ago
They obviously knew it sucked because all of their luxury cars still have buttons. It was just a cost saving measure and they tried to spin it as “fancy” in their low to mid range cars.
Zipitydew@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
That’s not true though. This happened in their EVs regardless of price range. Even the Porsche Taycan which requires using a screen to adjust HVAC vents. Other than some steering wheel buttons the Taycan is all screens.
The Audi E-Tron GT (same chassis as the Taycan) oddly enough has more buttons. But that’s because VAG makes sure Porsche and Audi interiors are slightly different for different market segments.
It’s more about VAG thinking (like many automakers) copying the Tesla trend was what people wanted. The mistake made was not considering Tesla early adopters often being techy people who might not match broader market opinion.
bizzle@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I, too, am guilty of vag thinking sometimes; but what does that have to do with Tesla?
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They also didn’t do it as well as Tesla which gave even more reason to dislike it.
flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
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.
SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Or follow the BMW plan and put buttons in the cars but make them subscription only.
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Never read from a book that summons demons, even as a joke.
Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 11 months ago
It’s probably a cost issue. Running one wire harness to a touch screen is a lot cheaper than running a wire to every button in a car.
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s also a “We can charge $900 for this $80 touchscreen when it fails in 5 years because your car is a brick without it” issue.
DaDragon@kbin.social 11 months ago
I hate the fact that you’re probably right about that reason.
someguy3@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I wonder if it’s a planning issue. Buttons you have to actually plan out. Touchscreen? Plop it in.
psud@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You have the software design costs, which are high but one-off, so they’re amortised over the entire production - and it’s either the same or nearly the same across each brand’s entire range
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Oh they KNEW what they were doing and just didn’t give a fuck.
We need a People of Walmart equivalent for this bullshit. Start finding the designer/engineer/manager responsible for this garbage and shame them publicly.
How does this stuff pass any kind of Accessibility regs?
FishFace@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Besides cost, we should probably at least entertain the idea that we are a vocal minority. I’d be completely unsurprised to find out that the majority of people hardly ever touch the controls that got moved to touchscreens and, if they do, they don’t really care - they can set them before they set off, or do it while driving and wobble all over the road, but hey everyone does it so what does it matter?
MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
Especially when the buttons move around in the GUI after an update so you accidentally press the wrong ones, or end up having to search the menus while driving.
Perhaps this could change when we have mainstream tactile displays, but until then buttons will always be better.
MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I think using a car tablet is equally as dangerous as texting and driving. Voice control would actually be better for adjustments while driving.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t think autonomous driving had anything to do with the initial choice. It might be a reason now, but I don’t think it was the initial driving factor.
You left off it being marketed as clean and minimalistic. I think that’s different enough from futuristic. Some people love that aspect, some outright hate it.
computerscientistI@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Also, Tesla’s button replacements actually do work more or less reliably. The other manufacturers decided to save money by adding a potato instead of a potent CPU that powers the screen in the middle of the console.
MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 11 months ago
“Finally a use for all these leftover 1st gen Kindle Fire CPUs!”
fosforus@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
I had huge reservations towards Tesla’s control system, but in reality, I got used to it in a week. And I’m loving how clean the dashboard is otherwise.
psud@lemmy.world 11 months ago
In practice though Tesla has buttons for the controls you need while driving.
Cruise control/lane keeping/cancel is a lever
Indicators, flash high beams is a lever
Park is a button
Windscreen wiper single wipe is a button, same button is window wash
Set speed is a scroll wheel, volume is a scroll wheel (and a touch control on the passenger side)
Navigation is on screen keyboard, but you should stop to change navigation, or have a passenger do it
Climate control heats or cools towards your target temperature, heated seats and steering wheel are automatic or touch screen, but you know you need them before you get in the car
What more would you want physical controls for?
foggy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Now take away subscriptions.
I’m looking at you, everyone.
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 11 months ago
SAAS is the greatest scam of the 21st century.
Rob@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I say there are some fair applications of SaaS. If you use a product that requires servers to be running, paying a recurring cost for however long you need the software is fair.
That being said, mandatory SaaS on a physical product with upfront cost is decidedly shitty. Especially when it’s a 50k car.
Dendrologist@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Software as a Service if you’re ignorant like I was and had to Google what SaaS meant
GiddyGap@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Companies love subscriptions, customers hate subscriptions. Subscriptions it is.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’d love to get a fitness band, but fuck all the subscriptions to access all their features.
redcalcium@lemmy.institute 11 months ago
It’s impossible, just like it’s impossible to tell game companies to stop doing microtransaction.
snaggen@programming.dev 11 months ago
What?!? Pictures Under Glass turns out not to be the most desired solution for controling your car? Who could have guessed? /s
phx@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They’re fine for certain things on an evolving menu etc, but not anything where a tactile sense might be needed to avoid distraction. A lack of volume knob is the thing that pisses me off the most in many vehicles, including my own.
Also, power should be a physical cutoff and NOT a soft button for head units. The one of my car is a software toggle and when the system started glitching, froze and also put out high volume noise with no way to kill it except to shut off the vehicle when I could safely do so
barsoap@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Yep a good rule of thumb is probably “If you aren’t comfortable with having it disabled when the car is moving, don’t make it a picture under glass”. Managing playlists is a thing you can expect people to do when stationary, touchscreen is fine, skipping a song is done while driving, make it a button.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 11 months ago
My '16 Prius has a pretty good balance between touchscreen and buttons. The only thing I don’t care for is having to use the touchscreen to change radio presets, but I usually stay on the same station anyway.
marretics@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
This was a wonderful read, thanks
CrowAirbrush@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Can we complain more about subscription paywalledcar functions then?
z00s@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
nutsack@lemmy.world 11 months ago
cars aren’t primarily for driving they are for convincing friends and family of your success
HawlSera@lemm.ee 11 months ago
They absolutely did!
TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I don’t want a touchscreen in my fucking car. That is all.
TheRealKuni@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t mind a touchscreen. Apple CarPlay/Android Auto are really nice.
I just also want physical controls for everything the car needs to do to be a car, like climate control or wipers or shifting. And also physical controls for play/pause, skip, volume, and tuning.
Touchscreens can do a lot to enhance the car experience, but they cannot replace physical buttons.
deafboy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’d go as far as mounting a full size qwerty keyboard on the steering wheel. Although we’d somehow have to deal with the shrapnel grenade situation as soon as the airbag hits it.
A_Porcupine@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Thank god. This is literally the worst thing about my car (apart from the lane assist trying to kill me).
snaggen@programming.dev 11 months ago
I found that a homocidal lane assist, have a really good effect on my alertness. Before lane assist I could relax and almost doze of, but with lane assist I don’t dare to relax for a second since I know it will try to murder me the first chance it gets. So, I guess that is why people say lane assist prevents accidents.
havocpants@lemm.ee 11 months ago
My car lets you turn off lane assist, it’s the collision avoidance that I can’t turn off that is trying to kill me. Randomly I’ll be driving along when an alarm sounds and it tries to swerve off the road. It’s fucking infuriating and dangerous and despite many of us complaining to the manufacturer you can’t turn it off.
jumpinjesus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The capacitive touch buttons under the screen on my ID4 don’t light up, so they’re literally invisible at night and completely useless.
yuki2501@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
nutsack@lemmy.world 11 months ago
the more important thing here is that you can find and press a button without looking at it
Dickarus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
HouseWolf@lemm.ee 11 months ago
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.
Gerula@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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
arc@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Carmakers did this to copy Tesla, not realising that Tesla doesn’t give a damn if removing a stalk or button is dangerous or not. Witness how they even removed indicator stalks, making it all but impossible for people to safely and legally navigate a roundabout.
Mr_Blott@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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”
nothatnow@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
Finally people are starting to see that touch screens or any other touch surfaces don’t belong into cars.
serpineslair@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Finally.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 11 months ago
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.
trackindakraken@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 11 months ago
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.
danielfgom@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Sanity prevails at last!
cheeseblintzes@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Thank god.
Touchscreens in a car never made any sense.
Suavevillain@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I might be the one of the weirdos that want buttons back on phones as well lol. 💀 I loved keyboards.
kameecoding@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Oh look they sre following in Hyundais footsteps
mrmanager@lemmy.today 11 months ago
Judging from reviews, people are avoiding VW now because of really shitty infotainment systems…
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 11 months ago
Tom Paris was right.
nutsack@lemmy.world 11 months ago
there should never be a fucking touch screen menu in a car for any reason
Donjuanme@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not all of the buttons. Please be reasonable. Just some of the buttons.
I don’t need memory buttons.
I don’t want to push the button half a dozen times, just to miss the menu I wanted by 1 click, and have to go around again.
I don’t need separate am fm and cd buttons.
I really don’t mind a touch screen for climate control, or audio interface. Just keep the business from moving around the screen at all and I’m pretty happy.
dinckelman@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’ve always wondered how these things happen. Clearly a massive car manufacturer should have some kind of a feedback group about what will potentially go into new vehicles, right? I can’t imagine anyone enjoying getting distracted from the road, to navigate between piano black plastic, and laggy nested touchscreen buttons
Betch@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
Same goes for kitchens. Give me real buttons and knobs and not these abhorrent touch panels that refuse to work every third time. A good quality kitchen appliance is identified by high quality knobs that last for decades.
0110010001100010@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I pumped gas at a brand new Shell station over the weekend. The controls for the pump was one GIANT touchscreen (I’m talking probably 12 inches wide by 36 inches tall). It was fucking PAINFUL to use. Every touch took 2-3 seconds for the action to happen. Da fuck is wrong with a regular pump and regular buttons that just work?
LastYearsPumpkin@feddit.ch 11 months ago
Biggest problem is that they cheap out on the tech parts. Nobody complains that an iPad has a touch screen, cause it works. But an appliance tends to have a crappy UI, running on a crappy touch screen, powered by a crappy CPU.
If they just used quality parts, it’d probably be fine, and the only issue would be expensive replacement for an entire assembly, instead of small, cheap parts that can be fixed.
douglasg14b@lemmy.world 11 months ago
In general high quality things tend to have physical buttons and knobs as opposed to touch screen devices.
Instead of turning into e-waste after 5 years or less they can last for the next 30 to 50 years.
How many smart thermostats have become obsolete because their service providers stopped providing cloud services for them?
I just tore apart a working thermostat that almost 80 years old now (to understand how it works) and in perfectly working condition. It uses the physical properties of the materials inside to measure temperature (a coil of metal expands and contracts causing a pendulum to move clockwise or counterclockwise). Suspended at the top of this pendulum is a small vial of mercury containing two electrodes. When the pendulum is far enough counterclockwise the Mercury slides in the vial and bridges the electrodes, turning the furnace on, when the pendulum is far enough clockwise the mercury slides to the right and no longer bridges the electrodes.
It’s brilliantly simple and will continue to work essentially forever. The physical characteristics of the materials involved won’t change. How gravity works isn’t going to change.
Wrench@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Touch screens especially don’t make sense in the cooking context, where your hands are likely to be wet / damp.
ominouslemon@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Omg I feel that. The oven in my apartment has touch controls. When I’m baking stuff with lots of moisture inside, water evaporates and is expelled though a vent JUST BELOW the toch controls. The condensation makes them completely unresponsive. Smh
dojan@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I was boiling pasta earlier and my fucking stove turned itself off and engaged the child lock because water splashed onto those controls. THREE TIMES!
I’ve had this piece of shit literally ruin dinner before. It’s amazing how it can be both really nice and really fucking useless at the same time.
Betch@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Agreed, it’s true for most devices. They’re often finicky, don’t offer anything in terms of feedback (Except maybe for a beep that is identical for all button presses) and they don’t last.
barsoap@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I’m really on the fence when it comes to kitchens because a) you actually have time to look at what you’re doing – if you need to lower temperature suddenly the better option is to take your pan off the stove, anyway and b) touch controls are trivial to clean.
What I can’t stand though is scales manufactures being so cheap as to not even have capacitive buttons but re-use the front left/right feet as sensors for the interface. On the upside the thing was dirt cheap and actually comes with an USB-C port to charge its LIR2450 cell.
Squizzy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Nah I just got new ovens and a hob and they are sleek and easy clean and work like a charm.
ultra@feddit.ro 11 months ago
I like touch panels but don’t mind physical buttons.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Not to mention completely useless in places where you need to wear gloves when driving.
NIB@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Volvo car touchscreens work with gloves on.
ZiemekZ@lemmy.world 11 months ago
For example?
If it’s so cold that you wear gloves, then get your AC fixed because it should’ve been running by the time you drive off.
poppy@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I got a new car two years ago, and physical buttons were one of the determining factors.
kameecoding@lemmy.world 11 months ago
How about others leading?
From march 20
thedrive.com/…/hyundai-promises-to-keep-buttons-i…