The move is part of move away from touchscreen controls, which drivers complained were tedious and dangerous to use while driving.

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.

    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      Tesla has the highest crash rate of any manufacturer. In particular, rear ending other cars. It’s the stupid touchscreen.

      • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        Maybe. Not disagreeing but I’ve never seen data to support that, have you? Some people blame it on self-driving, some blame it on the higher performance, and yes the touch screen is plausible. But we need to know. That accident rate is too high to be guessing.

        Unfortunately my experience supports all of the above

        • self driving is continually improving. I trust it much more than previous iterations but I don’t trust it. In my latest test the only dangerous thing it did in two hours was to stop at a yellow light. Technically correct but the idiot behind me expected to drive through. I also took over four times when I wasn’t sure it was going to do the right thing
        • in my first drives I had to see its acceleration - was surprised by it enough to experience fear
        • there are shortcuts to the common screen controls but it’s not always easy to discover them. Voice control works well for me so far
    • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      If VW made a car that randomly exploded every time it went over 40 miles an hour they would still sell it if in some way that saved the money.