Volkswagen will bring back physical buttons | Hacker News Reader

Volkswagen will bring back physical buttons

afronomist.com

53 pointsdanielfoster52 comments

I read the article (which contains no quotes & no sources). I also read the linked article, which is just a VW press release about a concept car.

I don't see any mention of them "admitting" anything. Nor is there any evidence that they did so because for any of the reasons claimed in the article. They don't even mention physical buttons in their press release other than extraordinarily brief "classic volume control".

Is this what passes for upvoted journalism on HN these days? Completely made up articles that can't even bother finding some corporate PR flack to give them a quote?

I agree that there are such fact-free postings here. Since we can't downvote the post, the best thing to do is link a previous/substantiated posting (if available) and discussion thread.

I'm guessing that the upvotes aren't necessarily for the article quality but rather agreement with the title and wanting to have a discussion.

> I'm guessing that the upvotes aren't necessarily for the article quality but rather agreement with the title and wanting to have a discussion.

Yeah, I'll sometimes upvote something I disagree with or dislike for this exact reason. If the discussion surrounding it is particularly "lively" or otherwise interesting, the post which inspired that can sometimes get my upvote.

I would think that in safety critical systems design (flight control systems for instance) there is a deep, well understood field of study over when, and why to retain mechanical inputs over digital (soft) inputs.

Which makes me wonder how far VW and others went, justifying their decisions to walk away from them.

Maybe I misunderstand how strongly advice exists to retain them? I mean, they didn't go with side-stick steering, fly-by-wire, a number of things. It almost certainly is cost driven, but I would love to understand where their compliance and safety "epidemiologists" were in this.

Short answer: there sure is a deep and well understood field of human factors that knows this in aviation.

But there’s also a lot of customers who think it’s cooler/neater/better to have touchscreens.

Blaming that decision on customers is not fair. Car companies gave their marketing teams too much say in design. The current state of affairs with car UXs is the result of not listening to engineers.

And it's been established for literally decades, which is why it's been so amusing to me to watch the rise and very quick fall of this type of input.

If I recall correctly, there was some instance in the space industry of using some (Javascript-powered) touchscreens in the cockpit. Possibly from SpaceX? I'm sure that's a great idea too.

Oh please tell me how a climate knob is a safety-critical flight-control element.

The point is not that a climate knob is safety-critical: The point is that the UX in this space is well informed. Why digitise things, which only serve as a distraction from the core function? It's pointless innovation.

Are you actually questioning why cheaper EVs are better?

Besides - a350 and 777x started adding touchscreens AND they are designing FSD equivalent system too!

Finally, if climate slider instead of knob distracts you, then perhaps you aren't fit to drive to begin with?

I wonder why they tried to move away from physical buttons to begin with ? Is it because they are cheaper to implement in software ?

Also more compact and flexible: a software button can be repurposed for different screens or localized to different languages, without making a different physical design. It makes sense from many perspectives, except for the perspective of usability (especially usability without looking at the controls).

A physical button can, too. You make it dependent upon the text on the current screen that’s displayed. The important thing is you can feel the button or dial itself, not what text is on it.

Even when you glance to see where a button is or which button it is (temp or whatever), once you know where it is, your eyes can divert back to the road and you can feel around for the dial or button when you miss it.

The bizzare thing is that the soft buttons had hardcoded symbols on them! https://youtu.be/XGbPHp6QfkQ?t=447

It was objectively worse than physical buttons, without any advantage at all!

That was a painful watch.

How does that get past any form of testing?

Because Tesla cut all sorts of things to cut costs and called it technically superior. A bunch of people drank the koolade. Other vendors tried to join the party.

It’s not technology, it’s blatant cost cutting that provides a significantly reduced experience.

Screens simplify the design, testing, reduces expense and variance with even more injection molds, wiring for each button, labor costs, etc.

There are nothing but upsides for the auto maker, but it's mostly downsides for the end user. It's flashy, which helps initial sales, but consumers hate ever little inconvenience after having the car for a few months.

> Screens simplify the design, testing

I wouldn't even say this. It just moves the design and testing out of hardware and into software (which, remember, is running on touchscreen hardware that still also needs to be designed and tested).

You can OTA update software buttons though. So arguably a lot of the "testing" can happen for free by customers after it ships.

Because it was easier/cheaper for them and they didn't care that it wasn't as nice for the customer.

An MBA thought they'd get a big bonus because buttons need inventory management whereas touch panels don't.

Wait, touch panels don't need inventory management?

The same reason as the farcical Tesla yoke. Cars are luxury fashion these days, and when it comes to fashion, function goes out the window in service to form. It's not about providing a good product, it's about increasing your social standing.

They couldn't figure out how to make buttons that didn't shed paint.

Physical buttons:

* work much better than bad touchscreen software (which really sucks!), and

* are much cheaper than great touchscreen software (which is very costly to develop and maintain!).

Personally, I'd rather have great touchscreen software, if possible. Put another way, what I really want is an "iPhone on wheels" with a friendly, pretty, snappy interface, but if that isn't a choice, I would take an "early-2000's Blackberry on wheels" with lots of buttons[a]. What I definitely don't want is a "Windows Phone on wheels."[b]

---

[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry

[b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone

I don’t know why it never caught on, but touchscreen buttons with physical finger guides are a pretty great replacement for buttons.

I mocked it up for the first iPad with a cut up screen protector and some silicone. Worked great for buttons of any size, sliders, and all sorts of other controls.

Buttons are much better!

I was car shopping recently and was pleased to see many current year model cars with a decent assortment of physical knobs and buttons. I especially like having media controls on the steering wheel, though most are still missing a 'pause' button (which would work as mute when using the radio).

But still all the major things like volume on/off, climate control settings, etc are all buttons and knobs. There are touch screens but they mostly are just for the media center functions (like adjusting levels, fade, settings, etc) which aren't used much and fine in a touch screen.

This is good because for me the presence of these physical controls is non-negotiable. I use them pretty much every single drive. I'm just not going to buy a car that's a pain in the ass to use every day.

I'm a little bit shocked that no automaker has done physical buttons over a screen like the stream deck. If elgato can do it for $70, surely a car company can figure out how to squeeze it into their margin.

The problem is the stream deck equivalent would have to work in -30C too. It's not impossible, but not trivial either.

Car companies don't really seem too concerned about that. If I park my car outside at -30, basically nothing works until it warms up for ten minutes.

> Volkswagen’s decision to reintroduce physical buttons and controls stems from a deep understanding of customer preferences and safety concerns. [...] By incorporating physical controls, Volkswagen aims to [...]

This is just copying marketing material, not even rephrasing it with obligatory "says" and "claims".

The topic is important, but I think this is not a good article for starting discussion, nor to be giving traffic.

Oh thank goodness finally

Bring back actual radio buttons

In the future If you want a radio it will be $8.00 monthly subscription fee, If you want radio buttons that will be $18.00 monthly fee.

I can imagine a future generation in UI design having no reference for these input elements.

Is this for all brands under the VW auto group? Will we see Porsche bail on the capacitive screens for instance?

No surprise after they absurdly screw up Golf 8, which is kind of pillar of the whole VW brand.

I think it's more of a sign that they're incapable of building software just like almost every other car company.

Car makers are starting to strip out CarPlay as well because they can see the consumer wanting CarPlay to control everything and car companies don't want to give up control.

And those are the cars I won't ever buy. CarPlay has become so important to my driving experience that it's a non-negotiable feature for me. I think a lot of people would say the same.

A lot of survey data supports this sentiment, and I personally agree as well—I wouldn't ever buy a non-CarPlay car in 2024. However, car manufacturers that remove CarPlay may be able to decrease prices, and their target customer is very price sensitive. I think a lot of diehard CarPlay users would consider buying a non-CarPlay car if it were 5–10% cheaper overall.

I think a lot of those 5-10% would be thinking “I’m sure I can add it aftermarket and save $$”

I've never used CarPlay, so I'd happily accept 5-10% cheaper to not have it.

> I think it's more of a sign that they're incapable of building software just like almost every other car company.

I think the general sentiment is that no, in fact, touch screens are a bad UX for cars where you, the driver, are supposed to be looking at the road.

Doesn't matter, there are so many buttons people still have to look at what they're pressing. It's not like playing an album on the screen and putting a CD in your deck is much different distraction wise.

I hear Tesla's software is pretty good. Don't care, still want physical buttons.

Someone could make perfect software that was tailored to my specific desires. I'd still want physical climate and media control buttons.

Every time this comes up I feel like some kind of outlier.

Between the scroll wheel on the dash and voice control, I feel my media control is better than any physical controls I've ever used.

As for climate control, I set it up once and I've never really touched it since (occasionally a passenger wants their side of the car a bit hotter/colder) -- I just don't see a need to adjust it.

> As for climate control, I set it up once and I've never really touched it since

You obviously live in the particular part of the world that these screens are designed for, no seasons and no temperature changes during the day.

Unfortunately the majority of the worlds population don't have this, and find it cooler in the morning and warm in the afternoon requiring a change of temperature.

No, I just set it to a comfortable temperature - during the summer I pre-cool the car before I get in and likewise if I leave it sitting in the sun.

In the winter I make use of the heated seats via voice control.

I think you’re right. And what they’re paid to not be able to understand is that their own solutions are always, always worse than CarPlay (and also I assume the Google version).

Love our Toyota. Loathe the Entune system that would have been awesome in 2003. For Christmas, I’m having that awful homegrown experience replaced with a proper CarPlay setup.

> car companies don't want to give up control.

Why should they? The software world gave up complete control to Apple and Google. Look what that looks like for anyone in software not Apple or Google trying to reach a customer on their typical device:

  - 30% taxation on everything
  - no ability to deploy whatever, whenever
  - strict, capricious review
  - forced to use their payment rails, their user account rails
  - no customer relationship 
  - no runtimes, no hot patches, no deploy whenever
  - forced to jump through upgrade cycles on their schedule or get your app down-ranked
  - you have to fight ads against your own product. Apple/Google make money on those ads.
  - if you want to side-load, that's "scary" on Android and impossible on Apple
  - if you want to deploy to the web, the web is a second class citizen

It's absurd and intensely unfair.

Apple and Google won and locked down the American consumer. You can't easily access them without going through Apple/Google.

If car companies fall for this boondoggle, this is their future:

  - 10% of sticker price of car paid to Apple/Google 
  - ads for other car companies in the dash
  - radio subscription fees going to Apple/Google
  - car telemetry and demographic data sold to competitors
  - car telemetry and demographic data not given to car manufacturer to improve their systems
  - reminders to service direct away from vendor/dealer centers
  - insurance data and analytics plays go to Apple/Google
  - "Fast Pass" systems live in the App Store now and run on Apple payment rails. 
  - Future in-vehicle billing goes to Apple/Google 
  - Future self-navigation / smart fleet solutions to Apple/Google
  - ...

All the hard as hell work of making a car, and you don't get any of these future upsides. It goes to the dumb, unregulated and uncompetitive smart glass companies. Because they got there first and established a duopoly with tendrils a mile deep.

Basically, I always think, "what's the worst I could do or extort from a company if I controlled them completely?" and then figure that's on Apple/Google's roadmap.

I'm not sure if it's 'extorting'. Software is hard. Apple/Google put a lot into developing/maintaining their software. People want it. Car companies don't have it.

I can tell you the future. It's that legacy car companies will be merged, acquired, and reduced to a body style and brand logo with maybe 100 employees. Real competition is coming fast, there's no way they survive.

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