[HN Gopher] Volkswagen Brings Back Physical Buttons
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       Volkswagen Brings Back Physical Buttons
        
       Author : stephc_int13
       Score  : 274 points
       Date   : 2026-01-06 16:59 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.caranddriver.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.caranddriver.com)
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | [dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46486646
        
         | tomhow wrote:
         | Comments moved thither. Thanks!
        
           | nathansherburn wrote:
           | I learnt a new word today. Thanks!
        
       | foxglacier wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | joeevans1000 wrote:
         | We wish for hardware intefaces. Not screen/hardware interfaces.
        
       | jrgaston wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | guywithahat wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | bloudermilk wrote:
       | I'm all for bringing buttons back, but do we really need _that_
       | many buttons on a steering wheel?
        
       | acd wrote:
       | 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.
        
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       (page generated 2026-01-06 23:07 UTC)