this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
911 points (99.1% liked)

Technology

68812 readers
6950 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Manufacturers are slowly starting to listen to what car journalists and owners have been complaining about for almost a decade: Cramming all the car’s functions into a touchscreen is an inferior solution to having dedicated physical controls for key tasks.

Among the manufacturers known to be switching back to buttons is Volkswagen, whose latest vehicles have gone touch-control-crazy with functions either buried inside a touchscreen menu or relocated to an annoying haptic feedback panel.

We’ve known for a while that Volkswagen was considering putting back some buttons in its cars, but the manufacturer never officially acknowledged this. Now VW’s design boss, Andreas Mindt, has admitted to Autocar that this approach was a mistake and that the automaker is backtracking on this trend.

“From the ID.2all onwards, we will have physical buttons for the five most important functions—the volume, the heating on each side of the car, the fans and the hazard light—below the screen,” Mindt told Autocar. He added, “They will be in every car that we make from now on. We will never, ever make this mistake anymore. On the steering wheel, we will have physical buttons. No guessing anymore. There's feedback, it's real, and people love this. Honestly, it's a car. It's not a phone.”

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 166 points 1 month ago (8 children)

Great. Do away with the unnecessary telemetry next.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I used to work with big companies collecting IoT data. 90% were collecting telemetry without knowing why. Or having business goals they could easily achieve in other ways, without hoovering everything and violating our privacy.

The rest were doing it so they could sell it to data brokers and make money.

None of them were trying to push privacy as a competitive advantage.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (3 children)

None of them were trying to push privacy as a competitive advantage.

This is why I don't have a new car. I'm hoping I get one where I have access to my own data (in eg. Home Assistant), and the manufacturer doesn't.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The thing the vast majority doesn't care about and that doesn't prevent them from buying cars and that you'll have to live with unless you just keep driving your old car forever?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I'll eventually have to buy a new car, yes. But I'll also be looking into replacing the car's cellular antenna with a dummy load if possible. A good car shouldn't depend on cellular networks to be able to function.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Unfortunately, a lot of them are bad https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/categories/cars/

I'm looking for reading on cars that don't break when you disable the cellular antenna, but haven't found much so far.

Even if you disable the antenna, who is to say it doesn't cache telemetry locally that isn't just sucked up by the dealer the next time you bring your car in?

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 112 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Nothing to do with the euroNCAP guidance that came out earlier in the year, of course.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Nah I'm sure that carmakers being forced to do this only factored in a little bit.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I’ve been assured that tHe MaRkEt will solve everything, though!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Great, now unfuck the car I already have

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Would be hilarious if they recalled them and superglued buttons over the touchscreen interface.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 month ago

Step 1: Make insanely stupid design decision to save $2

Step 2: Sell reversal as an upgrade

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 month ago

Glad they return to the old proven ways. It’s so much safer to have proper buttons and dials.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Now wait a second! Hold on! Let's get one thing straight here......

.......buttons should also return to phones.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

I'd settle for reasonable ports

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Bring back the Blackberry.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

i would be willing to pay so much money to have a physical horizontal keyboard in my phone

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Not sure your age, but that used to be a thing. A little slide out keyboard as a way to transition the gap between fully onscreen controls, and the old flip phones. This would have been 2003-2009 roughly.

I've never understood the cell phone market thinking. If you have 1 flip phone, it's suddenly ALL flip phones for the next 2 years. Then its a candybar style for the next 3 years. Then one phone gets wider, they all get wider. Then one gets credit card slim, they all get credit card slim. Now for the past decade it's all been black rectangles with no personality besides 1 logo on the back. Just a touchscreen, and a fuck you.

The market is filled with different customers. One wants a keyboard. One doesn't. Why can't they both find what they want in different products on the market?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (7 children)

This will be another nice side effect of Tesla shitting the bed. They were the ones that started this trend and now that they are out of fashion, it will become unfashionable again.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (17 children)

honestly, I'm all for buttons on phones too, I miss my sideout keyboard.

load more comments (17 replies)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Whoever thought touchscreens were a good idea for a console needs to be shot

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

They are grat for things that benwfit from havibg flexible touch anywhere interaction like maps.

They suck for anything you want to touch without looking away from the road, like temp controls.

Honda still including buttons and knobs for climate controls was a huge factor for my last purchase. A few brands were instantly rejected because they had climate controls in the touch screen and I had already hated that experience from rentals and my in law's cars.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Nah you should make the steering wheel also a touchscreen, that would be smart. 🙃

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Swipe left to go left. Swipe right to go right. Pinch to accelerate. Say in a clear voice "Please begin braking" to decelerate.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

The world is healing

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Touch screens in cars has always been a fuckin' stupid idea, and I say that with the sincerest hope that nobody died because they had to look at the touchscreen to know where to tap to change the radio station because commercials came on

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Someone has died due to a touchscreen. A woman had a Tesla which you put in park forwards or reverse with a touchscreen. She’d always had trouble with it and got it wrong and reversed into a pond. That meant the power went out so she couldn’t open that door. To get to the emergency escape handle you have to remove the speakers in the doors. So she drowned.

The kicker? Her husband was a millionaire and he immediately put out a statement absolving Tesla and musk from any wrongdoing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Billionaires, both of them, I think.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

It's incredible it took them this long, considering how obvious it is. But good - it's nice to see at least one thing getting less and not more shitty for once, however tiny.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I dare say that that part of the reason behind this decision is that they are also required to meet safety standards.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

No it's the only reason they are coming back, if they cared they wouldn't have got ridden of the buttons in the first place

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

But why can we not have button phones as well? I miss tactile feedback.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Finally saw a VW Buzz on the streets- I fell in love instantly. Not sure of the specs but I think she's mighty pretty and it makes me want to load up my band and do a cross country trip with a fun montage sequence.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Thank you!

(Though, to be fair, I'm not sure how much they deserve to be thanked for undoing a change that should never have been made in the first place.)

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hyundai and now VW? Who's next?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago

Most of them, probably. It's a new requirement in EU to get 5/5 stars safety rating.

That's also why it's specifically 5 features - that's the bare minimum.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is incredible news because that means my future GTI will have buttons.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago
load more comments
view more: next ›