As the world’s Auto manufacturers continue to try and persuade us into EV’s with their high-tech offerings they have replaced the old familiar touchy-feely knobs and buttons with sterile touchscreens.
This has proven to be a problem, because lots of drivers, me included, hate them with more than just a passion.
The cacophony of complaints has reached such a volume now that Volkswagen has finally sat up and paid attention to the wants of their customers and in the process of replacing them according to a recent report in Autocar.
It would seem that our cardigan wearing friends over in Wolfsburg are now planning for all of their future interior deigns to be derived from its ID 2all concept car, which is an EV four door costing about 25k euros.
This car still has two screens, one for the driver controls and one for the infotainment system, but the car will feature physical buttons and switches with which you can control them.
The big question is why do drivers loathe touchscreens so very much? A lot of it comes from the absolute need to be looking at the screen to ensure that you have hit the correct spot on the touch screen, and without looking, there is absolutely no sensory feedback to tell you whether you have or not.
There is no satisfying click or feel to the screen that lets you know you have connected with the correct point.
You have to take your attention off the road and onto the task in the car. This is distracting and potentially lethally dangerous. But over here at Automology, we have highlighted the problem with touchscreens before.
Touchscreens have become absolutely dominant on the market despite the industry knowledge that customers do not like how they make a car a potentially lethal weapon.
In fact, a report published by Bloomberg early last year pointed to 97 percent of new vehicles now sporting touchscreen ‘switches’.
Isn’t it nice to know how the car companies take the customers feelings into account when they design their products.
To me, it has always been a no-brainer: I simply do not want to have to scroll through multiple menus of some flashy gadget as I try to ensure that my finger hovers over the correct arbitrary place on a touch screen whilst I try not to have a coming-together with other road users.
It is simply an accident waiting to happen. Hopefully, other car makers get the message: bring back physical buttons!
