Volkswagen Brings Back Physical Buttons
Key topics
As Volkswagen dusts off physical buttons for their interiors, a lively debate erupts about the perils of innovation and the consequences of ditching tactile controls. Some commenters, like observationist, warn that fixing problems can create unrealistic customer expectations, while others, such as nostrademons and game_the0ry, counter that not adapting can lead to being outdone by competitors and that consumer pressure is a healthy market force. The discussion reveals a consensus that companies must innovate to stay ahead, with some, like toss1, citing Steve Jobs' strategy of self-cannibalization to stay competitive. Amidst the discussion, a pointed question from ethagnawl lingers: what justified the initial shift away from physical buttons, given that many devices are actually better with them?
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
15m
Peak period
131
0-6h
Avg / period
20
Based on 160 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Jan 6, 2026 at 11:59 AM EST
3d ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Jan 6, 2026 at 12:14 PM EST
15m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
131 comments in 0-6h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Jan 9, 2026 at 12:07 PM EST
52m ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
How many other execs would have the courage to do that vs letting the current thing (microdrive player) settle and holding the new thing (flash memory player) in reserve to launch only in response to a competitor gaining traction?
It's a good thing when consumers put pressure on corporate management. That's free market economics working efficiently.
I felt inspired to channel a little Douglas Adams - the whole removing buttons thing is so anti-consumer, it'd be such a PR win for some company to champion the return of physical buttons that it seems like a no-brainer for us consumers, but management types have been charging ahead with eliminating buttons for almost a decade now. Less wiring, more opportunities to nickel and dime, etc.
>>> That's free market economics working efficiently
The enshittification paradox - what the customers want is not what they get, because the UX and UI designers and the MBAs in charge know better than those silly customers. They have degrees! From Harvard and Stanford and Yale!
For your sentiments to be true several important parts of the pipeline and market need to be dysfunctional already.
Most parts of the market are dysfunctional and have been for a long time.
Actually I take that back, we don't really have markets anymore, we just have oligopolies.
To give a very concrete and potentially hazardous example: I have an induction range which has no physical controls but has a touch interface which requires various combinations of tapping, holding and sliding fingers. To say nothing of the fact that this is useless for people who have significant visual impairments, how am I supposed to turn it off if there's an electrical fire because a pot boils over or something? Is the expectation that I reach into boiling water that potentially has current running through it and hope to tap my fingers in the right place? Am I supposed to try to yank the power? Or is the expectation that I just walk outside and call the fire department?
I believe Toyota did this frequently in their Prius models, where things were different from mainline Toyota just because, like the center-mounted speedometer and the joystick shifter.
You can live a LONG time without a working ... radio tuning knob, if the other 99.9% of the controls work. Or if the right passenger door lock button fails, really who cares. But when the central control of the entire car fails, its scrap.
Very profitable for the manufacturer.
Safety is in fact the big selling point of the device. The surface doesn't get above food temperature. If you boil a pot over, move the pot and just wipe it up with a rag, just like you would spilled tea or whatever.
That's not to say there aren't human interface issues with relying on capacitive sensors[1], but safety surely isn't one of them.
[1] Actually "boiling over" is in fact the shortcoming: what happens is that your sauce spills over the controls and causes the sensors to glitch, which the device detects as a failure and shuts down before you can wipe it. Then you have to reset all the temperatures.
Also the breaker itself is like $130+, plus slightly higher chance to nuisance trip, so fat chance any builder is putting that in voluntarily.
The folks who just want a drop-in replacement are probably not getting induction - they're the ones who complain about the necessary electrical upgrades being too expensive.
I think I paid like $30 for the breaker, putting GFCI on the oven would have raised the cost of the entire house by more than 0.1%. It's not something people other than rich people or people in areas that rapidly adopt new code and also live in new construction are doing.
Cool is generally bad in UX design.
Maybe it can be implemented in a single hand gesture. But the point is pot or pan can be control interface itself.
Why are they frustrating? Because every time I have to clean the stove top (which is after most uses) wiping the controls results in activating them. Sometimes things boil over or spit out hot fat while cooking and you need to clean it up right away (or it will get cooked on like welded steel) and you end up switching the simmer on the back element to high and drop the oven temperature by 100 degrees. A zillion beeps and cute jingle tones don't help, they just contribute to sensory overload.
It's a great cooktop but I would prefer physical controls that are not on the cook surface.
I'm not sure whether this is also true for your induction range. Certainly on generic table lamps and such, the touch-activated buttons are the hobby slop we'd buy from amazon.
Anyway, I've never really heard anyone offer performance, likeability, or usability as a reason for touchscreens in cars. Glad to see the industry get rid of them, at the decadeslong speed you'd expect from a dinosaur industry with a regulatory forcefield.
But that’s the issue. Grey suits in boardrooms with no passion for driving making decisions based on cost and homogenizing manufacturing amongst the car lines.
For example someone at VWAG thought it was a good idea to replace the 911 key with a button, and dials with a screen. Why? Cost and stupid tech fantasies fueled by EV manufacturers and Apples next-gen CarPlay nonsense.
* Tesla infotainment is fast, responsive, good software
* Other OEMs struggle to compete in this space
* Other OEMs have software updates that require dealer visits
So the OEMs tried to emulate having a big screen UI and shoving more functionality into software, so they can update it.
Not to say Tesla gets all the credit, or that OEMs didn't start leaning on screens more and more before then. As screens got cheaper, customers demanded bigger screens, and OEMs felt like getting rid of buttons and shoving the functionality in the screen UI was the best way to appease their customers.
A big and higher definition screen provides a ton more context from the navigation's map with wider sidebars that can contain more information, while also providing more contrast and better legibility.
Usual Android auto screen sizes and resolutions feel to me like the difference between looking at a 32" monitor and an early 4.5" LED mobile screen. Too small for context, low definition, and not enough space to display additional useful information (so you don't have to touch the display every 5 seconds).
As someone with a 2003 Golf (with a tape deck) I find the screen on my iPhone sufficient to get me to where I want to go. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Though also I would wonder if bad market research was a problem. I bet if, 10 years ago, you showed someone a traditional VW interface, or a touchscreen thing, they'd go "oh, cool, touchscreens". They might feel differently if they actually _used_ the thing, but if you skip that bit of the research... It's fairly common that companies make changes based on what customers _say_ they want, because customers are not necessarily good at realising what they _actually_ want until they experience it.
1 may be one the same button as cruese control
2, 5 may be on shifter knob panel
3 and 4 are the only new buttons on steering wheel
2 I've usually found in the buttons near the shifter
3 I'm not sure what you're referring to? If it's the little screen generally between the speed and battery/rpm display those controls are usually on the steering wheel in my experience.
4 Steering wheel, in every car I've seen it in and that's often standard across the models
5 This one I've only had one experience with and that's my wife's Kia Niro EV and those are on what would be shifter paddles in a car with a gear box.
The number of buttons on steering wheels between my decade old gas Golf and my wife's few year old Niro EV are shockingly similar though presented and arranged differently. Both have 4 buttons and two directional pairs (audio control for skipping on one, volume on the other, cruise control speed on another and one dimension of the hud paging on the last) though the Niro has the pairs as rocker switches that can click for one extra button I suppose.
Automotive hardware is extremely difficult to get right. Buttons are a solved problem. Touchscreens are getting there. Everything else is a gamble in an area where failures have huge risks. OEMs don't like those. We'll probably continue seeing haptic feedback on things like wheels and shifters, but haptic touchscreens seem to be on the way out these days.
I think of an initiative GM had, I think circa 2000, to standardize branding across all their vehicles and notably use the same buttons from the bottom of the line compacts up to flagships like the HUMMER, Cadillac, and the GMC Suburban. Sensitized by media coverage whenever I looked at these buttons sitting in a GM car or looking through the windows I felt that it diluted the higher end brands.
Also Everyone: I will never buy a car without CarPlay / Android Auto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CarPlay (March 10, 2014)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Auto (March 19, 2015)
If the music from my phone could controlled by big thunky buttons, that would be great. I get upset with CarPlay and its touch interface all the time.
There is also the issue that I simply don’t trust the car companies with my data. They have proven they can’t be trusted with it, and CarPlay is a way to get a lot of that data isolated (I hope).
I’m fine with a display for some things, a backup camera demands it, but I want to control it all with tactile controls, not touch.
I would say that 2005 was peak car, except 2000 is slightly better because they had not yet gone nuts with serialized components.
(another reason is that direct inject fuel injection hadn't taken over yet, it's a disaster)
Then they get it home and find the app is crapware full of ads and nags, or the touch screen is impossible to use unless your fingers are as dry as the sahara or such.
That has to be a big part of it... especially if the customers' reference point is modern touchscreen cell phones (high quality displays, fast, etc).
But, the touch screen in my Honda is NOTHING like my iPhone. It's slow. It's not a good display. The software package is lackluster. It has a "apps" page, but there's no app store for crying out loud!!!
At least the screen is only for radio stuff and a few car monitoring things. The HVAC is still manual buttons.
It isn't hard to see, tbh. Think about the controls in a Tesla from a few years ago. They had physical controls for drive selection, turn signals, cruise control/TACC, cruise control distances, volume, next and previous track, seat controls, and manual overrides for the automatic wipers. The things that were used a little less were on the touch screen, with automation attempting to mitigate the downsides of this. This largely consisted of climate, manual overrides for the automatic headlights, and things like suspension settings.
So, what has VW made better here? Well, they have physical controls for turn signals, drive selection, volume, next and previous track, etc. They appear to use the touch screen for much of the climate control and entertainment settings, including appearing to retain the much maligned touch settings for seat heaters.
I'm not convinced that this is better. By contrast, my Nissan has driving settings like lane centering and seat heater controls on physical buttons... right next to my left knee where they are nearly inaccessible while driving.
TBH, the whole debate around this needs to be recentered around actual ergonomics and less around touch vs physical.
The climate controls should be physical buttons. Touchscreen climate controls tend to be giant messes requiring multiple interactions and often (hi, Tesla!) have controls in unpredictable locations. And fine-tuning the climate while driving is not exactly unusual.
Of course, physical buttons can be awful too. I’ve been in a Mercedes SUV where the A/C state is controlled by some bizarre split physical buttons and 100% of front passengers surveyed are entirely unable to confidently figure out what they do even after reading the test and contemplating for a while.
You can buy buttons if you have disability that makes it difficult to use touchscreens.
Tesla fans sung the praises of other stupid ideas like the Highland's indicator buttons and the Plaid's 'yoke', both of which were silently shelved after buyer dissatisfaction.
> Why defend an obvious regression?
Because it's not a regression. Whenever I use my older cars with manual controls I see no benefit. Most of the time I still have to look at it - it has a dial or little screen to know what exact temperature you are setting.
So, if I'm using physical buttons, how do I set the temperature to 24° (75° for US-folks) without looking away from the road?
Or set the radio to 106.9MHz? Or the cruise control to 88km/h (55mph)?
In all cases, I still need to look at an indicator.
You don’t. Instead you observe it’s a bit too warm and press the down button once or twice. Source: I used to do this regularly when I owned a car with excellent buttons.
> Or set the radio to 106.9MHz?
By pressing preset 6 by feel. Or by glancing for 1/4 second to find preset 6 (which is a clearly labeled button that never moves) and pressing it.
> Or the cruise control to 88km/h (55mph)?
By driving 55mph and pressing the stalk in the appropriate direction?
This stuff was all worked out very nicely in the late 1980s by UX experts who put very serious effort into making cars with an excellent user experience.
I can beat that. 2011 Prius. USB-A port is inside the center console at the bottom of the back vertical interior panel.
You have to lift the center console lid, move all of the crap you've stored inside the console away from the lower rear of the compartment to reach the port, then by feel (unless you want to turn your head 100 degrees to the right and look down while driving) attempt to slot the USB cable into the receptacle.
I hate sitting around with a cold butt waiting on the infotainment system to boot...
The number of times I've got gone back to check something and it was ruined sitting 200deg lower than it should have been is more than I can count.
There are some very real benefits to touch interfaces in cooking (primarily ease of cleaning a solid flat surface, and manufacturers don’t need to worry about moisture ingress), but it’s pretty hard to make one that actually consistently works in a way that won’t accidentally burn your house down when your cat walks across the cooktop in the middle of the night. I’m personally going to stick to knobs and buttons in the meantime.
Regardless of how the controls work, you can make a cooktop that, functionally, will not set your cat on fire: use an induction stove. Unless your cat ends up in a pan or your cat is ferromagnetic, the stove won’t heat it :)
Oh, and a switch for the light.
If you are on a highway - driver assist is probably enough. In city you can fiddle while waiting for traffic lights.
Again, this assumes you are particularly mentally challenged and car has very poorly designed controls. Majority of people haven't got an issue with it.
Consider the key fob to my car. It has two buttons on it with icons - lock and unlock. You'd think that's what it does. Not so. It has all kinds of behaviors based on how you press the buttons! Thinks like setting of a siren (which won't turn off until you put the key in the ignition), opening all the doors or only one of them, opening the windows, putting the car in "sentry" mode (whatever that is), etc.
I also got to wondering why the battery in it never died, like it would do in other key fobs. It turns out it recharges when inserted into the ignition lock! (I actually kinda liked that feature!)
We both know that cannot be true.
Phone.
You can still buy niche phones with a physical keyboard right now.
The idea that, because we aren't willing to pay $700 for a garbage tier "smartphone" with spotty support and basement level specs is somehow evidence that we don't actually want keyboards on our phones is bad faith.
Before smartphones I was buying feature phones with full keyboards too, including things like the Samsung Alias 2.
Meanwhile, folding phones, despite being a niche, are getting real attention by manufacturers, because it's a "new" gimmick and can drive sales.
Schadenfreude maybe after watching people interact with their UI. I regularly drive in an ID4 and it's hilarious how terrible the whole experience is from a user UX point of view.
I can't speak for other manufacturers, but having lived with a Tesla I can say these are some justifications, beyond cost:
- Standardization. With some exceptions where hardware is different, once you've driven one Tesla you can drive any Tesla. I love physical buttons too, but I don't love finding the drive mode buttons in a different place every time I rent a car, or trying to figure out how this one does the windshield wipers, or headlights, or radio tuning, or parking brake, or whatever.
- Simplification. Along with the mandate to reduce physical controls, Tesla also pushed toward making everything automatic. I never have to think about my headlights (and they dim in a circle around any detected vehicle in front of me), and I don't have to think much about drive modes either. It does a good job of automatically picking the correct direction when you tap the brake, and has a good mechanism for auto-switching between forward and reverse as you manipulate the brake and wheel.
- OTA updates. When something isn't working out for people they can make adjustments. They can also add new features (AI assistant, more automation) without mounting new buttons.
There are some silly choices, like the glove box (which is tiny and not very useful anyway) requiring a voice command or the touchscreen. And some people don't like the touchscreen vents (I do, surprise surprise). But most of it makes good sense.
to me it feels like a cost cutting measure needed for Tesla to survive. Elon and his reality distortion field made it look like a touch screen (and no controls) are superior - and all the car companies started mimicking it out of fear to miss out on something
There were two converging factors: number one is that there was a time where it was considered a sign of sophistication / progress. Definitely a case of form over function, but remember this was the era when everything Tesla did was cool and everyone was chasing them.
The second factor is cost. Physical buttons are expensive to design, certify and manufacture (most people don't have a notion of how high the durability bar is for everything that goes into a car interior). Once you have to have a touchscreen anyway you can (theoretically) remove almost all physical controls.
Reminds me a lot of the skeuomorphism from classic iOS and WebOS, but cleaned up with elements of modern “flat” designs.
Mine still cold boots/watchdogs every time you start the car in what I suspect a Patriot-style fix of numerous issues. It still has confirmation dialogs over confirmation dialogs (e.g. when selecting CarPlay you get to confirm your choice three times). Voice input is still unusable: the only thing it reliably recognizes is when I tell it to fuck off (and it scolds me for that). Door locks/keyless became more unreliable, which I frankly doubted was even possible. Everything is lagging, especially after cold boot: getting to entering nav destination after you sit in the car takes an eternity.
Both times, the touchscreen-only controls were such a pain in the butt that we vowed we would never purchase such a car. It was a timesaver, because in that period our family has gotten two new (to us) cars, and our experiences with the rental Volkswagons allowed us to exclude an entire manufacturer from consideration.
If they haven't re-broken their interiors by the next time we look for a new car, I guess we'll have to consider them again.
The Equinox EV is one of the better EVs to offer AWD out there right now, matching the range of a Model 3 at a decently better price and obviously massively better UI. Slower charging is the only real downside.
And a used pre-2020s Bolt is a really excellent value, because they are insanely cheap (under $15k) and due to the whole catching-on-fire thing they all had their batteries replaced in the last few years, which means you get a much newer battery than the mileage/age of the car would suggest. The Bolt is replacing a much older Leaf, so bumping the range up to ~200 miles from ~70 is a huge upgrade for us.
https://www.caranddriver.com/photos/g64477839/2026-subaru-ou...
I don't want a screen at all, but reversing cameras are now mandatory so that one is probably not going away.
I like the "return to real buttons" trend but it's less about buttons and more about the appropriate physical controls for the operation being performed. The control itself should both indicate current status and provide for changing it. For example, things that are "on" or "off" should have a switch with distinct "on" and "off" positions, not a single pushbutton that toggles. Temperature or volume or blower speed should be dials or sliders that move between two physical end points. If you have to repeatedly push or hold an "up" or "down" button and look at a display to set the temperature that's suboptimal. Moving a slider or dial where the physical position corresponds to the actual setting is so much better.
My Mercedes is absolutely terrible at this. Having owned it for a couple of years now I still have no intuition about what most of the steering wheel buttons do. On the other hand, they get cruise control right: It's a simple stalk on the steering column. Up for faster. Down for slower. Easy to find and operate without even a glance off of the road.
If there were a few carefully chosen single-purpose buttons on the steering wheel I could maybe get on board. But if there are too many or they are multifunction then it's cognitive overload.
I don't mind this feature is somewhere deep in the menus of the driver settings area. However, if you're tripping over settings like this either the car is poorly designed or your routinely delving into settings areas you really shouldn't be in while driving.
It's awesome. I've never had a better cruise control button setup than in my Subarus. They're usually slightly different by model/year but we're consistently good and easy to use without looking.
I have never accidentally while driving found any settings menu getting in the way there. Yes there buttons there that do that. But only in the same way as my 25 year ago cars did: basic settings you set once and never again and that are in those menus probably for historic reasons as they were there pre-screen being standard in the car and they just left them.
I don't use my phone at all while driving so all of the phone buttons could go away in my car. I hate audio assistants, so that button could go away too. The dash control switch could be on the dash.. etc etc. I'm not a UI person and I'm sure some committee fought over every square inch of that space, but just personal preference.
I’ll be in the market for a new car soon and I am only considering ones with touch buttons for HVAC. It’s not worth getting into an accident trying to change the temperature.
I was given a rental once from a dealership who was doing warranty work on my truck. It was one of those weird months in the midwest, where the temperature could be 80 or 30 depending on the day, and this day just happened to be 30. I realized shortly after I got onto the road that it wasn't getting any warmer, because A/C was on. There were no buttons to turn it down or off, only a touchscreen, so I just did the 15 minute drive home of shame in 30 degree weather with the AC blasting. That was all it took to make me swear off -ever- buying a car without physical buttons.
I entered a 150k € Mercedes two weeks ago and the display looked very similar to a toy display I got for my godchild.
It's absolutely not too little too late for them.
What happened to them is that they're still #2 globally and make 5.5x as many cars as Tesla.
It's a shame too. I drive a 2016 VW GTI and it's an absolute joy. The last era of VW worth any consideration. Small touchscreen that shows current playing track, or carplay/map, but still with physical controls for volume and AC. I was glad to see Doug DeMuro shred them for the electronics in the newer model.
I'll be driving my 2016 car and 2008 truck into the grave, at which point I'll replace them with something of the same era or older. There are some enticing ways to die in a fiery car crash, but eating a median while trying to finger stab a mid ass ipad knockoff for control of the defroster is not among them.
A nice balance of buttons and screen is just fine ... (imo).
Whether this specific example is great or not remains to be seen - but I appreciate the direction.
When I vehicle shop, my budget isn't endless, but it's fairly uninhibited because I keep cars for an average of 10+ years and I like driving and want it to be an experience I enjoy. That said, companies just aren't making cars I like much anymore. I /loathe/, utterly /detest/ crossovers, and that's the vast majority of new vehicles being brought to market. Even vehicle lines that I previously liked, such as the BMW 3 series, have become enshittified in weird ways that dilute the core concept of that particular vehicle line. I'd love an E92 M3 w/ DCT but made in 2025/2026, but that's not made anymore and I think the current G80 M3 is a much worse car in every way that matters to me, even though the S58 is in some ways a better engine.
It's really disappointing and frustrating trying to find a decent vehicle these days.
Ironically people are constantly surprised every time this comes up that I cross-shopped a Mazda 3 vs an Audi RS3, but if you put aside some of the cost difference (which isn't as large as you think, it's 50% more, not 2x the price), Mazda is trying to up its game and move into the Japanese Luxury space to compete with Lexus, Acura, and Infinity rather than the other Japanese brands. Some issues aside, I think the execution on the interior of the Mazda 3 Premium is pretty great, especially at its price point ($40k base).
General cautionary tale: just coz a company is successful, doesn't mean it's doing _everything_ right. Plenty of folks who love their Teslas would prefer a few more buttons (and door handles on the inside, etc) if given the choice. Could say similar things about some choices Apple made.
Next, they need to make the buttons more physically distinguishable, instead of panels of identical buttons
The dashboards of older pre-1990s cars had a wide variety of buttons, switches, and knobs, all with different locations and feels. Of course today's designers would see this as an unclean mess driven more by manufacturing considerations than "design" considerations, but it was a much lower driver workload to operate those "messy" controls. The different position, size, shape, and feel of each control allowed easy operation by just feel, without taking eyes off the road.
In contrast, the all-the-same rows of buttons on modern cars are still hard to operate after familiarization; which one is the front vs rear defrost?
Moving many buttons to the steering wheel overcomes many of these limitations, but again, rows of identical buttons do not help. Consider a Formula One steering wheel with 20+ controls. They are 100% custom and can be made any way they want. They make the OPPOSITE of identical controls — they are all different and brightly colored.
The point of driver cockpit design is NOT some clean asthetic.
The point is to use every available mnemonic device so a driver under heavy workload can recognize the controls instantly and reliably.
[0] https://www.wired.com/2014/05/formula-1-steering-wheels/
[1] https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/f1-explains-how-f...
[2] https://medium.com/formula-one-forever/the-nerve-center-of-a...