You may or may not have driven a Volkswagen, but you’ve probably heard good things about the inside. A lot of people who like the German everyday brand are upset that the cars don’t have physical buttons. VW CEO Thomas Schafer heard what customers had to say and said that the “frustrating” touchscreen controls “definitely did a lot of damage.” Reports say that Darius Watola, VW’s interior designer, has said that the company will now put buttons on all of its new cars. Watola told Autocar that the ID.2All idea and its buttons “showed a new way of doing things for all models.” He used what the people thought in the same way that Schafer did. Of course, touchscreens are still there. There is a big, bold infotainment screen as well as a digital cluster of gauges. On these screens, however, the controls are not hidden behind menus; instead, they are all turned on and off by switches in the middle stack. Being able to trust that real buttons work is nice. There are times when the touch sliders and other controls on the Mk8 Golf and ID.4 don’t work right. They are also hard to find and use in the dark because they don’t have backlighting. Both owners and experts have panned modern VWs for these reasons. In fact, my coworker Jerry Perez said that the ID.4’s technology “ruined” what was otherwise a useful and livable EV. Jerry talked about the entertainment system in the car It’s awful, the worst thing I’ve ever seen. There is no way to get an XM satellite radio channel list. At least, I couldn’t find one after thirty minutes of searching. Then, press the on/off button on the screen for the climate system to turn the air conditioning or heater on or off. You can’t just push the fan speed icon to make it work. No, you have to press the “on” button first before you can change the temperature and speed of the fan. This extra step isn’t needed, and to make things worse, the OS’s climate section wouldn’t work so that I couldn’t turn on the heater over and over. Sometimes, the task was not possible at that time. Why? “I’m not sure.” That short sentence tells you a lot about what to expect: real buttons are coming back in a big way.
