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VW Is Putting Buttons Back in Cars Because People Complained Enough
(www.thedrive.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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The fact that they needed to receive a lot of complaints to reconsider makes me wonder - do they even do any kind of usability testing for their products? Anyone who even sat in a car with only touchscreen can tell you the experience is not comfortable.
And I don't think it's just about the price of physical buttons. Buttons are a selling point right now, they could charge a small premium (not in the thousands but ~$200 certainly.
Or follow the BMW plan and put buttons in the cars but make them subscription only.
Never read from a book that summons demons, even as a joke.
I know they said "What you do in High School will affect your entire life" but I didn't think it would be this bad! It was only once! I swear!
It’s probably a cost issue. Running one wire harness to a touch screen is a lot cheaper than running a wire to every button in a car.
It's also a "We can charge $900 for this $80 touchscreen when it fails in 5 years because your car is a brick without it" issue.
I hate the fact that you’re probably right about that reason.
I wonder if it's a planning issue. Buttons you have to actually plan out. Touchscreen? Plop it in.
You have the software design costs, which are high but one-off, so they're amortised over the entire production - and it's either the same or nearly the same across each brand's entire range
Oh they KNEW what they were doing and just didn't give a fuck.
We need a People of Walmart equivalent for this bullshit. Start finding the designer/engineer/manager responsible for this garbage and shame them publicly.
How does this stuff pass any kind of Accessibility regs?
Besides cost, we should probably at least entertain the idea that we are a vocal minority. I'd be completely unsurprised to find out that the majority of people hardly ever touch the controls that got moved to touchscreens and, if they do, they don't really care - they can set them before they set off, or do it while driving and wobble all over the road, but hey everyone does it so what does it matter?