this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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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.”

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 16 hours 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] 10 points 15 hours ago (1 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.

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

3rd party stereos in classic cars seems to be the only way to get that.

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

Yep, that's basically what I have.

I'm ready to buy a factory new car, when I find one where the data is mine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

It’s too bad LocalMotors never really worked out. It could have been an open source car company, but instead it was a weird designed by committee expensive car.

Factory cars these days are so locked down that in order to replace some sensors or controllers you have to log into a paid (like sometime $30+ an day) online portal to enable the new part. It’s super fucked.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

nymea.io was one of the few who were full private, but I think they got bought out or something