VW is bringing back physical buttons in their newer models, e.g. ID.3 Neo and Polo. Skoda never did away with them.
replyIt's also part of the safety rating of Euro NCAP, and AFAIK China mandated physical buttons for important functions as well.
The wheel in an Enyaq before the facelift is the same haptic one-button shitshow. They have some buttons that act like shortcuts below the infotainment. But it the screen is still essentialistisk for managing crucial functions.
replyThe steering wheel on my Scala has 8 buttons, two knobs (which can be clicked), 2 flappy paddles and 3 stalks...
replyI have a 2021 Skoda Octavia and boy do I have to touch the screen a lot.
replyYes, you can open the AC screen by tapping the AC button but then you still need use the touch screen for any actual AC adjustments.
It’s a joke that that’s legal. Looking at my phone is illegal, yet it’s many times faster.
My 2025 Audi A3 is pretty good with buttons and knobs. The only time I need to touch the screen (other than for CarPlay) is to tell it, "no, you still cannot steal my data" every time I turn the car on.
replyMy Hyundai Ioniq 5 has Car Play and knobs and buttons. It's not either or.
replyThat's in fact one of the pros of carplay/android auto as opposed to just putting your phone in one of those windscreen attached holders; you get to use the volume buttons on the steering wheel. Annoyingly my car doesn't have play/pause buttons on there, but if it had, they would work.
replyEven on the holder, you'd use Bluetooth, and those buttons work. With Android Auto/CarPlay you can also use a joystick, if your car has one.
replyOur BMW i3 also has CarPlay and it’s all knobs and buttons for interaction!
replyLots of modern cars cater for this. It’s actually a marketing point with manufacturers like the VW group publicising how they’re bringing back tactile interfaces. And some ranges of cars never took that away (for example Jaguar).
replyHow can they be "bringing it back" if they already offer it? So they can't be currently catering for it.
replyAlso, the Jaguar F Pace was a big screen with the only knob being the vents, so they did take the majority away.
They did away with a lot of physical buttons in the past. Now they are in the process of bringing them back. There are some models still sold with the old design while all new models have physical again.
replyAlso some of their brands had physical buttons all along. I think Skoda never removed them in the Elroq or Enyak.
Even physical controls can be a downgrade if poorly implemented.
replyR.I.P. Anton Yelchin, who brought us joy with his portrayal of Chekov in the Star Trek films, before losing his life at only 27, from a switch poorly masquerading as a brake lever.
In my mind it's always because he played Kyle Reese once and the car was just confused about it.
replyAt this point, I feel like automakers should be criminally liable for redesigning the automatic shifter UX. It's probably the 3rd/4th most dangerous control in the vehicle; why do we want people to have to relearn it every time they're in an unfamiliar car?
reply(I stick with a manual for my vehicles, so fortunately I'm mostly immunized against the madness.)
I bought a BYD that is as close to that as I could.
replyhttps://esv6hz7yeij.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/b...
From everything I’ve read about BYD, I’m thinking it’s almost certainly going to be the car I buy after my move to Mexico.
replyBut still no pause button, only mute! Just maddening, do they think I only listen to radio?
replyIn my Hyundai pressing the mute button while on Bluetooth/Android Auto pauses playback and mutes. Pressing again resumes playback and volume to previous level.
replyThat's a great solution, I wish mine did that.
replyNot only does my wife’s vehicle pause CarPlay audio when I mute it, it can also pause the radio, and pick up when I play it again.
replyMust be frustrating for the radio host to have to wait mid-sentence for you to unmute.
replyPresumably pressing Play will pause when already playing? Like it's been a case for like 40 years or so?
replyWell, either I'm very dumb and didn't think to press play on the car I own to solve the problem I've had for years, or you're missing the fact that there is no play button on BYD cars.
replyI wonder which it is.
There's clearly a play button on that photo referenced in this thread. Whether your car has that is irrelevant, we're not discussing YOURS.
replyAh yes, the play button, and also clearly the reverse play button on the opposite side, which presumably makes the audio play in reverse.
replyI have the same car, those are the previous/next buttons.
You feel better about yourself when you patronize this much?
replyWe're literally talking about a car wheel, how do you get off on it so much?
There's no Play button on the whole wheel? That roller, doesn't it also play/pause when pressed?
The roller mutes when pressed.
replyThis is what set me off:
> Like it's been a case for like 40 years or so?
That thing set you off? Really?
replyJust guessing they wouldn't have said it if it wasn't the case.
replyOh yes the mute button, very useful when trying to pause a podcast :(
replyI use CarPlay all the time and I almost never use the touchscreen - as you shouldn't while driving. The car has buttons and knobs, on the dash and on the wheel, to call up all sorts of options in the UI. The only time I need to touch the screen is if I want a full screen map (instead of the three-panel usual view).
replyI'm unconvinced. Navigating the UI via knobs seems much more distracting to me. I have to reach farther in my vehicle, but more importantly, I have to watch the screen anyway to make sure the knob ends up on the right control.
replyAm I missing something?
It really depends on what you are doing, but yes - if you need to look at the screen to do anything, you still fail safety. A knob is nicer than a touchscreen because you don't have to adjust to a moving vehicle to hit the right spot of the screen (for this same reason recent airplanes have buttons in addition to touchscreens).
replyStill, if you are very used to the UI, you can say the music app is one item down from the map, and the phone is two, so you can count presses. I was able to SMS people with a Nokia phone with a hand on the steering wheel and one on the phone (back when it was not forbidden).
Voice controls?
replyMy 2023 Mazda CX-5 uses knobs to control car play, it basically acts like using Tab key to walk through selectable UI elements.
replyMazda has knobs and buttons that can even control carplay
replySame with Toyota (fun fact—I discovered earlier this year, over three years that I bought my Prius, that there were whole displays in the dashboard I didn’t know existed while trying to adjust the volume from the steering wheel while I was backing out of my garage, but because the wheel was rotated 180°, I hit the wrong button. Turns out the navigation between different info displays is 2-dimensional and the ↑/↓ gives additional views into some of the information that I had no idea existed, as well as revealing some functionality I didn’t know was there for the HVAC).
replyI believe even they dropped it in the latest cars, unfortunately
replyYeah, the latest CX-5 and 6e went all in Tesla screen derangement and folks don't love it.
replyAll the effort put in to stopping drivers distracting themselves with phones while driving, then we get big distracting touchscreens with apps front+centre in many new cars, and apparently that's OK.
replyI think it's just typical that this is allowed because it maximises profits; let's be real, a big fat touch screen and nothing else, is significantly cheaper than all of those expensive buttons, knobs, dials and switches that have been engineered and tested to perfection.
replyDid cars get cheaper when they took all of those out? I certainly didn't notice.
Some still have knobs. My mom's caddy has knobs in front of the armrest that control everything, so the touchscreen is optional but works just as well for those that want it.
replyJeep may not be modern, but all of the windows, climate, etc, are physical buttons.
replyIt will also depreciate by 50% or more in 5 years, so there’s that. Honda and Toyota mostly use knobs and buttons for important controls and retain their value much better than Stellantis trash.
replyMy Mazda controls Auto/CarPlay with a physical controller so it's not either/or.
replyLast time I got a rental car, it was a Mazda 3. I really enjoy how the dial works.
reply