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After complaints, Volkswagen will ditch capacitive steering wheel controls

11 points by dangle1 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago
I thought it was amusing that a luxury automaker dropped touchscreen controls during the supply chain crisis. There's nothing that spells luxury more than real buttons!
joezydeco 4y ago
I spent a lot of time working on projected cap interfaces and it's a tough tradeoff. Companies love the idea because you greatly simplify the cost of manufacturing. That VW steering wheel control can be one piece of molded plastic with a PCB or flex circuit glued behind it and you're done. The cost of tooling and molding separate buttons, or a molded silicone octopus, can be a lot more. Making it work well with sensitivity and haptics is another mountain to climb. Apple is probably the best at that and if there's anything really advanced it's locked behind a few dozen patents and nobody else is using it. The old home button is the best example of what VW was probably trying to shoot for. I'd also wager that VW is killing it because of chip shortages but it making it feel like a win for the customers. You complained we listened etc etc etc.
sklargh 4y ago
My stance on buttons has only hardened over time. I have an ID.4 and an older-but-contemporary VW-family car with enough buttons to necessitate a meaningful overhead switch panel. It's quite jarring how bad the comparative experience between the two cars, even with Airplay enabled. The wheel just feels cheap and unbecoming of the "sensible but not cheap" interior I expect from VW...it is well described in this article. Beyond the wheel's downsides, the center stack has nowhere to place your hand to create a reference point to the contextual menu on the screen...so your hand is simply floating in mid-air, at speed, to change the fan speed in the AC. The light control cluster is also fully haptic, which is downright dangerous...it's extremely hard to turn on your fog lights accurately. With a previous generation VW interior and its driving characteristics this car would be a knockout. Unfortunately, someone decided to cost optimize the interior and call it progress. It's simply dangerous. I suspect my next EV may be a Lighting Pro (assuming base models ever become available again), simply to get physical buttons back with an EV transmission.

11 points by dangle1 4y ago

I thought it was amusing that a luxury automaker dropped touchscreen controls during the supply chain crisis. There's nothing that spells luxury more than real buttons!

joezydeco 4y ago

I spent a lot of time working on projected cap interfaces and it's a tough tradeoff. Companies love the idea because you greatly simplify the cost of manufacturing. That VW steering wheel control can be one piece of molded plastic with a PCB or flex circuit glued behind it and you're done. The cost of tooling and molding separate buttons, or a molded silicone octopus, can be a lot more. Making it work well with sensitivity and haptics is another mountain to climb. Apple is probably the best at that and if there's anything really advanced it's locked behind a few dozen patents and nobody else is using it. The old home button is the best example of what VW was probably trying to shoot for. I'd also wager that VW is killing it because of chip shortages but it making it feel like a win for the customers. You complained we listened etc etc etc.

sklargh 4y ago

My stance on buttons has only hardened over time. I have an ID.4 and an older-but-contemporary VW-family car with enough buttons to necessitate a meaningful overhead switch panel. It's quite jarring how bad the comparative experience between the two cars, even with Airplay enabled. The wheel just feels cheap and unbecoming of the "sensible but not cheap" interior I expect from VW...it is well described in this article. Beyond the wheel's downsides, the center stack has nowhere to place your hand to create a reference point to the contextual menu on the screen...so your hand is simply floating in mid-air, at speed, to change the fan speed in the AC. The light control cluster is also fully haptic, which is downright dangerous...it's extremely hard to turn on your fog lights accurately. With a previous generation VW interior and its driving characteristics this car would be a knockout. Unfortunately, someone decided to cost optimize the interior and call it progress. It's simply dangerous. I suspect my next EV may be a Lighting Pro (assuming base models ever become available again), simply to get physical buttons back with an EV transmission.