When you are grooving on a drive through a scenic spot and a great song pops up on the radio, do you ever want to just crank up the radio? But with touchscreens in today’s models, you have to press a slider or a button, sometimes repeatedly.
That kind of problem might be changing slowly, as some carmakers—especially European models from Mercedes-Benz, VW and Audi—are moving away from capacitive-touch sliders on touchscreens, a kind of sensor. Capacitive touchscreens use an electronic sensor that detects a user’s touch by measuring the changes in an electrostatic field. A grid of electrodes creates the field and when a person’s finger (which is conductive) comes in contact, it disrupts the field.
The move to more physical controls is partly driven by safety standards from the Euro NCAP starting in 2026 that has responded to safety proponents who argue that touchscreens increase driver distraction. Yes, touchscreens are sleeker and cleaner in interior designs, but they also mean drivers are more distracted than with a physical button or dial. The viewpoint is that physical buttons and dials provide more tactile feedback and allow drives to manipulate them without looking, which is arguably safer.
Plus, drivers have pushed back against large touchscreens in some of the latest models, according to dealers and drivers.
Buttons and dials actually cost more for carmakers, but the push to please buyers and add back safety seems to have won the day. The development cost of touchscreens dropped over time, which is why automakers decided to rely on them instead of designing rows of toggle switches and buttons, according to Robby DeGraff, product and consumer insights manager at AutoPacific, told The Drive in a report carried by Kelley Blue Book.
Wired reported the trend to vintage controls in May when Hyundai added more buttons in the Santa Fe. “From an interaction design perspective, the shift to touchscreens strips away the natural affordances that made driving intuitive,” the report quoted Steven Kyffin, a past dean of design at Northumbria University in the UK. He said steering, acceleration, braking, gear shifting, lights, wipers and other factors that enable you to drive the car should be tactile. The Today Show also recently laid out the latest trend to buttons and dials.
Among the other carmakers heading back to the future with dials and buttons are Porsche, Mercedes, Volkswagen and Audi. Mercedes-Benz software lead Magnus Ostberg told Kelley Blue Book, “The data shows us the physical buttons are better and that’s why we put them back in.”