As previously noted by Gizmodo, there have been rumors for some time of consumer fatigue over car interiors that resembled a series of tablet computers. To be clear, VW isn’t completely criticizing the infotainment screen by adding a handful of new physical buttons to this model – and this update also addresses an entirely different problem unique to the controls on Volkswagen steering wheels – but it’s at least a fresh data point that shows a greater number of physical buttons inside the car rather than less.
Some of the company’s first aspects of moving away from physical buttons were considered a failure by VW itself, with design chief Andreas Mindt speaking about the issue with extraordinary candor to British car magazine Autocar. “We’ll never make this mistake again. On the steering wheel, we’ll have physical buttons. There’s no guesswork anymore. The feedback is there, it’s real, and people love it. Honestly, it’s a car. It’s not a phone: it’s a car,” Mindt said.
VW fans were probably most angry with Mindt and his colleagues because of the confusing, non-clicky buttons that required the driver to lean over the steering wheel to perform basic tasks like changing the music volume.
Many of the essential buttons that were removed, Mindt said, “will be in every car we make from now on. We understood it,” he told Autocar, adding, “From the ID.2 onwards, we will have physical buttons for the five most important functions – volume, heating on each side of the car, fan and hazard light below the screen.” According to the naming scheme set by Volkswagen, what Mindt confusingly called “ID.2All” in this case clearly refers to the ID. Polo.
Kai Grunitz, whose title at the company is “Board Member for Technical Development,” said in a new press release that what’s being unveiled now is the company’s “new internal architecture, starting with the brand new ID Polo,” and that it includes “an intuitive operating environment with physical buttons and newly structured screens.”
Elsewhere, the release notes say, “Separate buttons for climate functions and hazard warning lights have been integrated into a strip below the infotainment screen.”
Uh, but: The photos also show one of those increasingly common non-circular steering wheels. Volkswagen has been moving steadily toward less round steering wheels for some time now, and this is another step in that questionable direction. It’s not shaped like the Tesla Yoke that’s been accused of being a safety risk, and it’s certainly not the hideous thing seen nearly a decade ago when VW first teased the ID. Discussion. But the recently unveiled steering wheel shape for the ID. Polo isn’t a circle – it’s like a 2-D version of a volleyball’s shape when you step on it.
As far as I know, consumers made it clear years ago that they just want a steering wheel. Good (And don’t blow up while they’re driving). But if you’re the one driver in the entire world who particularly hates round steering wheels, congratulations on another win!
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