Volkswagen Says Nobody Can Agree On Interior Buttons

Volkswagen knows it has a problem in its hands – or more accurately, its customers do. Only a few years after touchscreen-intensive functions and haptic sliders arrived on the likes of the ID.3 and ID.4 EVs and the Mk8 GTI, those controls are swiftly moving toward the trash can, replaced by physical knobs and switches in the near future. But while that may be good news for American and European customers (who have shared their overwhelmingly negative feedback with VW), it may not be right for the Chinese market. According to a LinkedIn post from Volkswagen AG China Board Member Ralf Brandstätter, our cross-Pacific neighbors prefer touchscreen and haptic controls to mechanical buttons.

Conflicting Tastes (And Conflicting Messaging)

In his post, which primarily focused on why Chinese-market cars may not always be a good match for European customers, Brandstätter pointed out that new EV shoppers in China had an average age of under 35, making them keen on “AI-first, connected vehicles, with seamless voice control and smart cockpits as the norm.” By contrast, EV customers in Germany and other European nations are 20 years older, on average, than their Chinese counterparts, making them prioritize a tactile experience and long-term reliability over a holistic digital experience.

Your author might push back on that characterization somewhat, however. At 36, I am indeed older than the average new-EV shopper in China, but I still would consider myself a digital native – or at least a naturalized citizen. With that in mind, few driver interfaces have left me as frustrated as those of the Volkswagen Golf R or pre-facelift ID.4, in which making minute adjustments to the audio or climate controls was impossible unless the car was at a standstill. That doesn’t come down to a lack of understanding, it’s a lack of ergonomics. It’s possible Chinese customers do indeed appreciate the VW’s touch-sensitive sliders and on-screen controls, but their relative age isn’t the reason why.

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Secondly, Brandstätter’s comments run contrary to those made by Hein Schafer, then Volkswagen of America’s marketing and sales VP, in 2021. Schafer said that while Americans’ disdain for the touchscreen and slider controls was clear, it was challenging to uncover a fix for the problem since VW is a European marque and the company’s home customers preferred their cars to “be as convenient and modern as possible in terms of touch and sliders.” But according to the Chinese-market exec, Europeans are having a hard time adjusting to the touch-intensive future as well.

A Permanent Fix Is Coming

Regardless of who said what and the reasons why, Volkswagen is making steady progress back to the region of sanity and reason when it comes to ergonomics. The recently launched Tiguan, for example, has an infotainment system with a multi-function knob on the center console to handle volume, drive mode selection, and ambient lighting controls. Although it sounds complicated, the knob works far better at each of those tasks than its slider/on-screen predecessors. And the automaker has committed to excising the frustratingly sensitive steering wheel touch panels – except on the Golf R – with physical thumb buttons on the steering wheel spokes.

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Hopefully the touch-sensitive climate control sliders are next, and then we’ll be right back where we started a decade ago, when Volkswagen interiors were reasonably intuitive and still packed with technology.

Source: LinkedIn via Motor1