Space cadet designers make cars impossible to live with
Driver to car interface is a minefield. Simple and easy back in the day, every car had five knobs. Volume, Tune, Temp, Fan, and Lights. They gave you complete control over everything beyond driving. Add buttons for Recirc, A/C and maybe TC off, and you never needed more. So, why less now?
BMW i-Drive was the culprit
Over the past twenty years, just turning the volume up, changing radio stations, heating the cabin, and circulating the air, has increasingly required a PhD to achieve. Even cosmonaut training isn’t enough for some. BMW started it. Never forget driving that new Seven closing on a quarter century back. Thinking what the…! about iDrive. It and rivals like Mercedes’ kit got very good by the mid 2010s. And then … oh dear!
Carmakers have spent increasing billions on trying to out-‘smart’ the rest. Yet their systems have become increasingly useless and impossible to use, and drive, by the year. Some, and an alarming percentage of them, are so woke that they’re plain dangerous. A nightmare to use, they take the driver’s eyes off the road.
Five-knob systems always worked
Others have got it right. There are a few bang on the button, for want of a better phrase, four, and five-knob systems out there. We drive them all, so we know them all. We’re critical of some and will remain so. For good reason. There’s no reason, beyond brands trying to prove how clever that are (not), why so many crap complicated car cabin systems are forced down our necks.
Take Volkswagen for example. That relic Vivo has a marvellous basic, easy to use and understand old school system. A fair sized touchscreen sits above a little volume knob to the left, a tuning one to the right. Three big, handy rotary knobs nestle below that. Fan in the middle with recirc and AC buttons, Temp to the left, Zones to the right. And the light knob on the right dash.
Vivo dash perfect with knobs
Add hazard, traction off, and rear window heater buttons on the strip above the screen, easy multifunction steering wheel buttons, and voila! Worst of all, it’s so good simply because it’s so old. Simple, understandable and user friendly it’s just a good old car dash that does the job. We never complained about it. We all understand exactly what every knob or button represents, does, and achieves.
Step up a model. Pick a VW model. Any model. At first sight, its dash make the old Vivo look, well, ancient. But that’s just the sugar coating the pill. Most modern VWs are blighted with an ‘advanced’ interface that does away with knobs and buttons for new-fangled touch pads, sliders, and surfaces. It’s designed to work like your smartphone, in conjunction with the touchscreen. Some models do have a token volume knob. And yes, it looks a million bucks.
Modern VW systems horrible to use
But that’s where it ends. Plain horrible to use, it just doesn’t work! Try set a temperature and you get pot luck. Change stations, or speed up the fan, and something else happens. Even turning out the lights is an issue. The ‘swipers’ are impossible to figure on their own. But add the slightest movement in the car, and basically anything becomes impossible to achieve. Be that by dash or steering pads, or the rest. None work!
Not sure if it was all done to save costs using cheap solid state hardware, but had Wolfsburg tested this junk objectively or independently, it’d have known right away that none of it is fit for human consumption. Cars move. These already oversensitive devices overreact by their nature. Add the real world and they become impossible. Maybe it was different in VW’s labs. Who knows?
Now Volkswagen brings buttons back!
So horrible is this system, that Volkswagen soon realised that sales were haemorrhaging as a result. It has binned the system. Now this very week, Volkswagen has replaced all that with a brand new system that reintroduces a row of backlit physical climate and other crucial buttons below a large central screen. Set to spread like wildfire across the range, it’s controlled by a BMW iDrive-like rotary controller on the centre tunnel.
So, VW has reacted to vehement consumer pressure. But is it enough? At first sight, we think no. We believe that no matter what or how clever the system is that the knobs run, people still want, and need five knobs in a car. Not a rotary controller. Not just buttons. But five good old knobs. Like you still sell in the good old Vivo.
BMW wants to eliminate knobs
The reason is simple. Very simple. No matter how clever smartphones are these are still cars. Carmakers are welcome to pack whatever they want into the depths of these ever ‘smarter’ infotainment systems. But there are five knobs and a few buttons, that everyone still wants and still needs in car. The same five knobs and buttons that we have ever needed. And ever will.
But space cadet car designers still want to reinvent the steering wheel. Volkswagen is now half way back with its little row of buttons. Mercedes continues to march down a knobless hole with its MBUX and cross-the-car Hyperscreen. And BMW’s Neue Klasse is apparently doing away with buttons altogether. Says we must rather tell our cars what to do. God help us!
Every car dash needs five knobs
Happily however, not everyone is cocking its knobs up. Lexus for one, does it pretty well with its blend of buttons and touch. And if Cousin Tacoma (the blue cabin in the picture on top) has anything to do with it, like the new Prado, the next Hilux will also have a wonderfully knob-rich environment. One where those physical buttons will share the cockpit with all the very best of modern tech.
Point is, us humans need five knobs in a car. We always did. We always will. And until carmakers understand that; they will keep on annoying us. No matter what their smartarse space cadet designers tell them about knobs! – Michele Lupini