Here’s Why It’s Taking So Long for Automakers to Reintroduce Buttons in Cars

      BMW

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      It seems like every few months, a car manufacturer with the means, staff, and experience to have known better announces that it is finally paying attention to customer feedback by reintroducing buttons in its vehicles. Volkswagen, once notorious for its all-capacitive steering wheel, was among the first to reverse course. Next, Hyundai revealed that its focus group testing showed users feeling “stressed, annoyed, and frustrated” when having to control various vehicle functions solely through a touchscreen, leading them to reconsider their all-digital approaches. Now, Mercedes-Benz is following in their footsteps. While this shift is refreshing, it leaves those of us who have been tracking this trend curious as to why this realization is occurring now.

      The shift away from physical buttons to software-controlled features isn’t a novel concept. It arguably began with Tesla and the Model S in the early 2010s, prompting other manufacturers to scramble for a similar reputation as leaders in technological innovation. Honda even temporarily eliminated the volume knob in several models around the mid-decade, only to bring it back to much acclaim. “Our customers and frankly, many of you, said, ‘We want a knob,’ so the knob is back,” former Honda North America executive Jeff Conrad stated at the launch of the fifth-generation CR-V in 2017.

      So, automakers have had ample evidence that their customers prefer buttons. Why does it appear they are still grasping this lesson? How many more times will it take before it truly resonates?

      Cost and Trends

      “The reason the industry initially pursued this direction is because incorporating buttons and physical controls in a vehicle is costly,” Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research at Telemetry, explained to me over the phone. “A significant amount of engineering is required—from their design to validating those components. From a manufacturing perspective, developing a dashboard or steering wheel with physical controls adds considerable complexity.”

      Abuelsamid points to Tesla in its formative years—which was following Apple’s success with the iPod and iPhone—as a brand demonstrating a viable shift away from physical car interfaces. As vehicles have grown more intricate, there is an objective need for touch interfaces and software menus, simply because creating a button for every feature in a car is impractical.

      “The rationale was, ‘We’re adding all these features; we can’t have 300 buttons on the dashboard,’” Abuelsamid remarked. “The touchscreen is seen as the next clear step in that evolution. However, it’s essential to find a balance between those two extremes—entirely touchscreen versus entirely physical—when incorporating so many features into a car.”

      It’s easy to overlook how revolutionary—both positively and negatively—the dashboard of the Tesla Model S was a decade ago with its near-total absence of buttons.

      Now, it appears that automakers are starting to strike that balance. I remember a Google employee from the Android Automotive division telling me five years ago that the company ran a lab studying how people interacted with its infotainment software—tracking eye movement and reach to touch controls. Even then, such insights were groundbreaking.

      “I believe when Tesla launched its approach, they didn’t undertake extensive research,” Abuelsamid commented. “They did what they felt was right. The rest of the industry should have conducted more human factors research to find the apt solution.”

      However, Tesla was uniquely able to benefit from a screen-first cabin since its products were developed from scratch without physical buttons in the design. S&P AutoIntelligence Associate Director Stephanie Brinley conveyed this idea in an email, highlighting that, for Tesla, adopting a screen-only design also minimized the number of components required from the outset.

      Robby DeGraff, Product and Consumer Insights Manager at AutoPacific, noted that it isn't only the expense of buttons that influenced this shift; the cost of displays has dropped significantly since the rise of smartphones and tablets.

      “A crucial factor behind the rush toward screens and more seamless touch or touch-haptic surfaces is that the development costs for these screens have significantly decreased over time,” DeGraff mentioned in an email. “For many car manufacturers, it became easier and more economical to implement a screen on the dashboard rather than design a series of toggles or buttons.”

      For the Mk 8.5 refresh, Volkswagen reverted the GTI’s wheel (on the left) to one featuring all physical buttons, while the Golf R's wheel, with entirely capacitive controls, remained unchanged.

      Some might find it surprising that large corporations like Volkswagen and Hyundai could be motivated by such frugality, but those savings accumulate. Earlier this year, I was taken aback to learn that VW chose not to equip the Golf R with a steering wheel featuring actual buttons, even though it did so for the GTI, due to the expense and time involved in adjusting a circuit board and producing a