September 18, 2025 - Return of the Button

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for September 18, 2025, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.  

There's been an unfortunate trend in the auto industry over the past two decades: getting rid of physical controls in favor of virtual controls in touchscreen interfaces. There are multiple reasons behind this trend, including cost-cutting and a desire to declutter automotive interiors. Engineering, validating, and manufacturing physical controls is expensive and adds a lot of manufacturing complexity. 

However, in an environment like the driver's seat of a moving vehicle, functionality and safety must come first and foremost in determining what features will be included.  More than two decades ago, the late co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, said, ”Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

The truth is, touchscreen controls simply don't work well while driving. Drivers have to look away from the road to tap a touch target on a screen and can't rely on muscle memory like they do to twist a knob to adjust temperature and fan speed. Tesla really accelerated this trend beginning in the 2012 Model S and has taken it to ridiculous levels, with having to go to the screen to adjust where vents are blowing, a feature that has been unfortunately copied by Rivian, Porsche, Lincoln, Polestar, and many others. But while it looks clean, it's just bad design.

Now a number of automakers are reversing course and bringing back more physical controls. Last year, Hyundai did a mid-cycle update of several models to shift to more physical controls, and Volkswagen has promised the same for new models. Most recently, Mercedes-Benz Software Chief Magnus Ostberg has told Autocar that the data from studying the drivers' use of vehicles has shown them that physical controls are better.  Despite the new CLA and GLC being the brand's first software-defined vehicles and having the company's largest screens yet, they are also getting more physical controls. Let's hope the rest of the industry follows suit soon. 

Thanks for listening.