‘It’s Not a Phone, It’s a Car’: VW Boss Promises Buttons Are Back for Good

Driving enthusiasts rejoice. Volkswagen will ditch its screen-happy control interfaces in favor of old-fashioned physical controls beginning with its next generation of electric cars, company design chief Andreas Mindt told Autocar. Why? Well, as popular and versatile as touchscreen interfaces are, they ignore one important fact: It’s not an iPhone.

“We will never, ever make this mistake any more. On the steering wheel, we will have physical buttons. No guessing any more. There’s feedback, it’s real, and people love this,” Mindt told the publication. “Honestly, it’s a car. It’s not a phone: it’s a car.”

I really couldn’t have put it better myself. And while VW’s touchscreens won’t be going anywhere, they will be joined by tactile controls for the audio volume, heating and cooling, and the hazard light, said Mindt.

“They will be in every car that we make from now on. We understood this,” he added, citing both critical and customer feedback. Cars will need to leave real estate for screens to accommodate nav systems and mandatory reverse cameras, but no longer at the expense of having dedicated knobs and buttons for these critical functions.

Mind you, this is not the first time we’ve heard this. VW CEO Thomas Schäfer promised the same thing late in 2023 after the company was taken to task for its excessive dependence on touch- and haptic-feedback-based control systems, particularly for the temperature controls in its newer vehicles.

Schäfer himself even complained about the difficulty of finding certain infotainment features, acknowledging that their first solution could be “awful” for the customer experience.

But this time, rather than vague promises, we know exactly when the cut-off should be: the launch of VW’s ID 2all—the program name apparently still being used internally by VW employees to refer to the battery-powered Volkswagen Golf.

“From the ID 2all onwards, we will have physical buttons for the five most important functions,” Mindt said.

Whatever VW ends up calling it, the new Golf-sized (and hopefully Golf-shaped) ID 2all is due to be revealed in production form later this year, with sales starting globally in 2026. Here in America, we’ll probably have to wait at least another year after its European launch before we get a crack at one.

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