alt Hacker NewsThere has been more pushback on car screens over the past couple of years, and the optimist in me hopes this leads to change. With enough pushback, manufacturers will have to listen to the market, cost savings be damned.
A concrete step I take to push this along: I mention physical buttons as a dealbreaker to car dealerships when I shop. Of course, I'm only speaking to dealer reps and not the decision makers at $CAR_CO, but if enough people do this, it does get back to the them and will make a difference.
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That works as long as you actually stick to your guns and keep them as deal-breakers. If you accept them with some grumbling, that's still a sale and that provides no backpressure to the manufacturer.
In Europe it's done through EuroNCAP: https://etsc.eu/cars-will-need-buttons-not-just-touchscreens...
It has already started asking for physical buttons for key functions to give manufacturers the top safety rating, and it's working. Buttons are coming back.
I could not imagine having to go back to buttons for anything I actually want to control. Once you get used to a well-designed touchscreen, buttons are just so clunky and unintuitive for most functions. Dials are probably my most favorite physical control, but other than volume there's not much it's useful for in a well-designed, modern car anymore. It was great for radio stations, but is terrible for Spotify.
Setting temperature manually by dial doesn't make sense anymore either- most cars have too many things to change and an expanding menu is great. There's hot cold, faster fan lower fan, feet vs head-height (we're already looking at more than three separate controls). Now there's seat heating and cooling (with varying power), steering wheel, defrost, controls of vent direction, etc.
I'll admit the touchscreen might be daunting if it's a rental but it takes like one week to get everything mapped out mentally (and going back to physical controls on rentals sucks).