Too many or too few buttons?
01/07/2021
It's hard to believe, but just 30 years ago, car testers were still annoyed by the large number of switches and buttons. When Götz Leyrer took on the Lexus LS 400 for "auto motor und sport" in 1990, he criticized the 70 switches/buttons that were distributed throughout the car to operate the many functions. And to be fair, it has to be admitted that the Japanese really didn't hold back when it came to the design of the hi-fi system and center console.
But in the meantime, the tide has turned completely, because car testers and car buyers are now missing the switches and buttons that provided direct access to important functions. In modern cars, buttons are increasingly being replaced by software-based interactions on a touch panel or even by means of a rotary knob and visual control on the LCD display.
Tesla cars are probably taking this the furthest, but even Volkswagen vehicles today lack many of the haptic controls that we were used to just a few years ago.
What makes some cars cheaper to produce and the functionality more configurable can quickly turn into a nightmare for some drivers or even earn them a traffic fine, as a recently publicized legal dispute in Germany showed.
