New photos of the interior of the upcoming Volkswagen EV reveal that the company’s previously announced plan to bring back some body buttons will soon come to fruition. On display is a small, budget EV called the ID. The Polo may not be released in America, but the company has made it clear that this is a new button system for its cars in general.
As previously noted by Gizmodo, there’s been a long-standing trend of consumer fatigue around car interiors that resemble an array of tablet computers. VW doesn’t want, obviously, to throw out the full blame for the infotainment screens by adding what looks like a handful of new physical buttons to this model—and this update also addresses a completely different issue with Volkswagen’s steering wheel controls—but at least a new data point shows a large number of physical buttons inside the car rather than a few.
Some aspects of the company’s previous pivot away from certain physical buttons were considered failures by VW itself, with design boss Andreas Mindt addressing the issue with unusual candor in British motoring magazine Autocar. “We will not repeat, make this mistake. On the steering wheel, we will have physical buttons. No more guesswork. There is a response, it is real, and people love this thing. In fact, a car. It is not a phone: a car,” said Mindt.
VW fans are annoyed by Mindt and co perhaps most because of the confusing, non-clickable buttons that require the driver to tap on the steering wheel to perform basic functions like changing the volume of their music.
Several key buttons that had been removed, Mindt said, “will be in every car we make from now on. We heard this,” he told Autocar, adding, “From the ID. 2 onwards, we will have visible buttons for the five most important functions – volume, heating on each side of the car, fans and hazard light – below the screen.” According to the nomenclature set by Volkswagen, what Mindt confusingly calls in this case “ID. 2all” clearly refers to the ID. Polo.
Kai Grünitz, whose title in the company is “a member of the board of technical development,” in a new statement to the press said that what is now being revealed is “a new internal structure of the company, starting with the new ID. Polo,” and that includes “an intuitive working environment with physical buttons and newly designed screens.”
Elsewhere, the release notes that “Different buttons for climate functions and hazard warning lights are integrated into the strip below the infotainment screen.”
Uh, but: the photos also show one of those classic non-circular wheels. Volkswagen has been moving towards smaller round wheels for a long time, and this is another step in that dubious direction. This isn’t quite as steep as Tesla’s yoke, which is alleged to be a safety hazard, and it’s certainly not the abomination shown nearly a decade ago when VW first teased the ID. The Buzz. But the newly introduced ID steering wheel mode. Polo isn’t a circle—it’s more like a 2-D version of the shape a volleyball takes when you step on it.
As far as I know, buyers made it clear years ago that they just wanted a steering wheel good (and not flying while driving). But if you’re the one driver in the world who especially hates round wheels, congratulations on another win!
