.and made the steering wheel less wheel-like.
New interior photos of an upcoming Volkswagen EV reveal the company’s previously announced scheme to bring back certain physical buttons will soon be a reality. What’s being revealed is a small, budget EV called the ID. Polo that may never see a U.S. release, but the company has made it clear that this is the new button plan for its cars generally.
As previously noted by Gizmodo, there have been rumblings for some time of consumer exhaustion around car interiors that resemble an array of tablet computers. VW is not, to be clear, issuing a full-throated rebuke of infotainment screens by adding what looks like a handful of new physical buttons to this model—and this update also addresses a totally separate problem unique to the controls on Volkswagen steering wheels—but it’s at least a fresh data point showing a greater number of physical buttons inside a car rather than fewer.
Aspects of the company’s earlier pivot away from certain physical buttons were deemed a failure by VW itself, with design chief Andreas Mindt speaking about the issue with extraordinary candor to British car magazine Autocar.
