A temperature knob does something a touchscreen struggles to imitate: it remains a temperature knob when the driver is looking elsewhere. Its location, shape, resistance, and travel carry information through the fingers. A control that can be located and operated by touch reduces visual workload regardless of its age. It is a division of labor between the senses, in a machine whose operator already has a substantial use for his eyes. The industry’s enthusiasm for replacing such controls with glass confused a cleaner photograph with an easier car to operate.
When a Cleaner Dashboard Makes More Work
The Model S’s large portrait display made a compelling showroom argument. A screen can accommodate maps, settings, and functions that would otherwise require a sprawling collection of hardware. Software can reorganize a display without requiring new dashboard tooling. Those are genuine advantages. The trouble begins when flexibility for the designer becomes a moving target for the driver. Reusing a display can reduce dedicated switchgear, but there is no honest universal dollar saving to attach to that choice. Software, validation, and supporting electronics also cost money. The more revealing economy is often the amount of physical information removed from the cabin.
Mercedes took that visual proposition to an extravagant conclusion with the EQS Hyperscreen: three displays presented beneath a sweeping glass surface. The effect is theatrical, but its scale cannot establish whether adjusting the cabin is pleasant. Nor does the presence of a screen disqualify an interior from luxury. A clear map is useful. A display that exposes the right information at the right moment is good design. The objection is to treating display acreage as craftsmanship, then asking the owner to admire the acreage while hunting for the fan.
Distracted Driving
The evidence is more useful than the most alarming shorthand. AAA’s 2017 study found that programming navigation took an average of about 40 seconds; that was task duration, not an uninterrupted 40-second stare away from the road. In Vi Bilägare’s 2022 comparison, a 2005 Volvo V70 completed four tasks in 10 seconds, against about 45 seconds for an MG Marvel R and 30.4 for a BMW iX. Drivers had been familiarized with the systems. Yet the touchscreen-equipped Volvo C40 managed 13.7 seconds. Those tests measured task completion time, not crash rates. The old Volvo’s advantage was real, but so was the evidence that layout and complexity matter alongside the input surface.
Pushing Back
Euro NCAP’s 2026 assessment makes that distinction more intelligently than the familiar claim that it has banned touchscreens. Its Driver Engagement protocol awards points for the design of general vehicle controls, including direct physical input for specified driving functions. Other tasks can satisfy the criteria through suitable touch or voice implementations. Climate controls do not all have to become mechanical switches. This is a scored consumer assessment, not legislation making glass dashboards illegal. Its useful intervention is to judge controls as things a driver must operate, rather than objects a designer must render.
Buttoning Down
The steering wheel is an especially unforgiving place to sacrifice tactile boundaries. It moves, the driver grips it, and a thumb resting near a control is not always issuing a command. Distinct shapes and deliberate travel help separate finding a function from activating it. Haptic feedback can confirm an action, but confirmation after an unintended input does not make the input welcome. The design problem begins before the click, not after it.
Ferrari’s newer wheel designs, including the Amalfi’s, restore physical controls. Its authorized dealers also now advertise a retrofit for eligible cars, a more meaningful response than telling existing owners to buy the correction attached to a new Ferrari. The retrofit should not be confused with a universal replacement of every touch input: the offered arrangement retains a touch-responsive engine Start/Stop control. Nor does it establish that every old Ferrari qualifies. What it does establish is that tactile precision is worth engineering into an already sophisticated car. A steering wheel should not require the driver to cultivate a diplomatic relationship with his thumbs.
Volkswagen’s revised direction is similarly visible in hardware rather than merely in executive promises. Its January 2026 presentation of the ID. Polo cockpit described a separate strip of climate and hazard buttons, physical steering wheel controls, and a rotary audio control on the console. Screens remain central to the interior. Stable physical locations reduce the need to hunt across changing surfaces.
BMW is not a reliable exhibit for an eternal promise to preserve the rotary controller. Its Panoramic iDrive announcement emphasizes a new arrangement of displays, voice control, and steering wheel inputs, including shaped surfaces and haptic feedback. The company’s stated principle of combining physical and digital operation is more durable than any particular knob. A manufacturer cannot vindicate an interface by calling its surfaces intuitive; the driver has to find the right control, make the intended adjustment, and return attention to the road without wondering what happened.
Lexus supplies the essential counterexample to any campaign that simply counts buttons. Its Remote Touch trackpad was a physical object controlling a visual interface, not a dedicated control whose shape explained its function. For the 2024 LC, Lexus introduced a 12.3-inch touchscreen. Directly touching a visible target can be a cleaner interaction than steering a cursor toward it from somewhere else. Every additional visual or physical step adds workload between the driver’s intention and the result.
Volvo’s restrained cabin design makes the same distinction worth examining. Reducing visible hardware can create a calm composition, but the operational workload does not vanish with the switches. It moves into software, voice commands, automation, or the driver’s memory. The C40’s relatively strong performance in the Swedish comparison shows that a screen-centered Volvo need not be a maze. The C40 result says nothing about Volvo interfaces that were not included in the test. Each deserves to be assessed for the tasks it actually makes easy, not acquitted or condemned by a family resemblance.
Owner irritation is a useful warning, but a viral complaint is not a controlled study. More persuasive questions are concrete. Can the control be located by touch? Does it work with cold or damp fingers? Are adjacent functions distinguishable? Does a bump in the road change the command? Does a familiar action remain in the same place after the display changes? These are ordinary demands on a moving machine. They should not require a consumer revolt.
Rejecting the Apple Store on Wheels
There is also a distinction between accepting an interface and taking pleasure in it. A well made switch supplies a small, repeated demonstration of care: its travel is sufficient, its resistance consistent, its illumination legible, its action unambiguous. A luxury interior earns its price through such encounters, not merely through the information it can display. Technology belongs there, but technology is supposed to improve the encounter. A touchscreen that adds capability and a knob that removes effort can coexist without either apologizing for its age.
The Mulsanne’s physical richness offers a different kind of spectacle from a wall of illuminated glass. Even here, ornament is not the same as ergonomic competence. A beautiful switch in an awkward place is still awkward. The best tactile interfaces combine material pleasure with an operation so clear that the driver can stop thinking about it. That is a more exacting ambition than installing more buttons, and a more generous one than forcing every adjustment through the same smooth rectangle.
In Praise of the Physical Button
A car does not need a separate switch for every obscure preference. It needs the right physical controls for the things people do while driving, and a digital interface that knows when to stay out of the way. Maps may fill the screen. Settings may occupy menus. The volume knob can remain a volume knob.
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