Audi Says Touchscreens Have Gone as Far as They’ll Go. Buttons Are Coming Back
It’s pretty clear that people like buttons, knobs, and who doesn’t love a good toggle in a car. A volume knob is just easy to use while driving a moving vehicle. Burying every single thing in a touchscreen, including vent direction controls for the climate control system, is a real pain point in the current automotive timeline. It seems Audi’s heard your, and our, cries.
On the latest episode of The Drivecast, Audi of America Senior Vice President of Product Management Filip Brabec exclusively told The Drive, “I think we’ve again gone as far as we will possibly go” when asked if we’ve reached peak screens in cars and if we’ll get real controls back in our lives and Audis.
Listen below from the moment Brabec addresses touchscreens, physical controls, and a course correction back to basics.
In terms of how we even got to this point where everything is embedded in touchscreens, Brabec pointed early in the conversation to China, EVs and their influence, but also noted, “For us, we, you know, and, in some cases you have to consider that we are part of a global equation and we don’t always have the strongest voice depending on what car is going where.” Brabec was referring to “us” as in Audi of America vs. the global company.
“That said, I would say the general tendency is definitely to more mechanical controls. We absolutely view that as the right thing,” Brabec said.
The SVP continued by saying, “The rollers on the steering wheel are maybe only the beginning, you’re gonna see more. And, particularly as we go to the kind of the next generation of design that we’re calling Radical Next together with Gernot and Massimo Frascella, we are looking at sort of, you know, again, kind of the right placement of the right controls. And you’re gonna see us really kind of go back to basics and to clarity.”
In terms of technology and its place, Brabec said, “This idea of just always having technology inside the interior is nice, but I think what’s really important is that the technology is always yielding the right effect and it’s in the right place for the consumer, that it’s almost in the background, you know, and from a kind of an intuitive standpoint.”
This new mentality extends beyond the touchscreen. “And whether it is looking at more climate control buttons, whether it is looking at the door controls, and what we’re doing that. And again, we talked about sort of he tried that we’re now doing on the Q7 and the Q9. We’re gonna actually go ahead and apply some of these principles to our existing interiors in a very, very near future, as I pointed out. And that’s not just the console, it’s actually some of the door controls and things like that as well,” Brabec said.
In terms of screens, Brabec said, “I think we’ve again gone as far as we will possibly go. I think that we will see some correction in that trend. I do. I also think that we will see some more, again, some more tactile and sort of different experiences inside the interior. You know, very much of that, again, is going in our new philosophy, what we’re calling Interior Next. And I think you’re gonna see something that you really like that’s very Audi in sort of the next generation product.”
For consumers that dislike the wall of screen situation in current Audis it sounds like that era is about to sunset with the Concept C and the Nuvolari points towards the future design direction.
Got a tip? Send us a line at [email protected]
The post Audi Says Touchscreens Have Gone as Far as They’ll Go. Buttons Are Coming Back appeared first on The Drive.