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Here's Why It's Taking Automakers Ages to Put Buttons Back in Cars

Car companies are finally starting to realize that drivers want physical buttons. What took them so long?

“The reason why the industry went down this path in the first place is because it’s expensive to put buttons and physical controls in a vehicle,” Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research at Telemetry, told me over the phone. I recall a Google employee from the Android Automotive division telling me as far back as five years ago that the company operated a lab where it studied how people engaged with its infotainment software—where their eyes traveled and for how long, or how far they had to reach to touch something. Earlier this year, I was surprised to learn that VW declined to put a steering wheel with real buttons back in the Golf R, even though it did in the GTI, because it would’ve been too expensive and time-consuming to tweak a circuit board and print a new piece of plastic.

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