this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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Volkswagen reintroducing physical controls for vital functions | Autocar (www.autocar.co.uk)
submitted 1 day ago by otter@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 8 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

You know how expensive it is to mold unique dedicated physical buttons for every function and then wire them all over the place?

Not expensive. You don't have to "wire them all over the place", you just put them on a PCB and connect them to the nearest CAN bus, or similar.

[–] T156@lemmy.world 5 points 11 hours ago

They'd basically already be doing that for the touch screen, and may well be using similar controls under the hood, where the physical buttons send a command to the computer to do a thing, in lieu of a mechanical connection.

[–] riodoro1@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

One more connector, one more cable in harness, more coding, more cad time, more manufacturing time and more testing.

If it comes out to 20 dollars per car and you multiply it by 50000 a year for a relatively popular model there is a nice bonus for the ceo. Oh, and the price to consumer increases at the same time.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 10 hours ago

If it comes out to 20 dollars per car and you multiply it by 50000 a year for a relatively popular model there is a nice bonus for the ceo.

Or you could just raise the price of the car by $20 since you've just added thousands in value?

I mean shit, let's take the seats out of the car! Bam! Just saved you billions, right? /s

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 1 points 6 hours ago

More coding?! Are you serious? Over a touch screen!

Also, extremely easy to test.