Technology is great, but realistically speaking, it doesn’t make sense to install a button for every single function a car is offering. It’s especially true with luxury vehicles with their ventilated and massaging seats, 360-degree cameras, 3D head-up displays, and whatnot. Even the original 8 Series E31 pictured above, a car launched in 1990, had numerous buttons. Its tech is ancient by today’s standards and it has far fewer features than the G15.
While the modern-day 8 Series still has its fair share of physical controls, recent high-end BMWs like the 7 Series G70 and iX have lost the vast majority of traditional buttons. Most of the functions are now accessed through the 14.9-inch touchscreen in a layout that has trickled down to the 3 Series LCI. Even the X1 has side-by-side displays (albeit slightly smaller) and only a few old-school controls.
Of course, BMW isn’t the only automaker simplifying its dashboards by removing the quick access to climate controls and often-used features. Other automakers also think less is more by cramming nearly all functions into huge screens: Volkswagen, Tesla, Mercedes – you name it. Is this the new norm? Perhaps, but the man behind the design of the original iPhone believes there might come a day when buttons will return.
Sir Jonathan Paul Ive, who served as Apple’s chief designer from 1997 until 2019, recently participated in a panel at Vox Media’s Code conference. When asked to have his say about design trends, he praised the benefits of having multi-touch surfaces but is concerned this tech solution is being overused:
“Potentially the pendulum may swing a little to have interfaces and products that are more tactile and more engaging physically.”
Journalist Kara Swisher then asked him whether touchscreens and touch-capacitive buttons asked him whether today’s cars have this problem, and Ive replied with: “for example.” He went on to say the user interface inside a car is “being driven inappropriately by something like multitouch.” The follow-up question about how he would design a car received the expected answer: “You know I can’t talk to you about that.”
Preferences aside, let’s not ignore the elephant in the room – manufacturing costs. It’s cheaper to get rid of buttons and have nearly all the functions accessible through the touchscreen, which is then used in a wide…
