QUESTION OF THE WEEK: DO YOU PREFER PHYSICAL BUTTONS OR TOUCHSCREENS?
Remember the days when you’d walk into a car showroom and leave with a piece of metal that had hundreds of buttons dotted along the dashboard, centre console and door cards? Make the same journey to your local dealer now and you’ll see that the humble button has almost become an endangered species.
Although... is that a bad thing? Rolling all of a vehicle’s functionality into one (or several) touchscreens means there's extra room for storage bins and perks like wireless charging pads. Less is more, right?
On the other hand, burying everything deep within a (often highly confusing) menu system means it takes longer to actually do stuff. Grr. And nothing could be worse for drivers who aren't tech savvy, particularly if all they want to do is switch the climate control on, or banish Ice Spice from the radio.
Tesla, for instance, is known for cramming as much as possible into one large, iPad-esque screen, while Volkswagen has faced a backlash recently for following a similar ethos.
So we want to know from you, dear reader, if the criticism is justified or not. Do touchscreens enhance your driving experience, or would you prefer to have every single pocket of space filled with switchgear?
Give us your best arguments below, preferably throwing in a personal experience or two to build your case. And expect the most well thought out comments to form the basis of Friday’s rundown post.