Any review of the Volkswagen ID.7 (or sibling VW) that doesn't mention the criminally misguided window switches is not doing its job.
For decades, the car industry was somehow able to provide four separate window switches in cars that have four windows. This ~$50K VW just can't manage it, providing only two switches that you have to toggle between the front and rear. Oh, and of course the front/rear toggle is a capacitive button right next to the switches for easy accidental input.
@siracusa if any company were doing this I’d have expected Tesla to have at least followed suit, if not pioneered it. But no. 4 switches here. Whoda thunk??
@siracusa I’m currently driving a 2016 eGolf, an EV with criminally poor range, but it has such a nice interior with nice physical buttons everywhere that I cannot bring myself to buy a new car. I keep saying that these touch everything interfaces are a passing fad and I’ll be able to buy in a few years but I’m starting to fear that might not be the case.
@siracusa Yeah, that's been one of the many fails for the VW MEB vehicles. Cost-cutting seems to be the name of the game, as the Audi Q4 (MEB cousin of the ID.4) has all four, if I remember from my test drive.
I thought I heard Thomas from Autogefühl mention during their ID.7 initial video that they were going to fix that in the next refresh of the MEB platform, but it was already set in stone for the ID.7. That or it was in reference to going away from the capacitive buttons for everything.
@qlp Same deal with the capacitive buttons on the steering wheel: fixed in newer/upcoming models, but not in many of the ones shipping soon. But really, this is not hard. Who thought this was a good idea!? Terrible.
@siracusa@qlp it’s so bad. The steering wheel buttons mean I have to look away from the road to change the volume. Forget being able to change track on the steering wheel: they decided to make this up and down (why???!). I still don’t know which is which after 18 months driving it.
@ben_lings@siracusa When I test drove a Q4 e-tron, I accidentally triggered the View or Voice Command touch buttons when doing turns or let my hand rest down a little bit. I want actual buttons, switches, scroll wheels and knobs!
@siracusa Terrible indeed. I wrote off the ID.4 due to the poor efficiency and the capacitive/touch-everything and the terrible, no good infotainment system (I know some of that has been resolved, but not everything).
It'll never happen, but if they could fix that and bring over the wagon version to the US, I'll put VW back on the consider list.
@siracusa these are the details I care about before investing in a machine that I’d hopefully have for many years! Rented a Corsa and now know the radio is spitefully bad, never again.
And it’s not just Volkswagen. Here’s a Volvo EX30. This is one of the most ill-considered cost saving measures ever implemented in the automotive industry—with extra bonus annoyance provided by the choice to make the toggle capacitive.
@siracusa ID.4 owner here. Things are even worse: the "REAR" word is a touch-sensitive area, while the things right above it (the mirror folding and heating icons) are not. They are LEDs that you get to using the rotary knob.
Also, if your windows are halfway down and you pull both window buttons simultaneously, then sometimes one window will go up and the other one down. Race conditions FTW!
@siracusa the window switch situation was one of the worst things about the ID.4 used to own (right behind the horrendously buggy software and numerous hardware recalls). I did indeed accidentally bump the capacitive front/rear button all the time.
@siracusa I've had an ID.4 for about a year now, and this is perhaps my biggest gripe. I rarely ever even need to open the rear windows, and don’t really miss the extra buttons! But half the time when I go to roll down the front, my finger accidentally switches it to rear control. It's maddening.
@siracusa we test drove a Cupra Born, which is basically a ID3 with a tracksuit, they had the same window buttons. Why? It was such a pain and the kids just laughed at my frustrations
@siracusa I have an ID.3, I mostly love it but the worst part is the volume and heating controlled by capacitive buttons that don’t light up, so when driving at night they’re completely invisible. I really hope they fixed that for the ID.7 too
@verge Looks like the carmakers are learning from Tesla. Features, CarPlay, lack of knobs. Now if it winds up being priced like a Chevy Bolt, the market is theirs.
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