This is the control panel of the environmental controls for our rental vehicle, a VW Tiguan. The car is not bad to drive. It has a bit of pep, is fairly comfortable to ride in and does what it’s suppose to do.
When we were looking for a new car in 2023 we looked at the Tiguan, but we found it a bit cramped for a liking and opted for the Nissan Rogue instead.
Volkswagen has decided to replace all the buttons on their environmental controls with touchpads. Everything you see in the photo is a touchpad. There are no buttons. We still haven’t figured out how to reliably adjust the temperature, so we tap and slide around until we see a number that’s relatively close to what we’re looking for.
We had to pull over to the side of the road to figure out how to turn down the fan.
This touchpad madness is not conducive to safe driving. I don’t know if Tiguan owners adapt to sliding their fingers around on a smooth surface with absolutely no feedback without looking at the controls, but I couldn’t figure it out.
I hope something changes in the world so that we can start having buttons again. It’s bad enough that I scream at auto correct on my iPhone on a daily basis, I don’t need to crash into things on the road while trying to get a little heat.
