Volkswagen is in the midst of undoing one of its most controversial interior-design decisions: replacing conventional buttons and knobs with touch-sensitive keys, sliders, and capacitive steering-wheel controls. Early signs are encouraging, with the ID.3 Neo bringing back more traditional buttons while eliminating the hated temperature and volume sliders, which weren’t even backlit in the early days. The ID. Polo and ID. Cross are another step in the right direction, as both have individual switches for all windows, like every car should.

 

Now, the company has offered a surprisingly candid explanation of why it went down that road in the first place. Asked why Volkswagen, like many other automakers, believed electric cars needed radically different controls, the company essentially admitted that it was trying to predict the future without having enough customer data to know what buyers actually wanted.