A Sweden study reveals that the buttons in a 17-year old Volvo V70 are easier to use than modern touchscreens

Nowadays, the tendency to reduce the physical buttons in cars and move them to the digital interface of multimedia systems is almost unanimous. It happens also because too many physical buttons give the feeling of outdated design these days, but also because it is easier and often cheaper to integrate controls into a digital interface that you can later update, than to do it in the format physical. However, the team from Vi Bilagare in Sweden recently conducted a study, which shows that new trends do not make our lives easier, but complicate them, at least from the perspective of the driver.

Vi Bilagare is a car magazine with a long-standing reputation in Sweden, and its study team consisted of journalists and technical experts. In their recent study, they analyzed 11 modern cars with large touchscreen displays, and on the other side they put a 2005 Volvo V70, so a car that was produced 17 years ago. The goal was to measure how quickly different commands can be executed in different models, in order to conclude how easy or difficult it is to operate them.

The list of studied modern cars included Dacia Sandero, BMW iX, Volvo C40, Tesla Model 3, VW ID.3, Mercedes-Benz GLB, Nissan Qashqai, MG Marvel R, Subaru Outback, Seat Leon and Hyundai Ioniq 5. So, a very different range and models and prices.

Drivers had to execute 4 sets of commands:
• Activate the seat heating, increase the air conditioning temperature by two degrees and include the defrosting of the rear window.
• Turn on the radio and set it to program 1 of Sweden.
• Reset the on-board computer.
• Reduce the light intensity on the dashboard dials to the minimum and turn off the central display.

Therefore, the most difficult car to operate turned out to be the Chinese model MG Marvel R, which needed 44.9 seconds and covered almost 1.4 km of the route while the driver executed the commands. Also in this car, the driver had to look down 56 degrees, while in the Mercedes GLB — only 20 degrees.

The BMW iX proved to be difficult to operate, followed by the Seat Leon. It took almost 1 km to complete the orders and 30.4 seconds for the BMW and 29.3 seconds for the Seat. The reason would be the agglomeration of commands. And Seat is criticized for wanting to save so much on costs, that the climate touch buttons, separated from the display, have no lighting of their own and are impossible to see at night, which makes them even more difficult and even dangerous.

The easiest to operate among modern cars turned out to be Dacia Sandero and Volvo C40. Both have displays, but they are not that complicated, say the Swedes, so the Dacia tasks could be completed in 13.5 seconds in the Dacia and 13.7 seconds in the Volvo C40.

The rest of the cars obtained a relatively average score of 20-27 seconds. However, the car from 17 years ago, the Volvo V70, had a much better result, needing only 10 seconds to operate the controls and only 306 meters away. All cars, by the way, were driven at 110 km/h while operating the buttons.

So, despite having a central console that apparently contains many buttons on it, the physical controls on the Volvo V70 proved to be much easier to understand and quick to operate. Without too many searches in submenus, without finger swipes, strictly on the function and in a maximum of a few presses the desired function is operated.