Why do this?

[E55BOF]

Touchpads are all very well - unless you have dry fingers...

The 211 dash is about as good as it gets, and my absolute favourite. It seems to me that much of recent 'progress' is just an unending race to introduce more gimmicks than competing manufacturers, but I'm not of the iPad/iPhone generation.

 

[OneForTheRoad]

Touchpads are all very well - unless you have dry fingers...

Doing away them I heard , dangerous!! Eyes off the road to adjust fans etc.

 

[MSG2004]

I too am against total screens almost total screen controls
In my views, a big knob to turn up/down fan speed, a big round knob to change airs from feet to top/etc/etc,
a nob to tun up/down volume and a knob to tun up down heating and buttoned to turn up down heating in seats.

Audi has decide to go back to some knobs

MB, I can't understand why MB changed the push buttons on the steering wheel to touch-sensitive controls and then to those
metl type riller buttons IMO were good back-to-touch-sensitive buttons on the steering

about 4/5 years ago my gle had a nox sensor problem - MB gave us an E class in place of my gle.
I drove the car on an almost 400 mile round round trip and could not fault it other than the touch-sensitive
steering buttons which resulted in me accidentally turning up/down the radio volume etc


Thankfully, EuroNcap are going to take the use of above controls into consideration from 2026. I guess they are waiting
this long to give car makers the chance to sort things out
I'm more than certain that there will be more knobs in most cars than there are when compared to cars manufactured during the previous 12/18 months

Touch screens where there is hardly a knob in the car (possibly other than the drive/passer/s) are danger and are dangerous when compared with knobs. There should have been stricter regulations but I guess the motor industry is still relatively powerful in Germany and US

 

[E55BOF]

There are plenty of knobs in Audis; usually driving them...

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

I’m an old fool, so I like old skool, and love to see plenty of dimly little amber buttons all over the dashboard. However having driven a fancy pants cars with big screens and very few buttons I adapted to it very easily.

It was easy to find even obscure controls - such as seat massage and ambient lighting colours - on the touch screen, even whilst driving. Large text, large controls, intuitive menus and navigation buttons on the steering wheel made it a doddle.

However you don't really need to use buttons as the voice assistant in MBUX is superb. Genuinely it’s no more difficult than navigating the plethora of small buttons on a well specified nineties or noughties Mercedes.

The text and controls on screen are much bigger than the text and co drops on physical buttons and so you don’t need to focus anywhere near as much, and so time looking away from the road is not really a problem.

If you can use a rotary controller then you can use the touch screens.

 

[Pontoneer]

Swmbo has a 2013 B class and we decided to possibly get a newer one. BUT can someone explain why MB have swopped the radio and cruise controls steering wheel buttons to the opposite side from before!!!??? And why the two foot long I pad dashboard?? Think we will stick with what we have got.

Cost cutting ? No longer making different versions for left and right hand drive ?

As for the LCD panel , built in obsolescence

 

[Pontoneer]

That 'Two foot long iPad' on the dash is actually a massive step up from the older dashboards. Its can display as much or as little as you want and in perfect clarity too, I love the one in my E-class.

But when these things die , and M-B no longer have replacements , they won’t be repairable in the way that a mechanical speedometer is , so that will be the end of the car .

The curse of electronics