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Volkswagen May Scrap Control Levers Behind The Steering Wheel
Car interiors are becoming more and more minimalistic, but we haven’t seen the end of the big cleanup trend yet. Volkswagen seems to be working on a steering wheel that integrates all functions that you can still operate with the levers behind the wheel.
In many modern cars, the number of physical buttons can almost be counted on one hand and you mainly have to operate a lot via the central infotainment screen or via touch-sensitive ‘buttons’ on the steering wheel. It may look sleek, but not everyone is a fan of it going that way. Those who don’t like it at all will probably not be enthusiastic about what Volkswagen now seems to be planning.
Carbuzz recently surfaced patent sketches that indicate that Volkswagen wants to scrap the levers behind the wheel. The functions that you now find on it, such as indicating direction, turning on the windshield wipers, and switching on lights (with some brands), should all be controlled from the steering wheel from now on. On the inside of that steering wheel, in the top half, are buttons. They can be assigned to different functions. For example, you can indicate direction with the bottom two on the right. One for left, the one below for right.
The buttons, touch-sensitive copies with haptic feedback, light up when you touch one. So you can also see what you are doing, very handy. There should not necessarily be fixed buttons for functions, but a configuration as the driver prefers. Furthermore, different functions for the same button would be possible at the same time. For example, if the lights are already on, the button in that place could serve as a button to control the music. That means that the number of functions no longer corresponds one-to-one with the number of buttons.
