Touch Buttons Cost Half As Much As Physical Controls

• CEO Benedetto Vigna says production costs for touch controls are 50 percent lower than those for real buttons.
• Ferrari will put more traditional controls inside its cars.
• Existing Purosangue and 12C Cilindri vehicles can be retrofitted with a steering wheel that features physical buttons.

For years, we’ve had to listen to nearly all automakers refer to haptic buttons as a beneficial evolution of car interior design. While they look great in press images, capacitive keys are often frustrating to use and typically have a glossy finish, making them fingerprint magnets. Better late than never, car companies have listened to customer complaints and are reverting to hard keys.

Ferrari has not only admitted its mea culpa but is also actively fixing past mistakes. Maranello is offering a retrofit for existing Purosangue and 12Cilindri models to swap out the steering wheel’s touch-capacitive buttons and make room for conventional controls. Additionally, the latest models bearing the Prancing Horse logo, such as the Testarossa and Amalfi, have more physical buttons than their predecessors.

Ferrari Luce’s physical controls

Photo by: Ferrari

In an interview with Autocar India, the company’s CEO candidly admitted what everyone knew all along, but no other executive has dared to say: touch buttons are much cheaper to make than the real thing. Benedetto Vigna said manufacturing costs are 50 percent lower for touch keys compared to old-school buttons. Side note: Imagine how much money companies are saving by eliminating buttons altogether.

‘The touch [button] is something that is made for the supplier’s advantage.’

During the same interview, the head honcho also discussed the retrofit mentioned earlier and how the company “got rid of the touch” in the two V12 models. Benedetto Vigna explained that switching (pun intended) back to traditional controls, even at a higher cost, allows Ferrari to stand out with tailor-made switchgear:

‘We have no problem going around with electronic consumer products that look the same. But we don’t like to go around with cars that all look the same. We need to do something unique. We are used to [doing] something else.’

Ferrari Luce’s window switches

Photo by: Ferrari

The upcoming Luce will be the clearest example of how Ferrari is rethinking its interiors, blending analog and digital elements. The company’s first EV features an interior co-developed with LoveFrom, the American creative collective founded by Sir Jony Ive, Apple’s former design chief.

Luce has plenty of proper buttons and switches developed from scratch to access various functions, including dedicated HVAC controls, rather than burying them in the main screen. It’s safe to assume these weren’t cheap to engineer and will cost a pretty penny to build. Naturally, those costs will be passed on to customers, with an alleged starting price of over $500,000.

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Source: Ferrari

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Motor1’s Take: Ferrari’s CEO thinks it’s “bizarre” and that it “doesn’t make sense” to assume an electric car should be all about screens. He’s right. The type of drivetrain shouldn’t dictate how drivers interact with a vehicle’s functions. Changing the temperature or turning on heated seats should be straightforward, without fumbling through menus or using touch keys, regardless of whether the car has a combustion engine or not.

While Ferraris are reserved for one-percenters, mainstream brands have also announced plans to bring back proper buttons. The Volkswagen Group is not only gradually dropping touch keys, but also reinstating physical buttons for features that had previously migrated to the touchscreen. Brands like Hyundai, Kia, and Toyota also want to avoid overreliance on screens. But brands like BMW and Mercedes have eliminated most traditional controls in favor of “minimalism” to the dismay of many customers.

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