Volkswagen Learns Tough Lessons, Promises Physical Controls

Volkswagen is again reminding everyone that knows it messed up by running with touchscreens and abandoning physical controls. Leadership wants people to understand that won’t be the case moving forward. But one wonders how much of what’s being said will yield real changes to vehicles and what’s just noise.VW CEO Thomas Schäfer recently spoke with TopGear, and was quite frank about how badly the automaker has been about some of its recent design choices.“It was clear we were losing our core,” he told the outlet.No doubt. Automakers have taken sustained criticism for most of the trends they’ve been chasing since about 2015 and it’s starting to impact profitability. For Volkswagen, this has meant declining sales. The company saw a 2-percent decrease in global sales for 2024 (year-over-year) and a 0.5-percent decline in 2025.The purported culprit was lackluster EV volumes in North America and a declining demand …