Audi’s A8 is a declaration of war on buttons, but now the battle with fingerprints begins
If there’s one thing that truly signposts the distance in interface development between phones and cars, it’s the reliance on buttons: phones are almost completely devoid of them, whereas cars seem to be abiding by a minimum quota of physical widgets, toggles, and doodads. But not the new Audi A8. This luxury sedan exhibits a deliberate hostility to buttons, opting instead for smooth black surfaces that transform into multifunctional touchscreens with realistic haptic feedback when the car is turned on. It’s a laudable and overdue minimalism in car design, but having spent the past 40 minutes inside the A8’s cabin, I can say it’s only a step in the right direction — one that shows we’re still closer to the beginning than the end of car…
