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Cars are meant to be functional and used. It’s one of the main reasons that shiny piano black trim is awful because it looks like trash in the real world. When it comes to vehicle controls Nissan has heard your and our pleas and will not be going the all touchscreen route.
In an exclusive interview with The Drive, Senior Vice President and Chief Planning Officer for Nissan North America, Ponz Pandikuthira said when it comes to vehicle controls, “You can’t make that purely a design exercise.”
The new 2027 Rogue Hybrid debuted with a real volume knob for the radio, toggles for the temperature controls, and buttons for critical climate control functions right down to the heated, and when equipped, ventilated, seats. The reason? “It’s really function dependent,” Pandikuthira said.
“Ultimately, you could put everything in a screen, for example, make everything a digital switch. It’s a very clean design on the inside. But the functionality takes a big beating. There’s certain things that customers are used to from a tactile feedback. The volume and power button for the radio needs to be a knob. People are just used to that and it’s just very intuitive for them of how you go backward and forward, so that remains a lot,” Pandikuthira said.
Beyond a volume knob Pandikuthira said, “There’s other things that can be done much more simply with the toggle if they have a two-way function, that’ll be a toggle. So that’s driven much more by the functionality and the user experience in the vehicle than purely a design statement.”
Pandikuthira noted that the Rogue is a mainstream crossover SUV that people are going to use functioning for transportation. That means it needs to be easy-to-use and that requires functional controls.
“It’s not a jewelry car that you just park in your garage and show off to your friends that form can lead over function,” Pandikuthira said regarding the new Rogue Hybrid. And while the Rogue Hybrid is a mainstream car, Nissan doesn’t make “a jewelry car.”
Nissan has only shown a few teaser images of the new Xterra including the front and side, but we can only hope knobs, buttons, and toggles are featured prominently throughout the reborn SUV.
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As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.
