Buttons on steering wheels

[savethemanual]

I absolutely love the design LoveFrom did, a fantastic marriage of digital and tactile analog. It’s going to be a special EV for those who can afford it!

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[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Saw this the other night, was reminded of this thread. Apparently this is an upcoming steering wheel design from VW.

 

[skyguyscott]

Saw this the other night, was reminded of this thread. Apparently this is an upcoming steering wheel design from VW.

Hmmm. Looks like it has a lot of functionality, but doesn’t look as ergonomically sophisticated as designs from a decade or earlier ago. I wonder if this is a case of new designers and new engineers doing something fairly quickly without really researching earlier designs and trying to improve upon them

 

[Conseil]

So there has been some discussion about car makers starting to add physical buttons back into their vehicles - for lots of reasons, such as customer demand and less driver distraction compared to screen menus.

Which got me thinking about where Rivian might put these buttons. I think buttons for climate control would be the most welcome, and probably the dash somewhere would be best, but the Steering wheel is another option.

Rivian already has some cool steering wheel controls, but they are still dynamic rather than dedicated controls, and still rely on some screen display somewhere.

Ever since Speed Racer's fictional Mach 5, kids have been dreaming about the perfect steering wheel, and I did some digging and found even crazier designs car makers have experimented with in their concept cars over the years and thought I'd share them here just for fun. Who knows, maybe Rivian will do something weird and wonderful someday, inspired by these wild wheels.

The Italians are known for their exotic designs, but Maserati has come up with some doozies from decades ago

Skip ahead a decade or so, and I found this one I kinda like -- note the Sony CRT and floppy drive!

Around the same time, Mazda designed a cockpit that speaks to the pilot in me. No they weren't the first or only, but I still like this version.

Lotus looked to the F1 world for this fairly recent design. Other than the gold knob, I actually think it looks almost conventional with present day designs:

Closer to home, Oldsmobile(!) did a really crazy wheel yoke that's so bad it's good. I wonder if the grips twist like on a motorcycle. Also, I'm not sure if they included enough buttons.

Love the nostalgia!

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