Also hardware improvements on the way
Volkswagen CEO Thomas Schäfer is once again going through the dust because of the disadvantages of the current infotainment of ‘his’ cars. Improvement is on the way, with the software getting a major update this year.
Schäfer, who heads the brand (not the group) Volkswagen as CEO, spoke about it with the British Car Magazine. “We know what we have to do. We receive a lot of feedback from customers, from journalists and from investigations. They say ‘you know this is not good, this has to be better’”, says Schäfer honestly.
Indeed, the latest generation of Volkswagen’s infotainment system often leads to annoyances. The system, which was introduced in the ID3 and Golf 8, certainly suffered from crashes in the initial phase. That has improved somewhat with updates, but the rather confusing menu structure has remained.
In addition, the system contains too many functions that could have been better operated with a button and – the most notable shortcoming – the ‘control slider’ under the screen is not illuminated. This touch-sensitive ‘bar’ can be used to influence audio volume and interior temperature, but is virtually invisible in the dark.
Schäfer promises software improvements to Car Magazine from ‘the winter of 2022’, so this year. According to the CEO, this is ‘a great step forward’. New hardware, in other words for new models, will see the light of day within 18 months. This includes implementation in the revised ID3, but also the facelifted Golf. The cars will have illuminated ‘sliders’, but also real, physical buttons on the steering wheel. Schäfer emphasizes that developing new infotainment for a company the size of Volkswagen is a huge job, but at the same time he indicates that with the help of user input, people are working hard to resolve the complaints.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl