Two years. That’s how long Mercedes-Benz knew its customers were unhappy with the disappearance of physical controls before it decided to act. Matthias Geisen, the brand’s head of sales and marketing, confirmed as much in a recent interview with Autocar, casually admitting that feedback from research clinics had been clear for some time. “Customers told us two years ago: ‘Guys, good idea, but it just doesn’t work for us,'” he said.
So buttons are coming back. But the screens? Those aren’t going anywhere.
Mercedes is threading a needle here, trying to satisfy two opposing demands from its own customer base. Buyers love the visual spectacle of the Hyperscreen and its sprawling glass dashboard. They also hate fumbling through submenus to change the cabin temperature at 70 mph.
The solution, apparently, is both — massive displays paired with physical controls for the functions people actually use in motion.
The new electric C-Class offers a preview of this philosophy. Its steering wheel gets a proper scroll wheel instead of the infuriating touch-sensitive sliders that plagued recent models. A small row of hard buttons sits on a high-mounted center console, covering drive modes, cameras, microphone, and volume. It’s not a return to the cockpit of a W124, but it’s a concession that touch-only interiors were a mistake.
Geisen frames the screen obsession through a smartphone analogy. “For the last 20 years it basically looks the same, but the magic happens behind the screen,” he said. He talks about “digital craftsmanship” and the ability for families to personalize their displays with wallpapers and themes. It’s a pitch that treats the car interior like a consumer electronics product, which is exactly the direction Mercedes has been heading since the original MBUX Hyperscreen debuted in the EQS.
The tension with Volkswagen’s approach could not be sharper. VW has been publicly retreating from its disastrous touch-everything strategy, restoring physical controls across its lineup after years of customer complaints and brutal reviews. Mercedes, by contrast, is doubling down on glass while sprinkling in just enough tactile hardware to quiet the loudest critics.
There’s something revealing about that two-year lag between hearing the complaints and acting on them. Mercedes had already committed enormous engineering and design resources to the all-screen interior. Reversing course entirely would mean admitting the flagship EQS interior — the one that was supposed to represent the future of automotive luxury — was fundamentally flawed. Bringing back a volume knob and a few rocker switches is cheaper than that kind of reckoning.
Expect the next generation of Mercedes models — including the CLA, GLB, and the gas-powered C-Class facelift — to adopt this hybrid layout. Screens dominate. Buttons assist. Nobody at Stuttgart is ripping out OLED panels.
The super-luxury segment already figured this out. Rolls-Royce and Bentley never abandoned physical switchgear because their buyers would have revolted. The haptic weight of a rotary controller or the click of a precision toggle communicates craftsmanship in a way no screen animation ever will.
What Geisen is really selling is a compromise dressed up as a philosophy. The screens stay because Mercedes has invested billions in software, because younger buyers expect them, and because they create recurring revenue opportunities through over-the-air updates and subscription features. The buttons return because the people actually writing checks demanded them.
Neither camp gets everything it wants, and Mercedes gets to keep building the future it already bet on — just with a volume knob bolted back on.
Two years of knowing and two years of waiting. In an industry that prides itself on engineering precision, that’s a long time to let your customers twist in the wind.
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