Volkswagen’s Future Interiors Will Feature Real Buttons and More Premium Materials

The next-gen models on the way from Volkswagen promise softer surfaces, simpler screens, and the return of physical controls.

Volkswagen’s new electric city car, the ID Polo, isn’t coming to America. But the way the ID Polo looks and feels is serving as a preview of VW’s next generation of global electric vehicles to be launched through the end of the decade. Like the ID Polo, the new breed of Volkswagen EVs will have an exterior design language that’s more closely aligned with that of the brand’s combustion engine vehicles.

More important, however, as we discovered while looking over a production-ready ID Polo in Germany at the recent 2026 Car Design Event, all new Volkswagens, regardless of powertrain, will come furnished with interiors finished in premium materials and utilizing physical control buttons for frequently used functions.

Volkswagen Brings Back Buttons Where They Matter Most

“It’s not a phone; it’s a car,” Volkswagen design chief Andreas Mindt said of his decision to employ physical buttons on the dash of every future VW to control audio volume, heating and cooling temperature and fan speed, and hazard lights. In addition, there will be buttons as opposed to touch pads on the steering wheels for functions like cruise control. The cars will still have screens, but with updated software and graphics designed to make their myriad functions more readily accessible.

Future VW interiors will also have a warmer ambience than the stark, plasticky cabins of the current ID lineup. “We are really trying to make the cars more friendly, more positive,” Volkswagen senior interior designer Jeremy Bras said.

ID Polo buyers will be able to choose from three interior trim packages, Philine Seydell, VW’s color, materials, and finish designer, said. Outside of the base trim, the car will be available with two “Style” interiors, one in a dark colorway and the other in lighter shades. The use of textiles and soft textures featured in the ID Polo’s cabin will be a feature of interiors across the range of the next generation of Volkswagen models, Seydell said.

The ID Polo’s re-engineered digital interface will also be rolled out across Volkswagen’s next-generation vehicles. Powered by a smoother and faster technical backbone, it features redesigned graphics and a simpler menu structure. The configurable digital dash ahead of the driver is larger, and function and/or data elements on the left- and right-hand side of the screen are toggled by physical switches on the corresponding spokes of the steering wheel. The central touchscreen features a simplified display layout and configurable shortcut menu. “We threw out a lot of submenus,” Andro Kleen, Volkswagen’s head of user interface design, said, “so it’s much more focused and way easier to use. We made sure this thing is built for driving.”

A Simpler, Faster Interface That Puts Driving First

The ID Polo makes it clear that VW has had a serious rethink about its EV interiors, especially since Mindt took over as Volkswagen’s design boss in February 2023. “All these cheap plastic elements, they’re gone,” Mindt said. “Now there’s a clean surface with soft trim on the first layer that you touch and feel.” More important, the ID Polo shows Volkswagen has also developed a sense of humor. Among the display settings available on the ID Polo is a retro mode, which reconfigures the digital dash to resemble the analog display of the Mark I Golf and puts a digital avatar of a cassette playing on the central touchscreen.

The ID Polo, whose single motor rests under the hood and drives the front wheels, just as the internal combustion engine hardware has done in gas-powered Polos since 1975, has been designed from the wheels up, inside and out, to present the electric vehicle as a mainstream automotive object, familiar and comfortable. “Five years ago, the electric car was a car for pioneers, for early adopters,” Mindt said. “We are not in the early adopter business anymore. This is for average people.”