- Scout Motors’ CEO said the auto industry is plagued by “dystopian disconnection machines.”
- Scott Keogh isn’t impressed by the massive screens and lack of buttons in new cars.
- He implied that buttons and tactile materials need to make a comeback, and that’s exactly what Scout is trying to do.
“Everything’s computer,” one man famously said earlier this year, referring to the interior of a Tesla Model S. While that saying quickly turned into a meme, there is some substance behind it.
Despite cars becoming safer, quieter, faster and more technologically advanced, their interiors have become lifeless tablets on wheels, often lacking buttons that people can operate without taking their eyes off the road.
It’s all in the name of cost-cutting, despite automakers’ efforts to wrap the transformation into something else. It might be cheaper to slap a screen on the dash and call it a day, but it can also be dangerous. That’s why Europe’s leading crash safety organization started deducting points for cars that don’t have essential buttons, which leads to lower overall safety ratings.
Scott Keogh, Scout Motors’ CEO, isn’t a big fan of button-less interiors either. Speaking with Bloomberg recently, he said that modern cars have become “sort of dystopian disconnection machines” that force people to dig into menus that are sometimes spread across several screens.
Photo by: Scout Motors
“Everything’s eight layers down. Everything’s on a computer screen. Everyone in the car needs their own computer screen,” Keogh said. But complaining about something doesn’t really move the needle in the right direction. Especially when you’re running a… ahem… car company.
“We think the exact opposite. We think mechanical switches give you a connection. We think less screens is better. We think bench seats are cool. We think tailgates are cool. We want to build this real, authentic connection,” Keogh added during his Bloomberg interview.
Scout’s upcoming Terra pickup and Traveler SUV have pretty cool interiors. Yes, there are two screens, one for the digital gauge cluster and one for the infotainment system, but there’s also a healthy number of proper buttons and knobs. I’m all for buttons, so I hope Scout will stick to its guns once the two electric off-roaders start rolling off the assembly line in late 2027. We’re still two years away from that moment, and let’s not forget that the cars that we first saw last year were prototypes, so anything can happen before production starts.
Keogh, though, seems confident that doing things the right way is something Americans cherish, so the company is trying to cater to that.
“I think some things don’t need to be reinvented,” he said. “There’s no American who said, ‘I don’t know how to open a door handle.’ There’s no American who said, ‘I don’t know how to turn the fan speed switch.’ Let’s bring those things back, and let’s get down to basics. It also plays back to our heritage. That’s what Scout was all about.”
Now, it’s not lost upon me that Scout Motors is part of the Volkswagen Group, and that Scott Keogh used to be the president and CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, as well as head of the Volkswagen brand for the North American region. That’s the same Volkswagen that went down in history as the company that removed the rear window buttons on its EVs. In fairness, though, the German brand admitted it went a little too far with the button removals and said that future cars will bring them back.
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Source: Scout Motors
