According to The Times, ‘Almost two thirds of British drivers polled by Allianz, the insurance company, said they would now prefer physical buttons and dials in their cars instead of the now ubiquitous touchscreen “infotainment” systems.’
On this, I’m with the majority. My current car was 12 months’ old when I bought it in 2021 but the actual model was launched in 2017 and it has every dial and button I need to alter the temperature and the air-conditioning, change the fan speed, adjust the wing mirrors, operate the heated seats, switch radio stations and so on. It also has a rotary dial on the centre console that operates the central dashboard screen and vehicle settings.
Every dial and button is within easy reach so you can do most things without taking your eyes off the road for more than a second or two. Compare that to many new cars that have almost no physical controls and the driver has to scroll through an online menu on a digital touchscreen and then tap the relevant icon - multiple times perhaps - in order to adjust a specific setting.
A couple of years ago I drove an electric vehicle (EV) with only a digital touchscreen and one or two buttons on the steering wheel and I was completely flummoxed. We were on holiday in Spain and we were given a courtesy car for a day, although we actually spent much of it on foot exploring the picturesque town of Ronda, which was an hour’s drive from Malaga.
Not wanting to waste time we set off without bothering to work out how to use the touchscreen, which was a mistake. The car itself was quick, quiet, and extremely easy to drive, but for the life of me I couldn’t work out how to change many of the settings, notably the temperature (too cold) and the fan speed (too high).
Manufacturers tell us that touchscreen digital controls are cheaper than dials and buttons, but in terms of driver safety and convenience it felt to me like a step back. Unfortunately, the technology in my next car - assuming it’s a relatively new model - will probably be very similar to that courtesy car so when the time comes I’ll just have to get used to it.
Either way, when I do buy another car it won’t be a diesel. Having insisted for years that I’d never buy one, I bought my first diesel, an Audi A4, in 2005. At the time I was driving up to 30,000 miles a year and it was said that if you drove more than 15,000 miles annually it was cheaper to drive a diesel because, while the purchase price might be higher than the petrol version, they were ultimately cheaper because you got significantly better fuel economy. Since then I’ve had a further four diesel vehicles but in recent years I’ve been driving fewer miles (around 15,000 miles annually) so it no longer makes as much sense.
Manufacturers, meanwhile, are phasing out diesel cars and in recent months the cost of diesel has rocketed. I’m not obsessive about fuel economy and once I’ve bought a car I don’t give it much thought because it is what it is and if you drive a car you just have to get on with it. This week, however, I couldn’t help notice that the cost of filling up the tank of my SUV was £150, up from £130 a few months ago and, before that, £120. In normal driving conditions that should give me around 700 miles, but still … £150 for 68 litres?!
When the cost of petrol in the UK crossed the £1 per gallon threshold in 1979 it was driven by soaring oil prices during a previous energy crisis. I remember it well because even though I had only been driving for a couple of years it was a significant milestone that led the news. Also, as a student I spent two summers (1979 and 1980) working in a petrol station just outside Kendal in Cumbria so I was well aware of the rising cost of fuel and the impact it was having on customers, many of whom were driving to the Lake District on holiday.
Imperial measurements subsequently disappeared from petrol pumps and today fuel is measured in litres. I always suspected that it was changed to disguise the rising cost of fuel because the change to litres began on September 1, 1981. During the Eighties many petrol stations chose to display prices per gallon and per litre in what was called dual pricing, but by December 31, 1994, the price per gallon had officially been phased out. That was driven, needless to say, by an EU Council Directive that aimed to standardise weights and measures across the European single market and was legally enforced on September 30, 1995.
Did the abolition of imperial measurements help disguise the rising cost of fuel in the UK? You be the judge. There are approximately 4.55 litres in a gallon. The price I paid for diesel this week was therefore £2.20 a litre, which translates as £10 per gallon. To put this in perspective, £1 in 1979 is worth £5.61 today (according to the Consumer Price Index) so the cost of fuel in the UK in 2026 far exceeds the rate of inflation since 1979 - and you can’t just blame external factors like rising oil prices because at least 47% of the total pump price is due to a combination of fuel duty and VAT which is imposed by our own government. Compare that to America where the tax rate on fuel is, on average, around 11.7%.
Anyway, for the first time I am seriously considering alternatives to my current diesel SUV. Whether that means petrol, EV or hybrid I haven’t decided (although given my occasional long distance journeys to Scotland and other parts of the country I think I can rule out a full EV). Nevertheless it’s a choice I didn’t expect to have to make for a few years yet, but £10 for a gallon of diesel? That’s criminal.
