Mercedes' CEO says the industry is at peak low button, not peak screen
Ola Källenius did not say screens are going away. He said the industry hit peak low button instead
Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius says touchscreens in cars could keep growing, even as he thinks the industry has reached what he calls "peak low button." The comment lands oddly next to Mercedes' own MBUX Hyperscreen, a tri-screen display that stretches well over a metre wide in some cars, making it the widest screen in any production car today.
What Källenius actually conceded
Pressed on complaints about controls migrating from physical switches to touchscreens, Källenius said "the industry as a whole might have gone a little bit too far" toward digital controls, adding: "Sometimes you get a bit ahead of yourself and do technology for the sake of technology and maybe forget a little bit about the customer. So from now on, you will see us reintroduce the most sensible buttons." That is a specific, bounded concession, not a reversal of the screen-first approach.
The five-year-old-or-a-board-member test
Källenius also defended the UI work behind the current system at length: "We spend countless hours on UI. I spend hours every year discussing this with our engineers and we joke it needs to be so easy that either a five-year-old kid or a Mercedes board member can use it." It is a memorable line, and also exactly the kind of polished executive answer worth reading as messaging rather than as the full picture, since the same interview is the one where he concedes the industry overcorrected.
What is actually changing
Mercedes has already added physical controls back to the steering wheels on newer GLC and CLA Shooting Brake models, swapping touch-sensitive panels for rollers and switches, the same instinct behind wanting a proper gearstick instead of paddles. Euro NCAP will expect dedicated physical controls for certain critical functions from 2026, which gives this timeline a regulatory push alongside whatever the UI team has concluded on its own.
Not everyone is moving the same direction
Volkswagen and Audi have made similar admissions about touch-only controls going too far. Mazda is headed the other way, fitting a larger screen to the 2026 CX-5, which is a reminder that "peak low button" is Mercedes' read on the industry, not a settled consensus.
AutoNext Take
Asked directly if the industry had hit peak screen, Källenius would not say yes. He would only say the industry hit peak low button, and that distinction is the whole story. Mercedes is not walking away from big displays, it is quietly restoring the physical controls people actually reach for by feel, while keeping the screens as the centrepiece. That is a narrower correction than the headlines suggest, but it is still the right one, and the honesty of calling it "a little bit too far" rather than someone else's problem is worth crediting.
