Electric

This is the interior of the new VW Polo, and it includes buttons!

Volkswagen is bringing back proper buttons and retro dials for its new electric supermini

Published: 05 Jan 2026

Late last year Volkswagen confirmed it would christen its new electric supermini with the Polo name, and now we know the interior will feature proper physical buttons. Three cheers for continued common sense. Hip hip, hooray!

The images above give us our first glance of the upcoming ID. Polo’s insides, with a large 13in touchscreen for infotainment in the middle of the dash and a smaller 10.25in screen for the dial display. And yes, at the touch of a button the latter can go full retro and mimic the look of the clocks in a Mk1 Golf. Nice.

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“We have created an interior that feels like a friend from the very first contact,” says chief designer Andreas Mindt. Right.

“Clear physical buttons provide stability and trust, warm materials make it appealing, and charming details such as the new retro views of the instruments show the typical Volkswagen wink. All this makes the ID. Polo a compact car with a big heart.”

The buttons are plentiful, with a proper row of switches on the dash to control the climate, a single rotary dial on the centre console for media and two little keypads on the new squircle steering wheel. VW even admits that its new “holistic design approach” was shaped by customer feedback. We’re also told this look will “define the cockpits of upcoming ID. models”.

The ID. Polo will also introduce Volkswagen’s next generation software, and we’re promised “tidy menu structures” and “familiar VW operating patterns”. All sounds reassuringly simple to operate. Essentially, it’s everything the original ID.3 wasn’t.

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