Steering Wheel Controls

For the life of me I can't figure out why Toyota would choose Left (volume down) and Right (volume up) while the Up (next track) and Down (previous track). Does anyone have any ideas why this might have been the case? I might understand if the steering wheel lacked the other directional pad on the right side. It always throws me off (especially coming from my other Toyotas (RAV4/Corolla). Alas, I am stumped. Any ideas?

I linked to an image (Motor Trend) because I didn't want to go back out to my truck to take a picture.

 

Yep. Was discussed back in 9/2015. Just how it is.

 

this bothered me for about a week, then you adopt to it. but I agree, not intuitive.

 

I've only been driving my Taco about a week now, but I still revert to adjusting the volume with the knob.

My brain hasn't picked up on the goofy steering wheel controls yet after driving Fords for the last umpteen years.

 

My wifes 2011 Highlander has right/left for the volume too. It's not a big deal. Get used to it.

 

I think about it how the display on the screen works... when you turn the volume up the image goes to the right and volume down the image goes left. When you change your stations it's the same thing... up button and the display cursor goes up and down goes down.

 

It's just how the world works.

 

The thing that's driving me nuts is they have the hands reversed.

Left hand is controlling the right screen, right hand is controlling the left screen. Seems wrong. Maybe I'm OCD.

 

your volume displays horizontally and your radio presets are displayed vertically? seems logical to me but then again anything that isnt profoundly stupid i accept after owning a few bmws

 

Hmmm. That is a really good point and that makes sense. Thanks!!

 

If you really want to be confused, the phone controls on my 2013 Highlander have the top button to hang up and the bottom button to answer.

 

The two BMWs I owned had (by far) the best steering wheel/lever controls. Miss them oh so much.

 

I really hate this as I keep wanted to change the volumn/station with my right hand and then... change my middle display to something else. I wonder how hard this would be to switch myself....

 

were they 2002's? half the buttons on my e90 didnt do anything, the other half did what you wouldnt expect. the e46 was half decent but far from what id consider ergonomic or logical.

 

Yup, agreed the controls seem opposite from intuition. However, even if there was a mod to correct this, the images on the buttons would still be there. Just got to get used to them.

 

What bugs me is that the "return/back" button on the steering wheel doesn't control entune.

 

Nope.

E46 M-Sport wheel on my '05 330i ZHP, and a E92 sport wheel on my '07 335i.



Volume is up-down on the left-most side (important when you're driving stick and your right hand is on the shifter), next/previous (much less frequently used) is up-down on the right . Buttons are clearly separated with whitespace in between them, and are easy to find without looking at the wheel. Cruise control is a separate lever with up/down movements to incrementally adjust speed.

The non-M-Sport "rectangular" steering wheel of normal, early-year E46s was ugly as shit, though.



The E92 version above was slightly changed, but still better than almost anything I've owned since.

The Germans definitely got this right.

 

At some point I was going to try rotate the switch/button to put the volume top/bottom, and station/track left/right...

Not sure if its even possible, but then the OCD in me would be bothered by the Speaker labels being sideways...

So I've gotten used to its "uniqueness"...

 

I'm not a fan of this either. The worse is that my wife's car is exactly the opposite. Volume is up/down (how it should be) instead of left/right.

 

Yup. People have done that - works fine.