Inside it’s pretty simple. There are ‘hard’ buttons (‘soft’ buttons being those on a screen, in VW parlance) for the climate controls, and the steering wheel gets a raft of buttons either side in place of haptic panels. There’s even an on/off button for the power. Window controls return to a conventional layout, and even the door handles are satisfyingly simple. It is, frankly, a relief.
The steering wheel itself is squarer than a poindexter in a 1950s Hollywood film. VW says it makes the screen behind it easier to see, and to be fair, it does. That screen is dressed up to look like a Mk1 Golf’s binnacles, with mph representing, er, mph and energy usage replacing rpm. It also shows things like the lane keeping assistance and battery percentage level.
Space is good, too. In VW terms this pretty much offers a VW T-Roc-level of space for a VW T-Cross-size car. The boot is huge, with a big underfloor storage area, much like with the similarly front-wheel-drive Ford Puma Gen-E. For all the buttons I do wish the menu to decide whether you want normal or strong regen wasn’t so many menus deep.