Hyundai is slowly backing away from the all-screen approach to interior design.
Hyundai Design North America Vice President Ha Hak-soo said that people “get stressed, annoyed and steamed when they want to control something in a pinch but are unable to do so.”
Absolutely my creed. In my industrial niche, touch screen never took hold - when your action is actually (or at least perceived) important, nobody wants to rely on touch screens.
I have a pre-touchscreen era (for its model anyway) 2012 car. I’m hoping by the time I have to get a new car this touchscreen fad will have come and gone. How are you supposed to use those things in the winter when you have gloves on?
There’s a happy medium. I have a slightly newer VW GTI (2017) with a touchscreen but there are still buttons and dials for basically everything. It’s a perfect infotainment system if you ask me :)
Hyundai is listening to what consumers want much more readily than other manufacturers, and their body designs strike an incredible balance between modern familiarity and retrofuturism. It’s almost exactly what I want from a new vehicle, other than the fact that they use all the same forced telemetry that other brands are using.
They’re also offering a great spread of electric AND hybrid vehicles to satisfy consumers worried about charger availability as well as consumers worried about the impact of gasoline-powered vehicles.
I won’t be surprised if they continue to increase their market share for a long time to come. If only privacy concerns were as common among the broader population as they seem to be here in the Fediverse, then maybe they might address those issues as well and be a no-brainer purchase.
Got a Tucson to test for a few weeks. I was delighted to give it back. It was infuriating to use, the glass slab caught every light and felt like it was at 103% of the perfect distance everywhere I needed to touch.
The worst thing about modern cars though, outside of the sim card live locations and data scraping, is the safety message on start up that needs confirmation and the fucking safety pause on android auto. I hate it.
Had a loaner Ford edge with the giant PITA display. Want to adjust the temperature? You have to look way down at the bottom and then slide the adjuster !!!SLiDE your fucking finger in a small area!!! Sooooo fucking stupid! And it is three taps to turn pretty much anything on. Just give me dials and switches.
The fast forward and rewind options on my car stereo are both touch only, and they rarely (if ever) work. I like everything else about my car, which thankfully didn’t do away with too many buttons and mostly uses the touchscreen for the backup camera and stereo. But those two functions specifically being part of the touchscreen makes no sense and drives me crazy.
I drive a 2023 Sonata N-Line. I feel like Hyundai got this one absolutely perfect as far as balancing physical buttons versus touch screen buttons. Every single important driving control has a physical button that is easy to reach and feel while keeping your eyes on the road. The only exception might be the control to turn the highway driving assist feature on and off. The touch screen is large and extremely responsive and has a multitude settings, but nothing that you would need immediately while driving. Absolutely love this car
The problem is not touchscreens. It’s the awful implementation. I have a Tesla(never again, ugh) and a Hyundai Ioniq5.
The Tesla has a fantastic touchscreen that integrates well with the car. Also no display behind the wheel. I’m tall, I can’t see it.
Hyundai the rear seat warmers are buttons. My passengers are happy. The driver’s warmer is buried in a touch screen menu. Which would be fine but the shitty screen takes a minute to boot up which means I can’t adjust my seat until I’ve already driven off and now it’s dangerous and fiddly.
In summary: I don’t mind if it’s touchscreen or not, it has to be fast and reactive.
Personally, I feel the problem is absolutely touchscreens.
I’ve only got five senses, and taste and smell aren’t helpful in a driving situation.
Of the 3 left, sight is the most important for the most important task: driving.
For other tasks, sound is best used to alert or remind about something, and is frequently diminished as a driving aid by music.
That leaves touch and sight for all remaining tasks.
Touchscreens are, despite the name, effectively 100% reliant on sight, since there’s no real tactile feedback to enable the user to make eyes-free adjustments. To use a touchscreen, you have to take your eyes off the road to see what the screen says and make your selections.
While some are better than others, I also feel like touchscreens are still embarrassingly and frustratingly prone to errors, missed touches, and generally not doing the things the user intended, requiring even more eyes off the road to undo whatever actually happened, get the interface back to the place you want it, and try again, hoping that this time it’ll work.
My mid-teens vehicle has a mix of a medium sized touch screen for the entertainment unit but physical controls for climate, driving, and a few of the entertainment adjustments, and while I was all about the advanced new touchscreen when I bought it, I find it’s my least favorite part of the controls this far along in ownership.
Tesla Model Y owner here (never again, either). I hate the touchscreen, and also hate the way they’ve shoehorned functionality into the button/scroller controls on the steering wheel to try to address complaints.
When I first got the MY, the only way to control things like the wipers was through menus in the touchscreen. A software update introduced the ability to control them from the steering wheel controls, but even that “solution” sucks. You have to press & hold the control down while simultaneously scrolling it with your thumb. And most times you can’t scroll it from all the way off to all the way on in a single motion, so you press, scroll as much as you can, release & press again then scroll the rest of the way. A real PITA.
There’s a limit to how many physical buttons before it goes the other way. Hyundai are already at ‘enough’ and the Kias I’ve looked at have way too many.
I mean, it’s all very subjective, so “too much” for you seems to be what is a good amount for everyone else…but realistically, I don’t think this is a legitimate complaint since you still need to be able to make all these adjustments anyway… it’s just a matter of the way the adjustments are being made.
All a touch screen changes is that it can play host to multiple functions depending on context…but it loses much of the visual recognition and almost all the tactile feedback of a physical control.
And while vehicles keep getting more and more complex for sure, I feel like when I’m riding in a more touchscreen heavy vehicle, that screen is displaying the same static set of controls 99% of the time…and at that point, the flexibility it offers is largely irrelevant, and the tradeoffs mean giving up a lot to get very little in exchange.
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First good news I’ve heard in a while.
Absolutely my creed. In my industrial niche, touch screen never took hold - when your action is actually (or at least perceived) important, nobody wants to rely on touch screens.
I have a pre-touchscreen era (for its model anyway) 2012 car. I’m hoping by the time I have to get a new car this touchscreen fad will have come and gone. How are you supposed to use those things in the winter when you have gloves on?
Most newer touch panels work pretty well with gloves but they do make gloves that are compatible with touch panels.
There’s a happy medium. I have a slightly newer VW GTI (2017) with a touchscreen but there are still buttons and dials for basically everything. It’s a perfect infotainment system if you ask me :)
Good. Can every other company please do this too??
Hyundai is listening to what consumers want much more readily than other manufacturers, and their body designs strike an incredible balance between modern familiarity and retrofuturism. It’s almost exactly what I want from a new vehicle, other than the fact that they use all the same forced telemetry that other brands are using.
They’re also offering a great spread of electric AND hybrid vehicles to satisfy consumers worried about charger availability as well as consumers worried about the impact of gasoline-powered vehicles.
I won’t be surprised if they continue to increase their market share for a long time to come. If only privacy concerns were as common among the broader population as they seem to be here in the Fediverse, then maybe they might address those issues as well and be a no-brainer purchase.
To me it’s about balance and design. I’ve been in cars with too many physical buttons and those can be a distraction too.
This is true. I mean who ever needed the ability to dial a phone number manually from the dashboard? Among others.
As a 90s kid I’m incredibly good at T9 text input, which is what I use the phone buttons in my car for
Got a Tucson to test for a few weeks. I was delighted to give it back. It was infuriating to use, the glass slab caught every light and felt like it was at 103% of the perfect distance everywhere I needed to touch.
The worst thing about modern cars though, outside of the sim card live locations and data scraping, is the safety message on start up that needs confirmation and the fucking safety pause on android auto. I hate it.
Had a loaner Ford edge with the giant PITA display. Want to adjust the temperature? You have to look way down at the bottom and then slide the adjuster !!!SLiDE your fucking finger in a small area!!! Sooooo fucking stupid! And it is three taps to turn pretty much anything on. Just give me dials and switches.
The fast forward and rewind options on my car stereo are both touch only, and they rarely (if ever) work. I like everything else about my car, which thankfully didn’t do away with too many buttons and mostly uses the touchscreen for the backup camera and stereo. But those two functions specifically being part of the touchscreen makes no sense and drives me crazy.
I drive a 2023 Sonata N-Line. I feel like Hyundai got this one absolutely perfect as far as balancing physical buttons versus touch screen buttons. Every single important driving control has a physical button that is easy to reach and feel while keeping your eyes on the road. The only exception might be the control to turn the highway driving assist feature on and off. The touch screen is large and extremely responsive and has a multitude settings, but nothing that you would need immediately while driving. Absolutely love this car
Yeah, the current Tucson and Konas seem pretty well-balanced here too.
The problem is not touchscreens. It’s the awful implementation. I have a Tesla(never again, ugh) and a Hyundai Ioniq5.
The Tesla has a fantastic touchscreen that integrates well with the car. Also no display behind the wheel. I’m tall, I can’t see it.
Hyundai the rear seat warmers are buttons. My passengers are happy. The driver’s warmer is buried in a touch screen menu. Which would be fine but the shitty screen takes a minute to boot up which means I can’t adjust my seat until I’ve already driven off and now it’s dangerous and fiddly.
In summary: I don’t mind if it’s touchscreen or not, it has to be fast and reactive.
Disagree.
Personally, I feel the problem is absolutely touchscreens.
I’ve only got five senses, and taste and smell aren’t helpful in a driving situation.
Of the 3 left, sight is the most important for the most important task: driving.
For other tasks, sound is best used to alert or remind about something, and is frequently diminished as a driving aid by music.
That leaves touch and sight for all remaining tasks.
Touchscreens are, despite the name, effectively 100% reliant on sight, since there’s no real tactile feedback to enable the user to make eyes-free adjustments. To use a touchscreen, you have to take your eyes off the road to see what the screen says and make your selections.
While some are better than others, I also feel like touchscreens are still embarrassingly and frustratingly prone to errors, missed touches, and generally not doing the things the user intended, requiring even more eyes off the road to undo whatever actually happened, get the interface back to the place you want it, and try again, hoping that this time it’ll work.
My mid-teens vehicle has a mix of a medium sized touch screen for the entertainment unit but physical controls for climate, driving, and a few of the entertainment adjustments, and while I was all about the advanced new touchscreen when I bought it, I find it’s my least favorite part of the controls this far along in ownership.
How else will I know when I forgot to release my parking brake?
They get really spicy!
Tesla Model Y owner here (never again, either). I hate the touchscreen, and also hate the way they’ve shoehorned functionality into the button/scroller controls on the steering wheel to try to address complaints.
When I first got the MY, the only way to control things like the wipers was through menus in the touchscreen. A software update introduced the ability to control them from the steering wheel controls, but even that “solution” sucks. You have to press & hold the control down while simultaneously scrolling it with your thumb. And most times you can’t scroll it from all the way off to all the way on in a single motion, so you press, scroll as much as you can, release & press again then scroll the rest of the way. A real PITA.
Not being able to quickly change wiper speeds sounds like a bad idea.
To have to navigate a screen to find a control is a traffic hazard. Also if it’s just to play music.
Physical buttons are always ready to be pushed.
There’s a limit to how many physical buttons before it goes the other way. Hyundai are already at ‘enough’ and the Kias I’ve looked at have way too many.
I mean, it’s all very subjective, so “too much” for you seems to be what is a good amount for everyone else…but realistically, I don’t think this is a legitimate complaint since you still need to be able to make all these adjustments anyway… it’s just a matter of the way the adjustments are being made.
All a touch screen changes is that it can play host to multiple functions depending on context…but it loses much of the visual recognition and almost all the tactile feedback of a physical control.
And while vehicles keep getting more and more complex for sure, I feel like when I’m riding in a more touchscreen heavy vehicle, that screen is displaying the same static set of controls 99% of the time…and at that point, the flexibility it offers is largely irrelevant, and the tradeoffs mean giving up a lot to get very little in exchange.