- 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.”
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
GM loves it’s damned buttons. Their new cars look like a piano.
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 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.
taste and smell aren’t helpful in a driving situation
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.
They aren’t just annoying, they’re dangerous and can’t be operated without looking at them
I have a UFO Civic and, out of all the cars I’ve been in, it has hands down the best dashboard. Everything is tactile and arranged in a way that I don’t have to look away from the road to adjust anything.
Beyond tactile vs. touchscreen, I wish more manufacturers payed attention to ergonomics so I wouldn’t have to reach into my ass to find the AC or the defogging button.
This is exactly why I love my 10+ year old VW
Good. Can every other company please do this too??
Now if only they could start building usable engines, it’d be great.
The “Firman” generators you buy at Costco are honestly fantastic. They have saved my bacon for years on end on a budget since I live in Northern California where we pay literally the highest electricity prices in the entire planet for the privilege of having 1-2 outages per month.
??? i was talking about car engines? Hyundai’s Theta engine series has been cursed with design flaws and horrible machining quality for so many years now that I don’t really trust any of their vehicles enough to even consider switching to one.
“Firman” and “Hyundai” are the same engine manufacturer. Maybe they suck at scaling up, the small engines I have purchased from them have stood up to a lot of abuse.
I live in Northern California where we pay literally the highest electricity prices in the entire planet
Bullshit…you’re not even the most expensive in the US. And for “planet reference” the average price ATM where i live (not US) is 40¢/kWh, and we’re not even the most expensive…Edit: misread California as Carolina…my bad
California, not Carolina. PG&E areas in NorCal can get up to 70¢/kWh during certain times of the day on certain rate plans. https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/residential-electric-rate-plan-pricing.pdf
Aw shit i misread that…we have >1$/kWh in peak (which is between 5-9pm) too often here during winter.
To reinforce this comment, the “certain times” that we pay 70¢/kWh here are literally all the times you need power, and those rates are scheduled to literally double within the next few years.
Also, gas appliances are now illegal so all cooking and water heating and home heating are at that electricity rate.
deleted by creator
You’re either a shitty LLM or you have difficulties with substance abuse like I do. If you’re the latter, please reach out to me again and we can have a private conversation about our journey to sobriety.
Uuh…what does that have to do with electricity prices??
See? That’s what drugs does to a motherfucker, no clue what’s going on around him anymore.
Jokes aside, I’m also really curious what that has to do with electricity prices.
I’m guessing that answer was a reply to something else, because it makes absolutely no sense in this context.
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.
I recently had a Kona loaner with that. It was so dumb.
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.
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.”
How many years it took them to figure it out?
Probably 10 minutes, but by that point they had to double down for the shareholders and as long as everyone copied, they were good.
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.
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.
First good news I’ve heard in a while.
Goddamn right!!
The only thing I need on a screen is the GPS, everything else is an annoyance.
Naw fam, gotta get that GPS in braille form
/sWait, are we still doing fam
Yeah fam, “fam” is hella lit.
Like Sluggo
Personally I don’t even need that, just give me aux and usb ports for my phone. It’ll be multitudes better than whatever hardware they use for the “infotainment” system.
As someone who needs GPS a lot for work, having it on the large display is very nice. I think the sweet spot is around 7 inches; big enough for maps, but leave enough space for everything else.
The best is when they display the “next step” right on the dash. Too bad my work vehicle doesn’t do that.
The best is when they display the “next step” right on the dash.
Ahhh that sounds awesome!
The downside of building the phone/tablet into the car, though, is that phones change more quickly than cars.
A 20 year old car can be perfectly functional. A 20 year old smarphone is insanely outdated. If the phone is built into the car, you’re stuck with it.
Relative to a built-in system, I’d kind of rather just have a standard mounting point with security attachments and have the car computer be upgraded. 3DIN maybe.
I get the “phone is small” argument, but the phone is upgradeable.
And I’d definitely rather have physical controls for a lot of things.
Yeah, but most manufacturers support CarPlay and Android Auto these days. Your car’s dashboard experience inherits whatever your phone’s OS projection system sends.
My old car’s onboard infotainment may be a decade behind, but when I plug my phone in, it’s 2024.
That’s why Car Play/Android Auto is the best way to go. The smarts are in the phone, but you can have a bigger display.
Exactly. These systems have been around for a decade and my new phone still works on an old Alpine CarPlay head unit from 2014.
Base alpine software may feel dated, but once the phone is in, I get the modern version of all my mapping, listening, and communication software.
Projection systems rock. I was an early adopter and I refuse to go back. Docking a phone on an air vent is janky.
Sadly, I still have an older car without Car Play/Android Auto.
Have you thought about upgrading to an aftermarket stereo or a one of those CarPlay / aa units that connects to your car’s existing auto inputs? I had CarPlay in a 2001 Subaru.
A 20 year old car can be perfectly functional.
Not if the car manufacturers get their wish. They’d love to force you to buy a new car every few years. Having tech installed that becomes obsolete fast would help make you upgrade.
After rolling to CarPlay and Android auto for a while, I’d rather not use a tiny handheld UI when I drive. iOS and Android’s auto UIs have bigger buttons and are more glanceable. If I’m using a screen while driving, I’d rather the screen that was designed for peripheral vision and less precise button targeting.
I would rather have just a dumb display with an open standard that will mirror my phone and send touches back. Android auto is great but it’s a proprietary protocol that support could be dropped at any time. Same with apple. Everything that is not infotainment should be physical buttons so if I want to swap out my display for something else it won’t neuter my hvac
A monitor with HDMI over usb-c input
There should be the mandatory inclusion of a set of open APIs that pass info like:
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display and audio signal (duh)
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microphone audio (to pass voice commands)
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whether the headlights are on (to offer auto dark mode switching on the display)
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whether the handbrake is engaged (so things like video playback can be a parked-only feature)
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crash sensor activation (so that a phone could, if the user desires, automatically alert emergency services)
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For EVs, battery SoC (so that navigation software can include charging stops seamlessly)
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whether the car is left-hand-drive or right-hand-drive (so on-screen buttons can always be close to the driver, not on the wrong side)
From there on, there can be actual competition in the space. You’re not just limited to Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. Any app would be able to use this API data.
Agreed, The left/right hand drive is a hidden setting in AA too. I found it and was happy to be able to have my media controls on the other side because I use them more than navigation. I set my destination and go, I change my podcast more.
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Good. This should be forced via regulations. Touchscreen controls are provably more dangerous than buttons due to the distraction.
Haptic feedback like knob clicks or button presses are much easier to use without taking eyes off the road as often.
Shhh, don’t call it “haptic feedback” or they might make them flat, unmoving buttons that have a vibration motor behind them.
They already have started doing that
I got a new BMW 5 series as a loaner a few weeks back and it had that shit all over. I’m happy with my 2020, thanks BMW.
Don’t you still have to look at it to find it first? Edit: sorry i thought you were talking about touch screens
Even if you have to look at it first, once on it you can go by feel where as i find i struggle to do the same on a fully touch control.
You can wave your hand at a dial and find it easily just by touch
No. All the knobs are in roughly the same area, so you can find and manipulate them by touch without looking.
I regularly manipulate my 2008 Toyota matrix’s radio and HVAC controls while never taking my eyes off the road. I won’t buy any car that forgoes the physical controls.
Some have tactile markings for location reference, like keyboars have
I’m sure Trump and his new auto industry advisor, Elon Musk, will get right on that. 😔
Oh, yeah!
That’s going to be a whole thing soon. Yay.
And Lina Khan will be right there!
