Hyundai Is Bringing Back Buttons Because Touchscreens Are ‘Annoying’

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.
- Don't you still have to look at it to find it first? Edit: sorry i thought you were talking about touch screens
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!

Congratulations on taking a fucking DECADE to realize what should've been FUCKING OBVIOUS from the start.

Design is science, they fail and go back. Doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different outcome is the definition of insanity.. Oh wait.

Honestly. I'd be fine with a touchscreen for things you wouldn't likely be adjusting on the go anyways - but basic stuff like the radio and AC/Fans should always be easy to distinguish, don't need to look away from the road to operate buttons. Making basic stuff require touchscreen is inconvenient at best and outright dangerous at worst.

Give me a manageable handful of physical buttons with defaults but that I can customize. The pendulum swung too far. There is a Place for touch screens and buttons in cars. They can live in Harmony. Personally, I never want to see a climate control physical button except maybe for my passengers microclimates. I set a setpoint and set the fan to auto like I do in my house. Let the car adjust to the preferred setpoint. Heated seats / heated steering wheel? Programmed parameters. Stereo controls? Hell yeah, let's get tactile - don't make me look at anything for that. I don't mind the idea of voice controls too, but I've never met one in a car that wasn't frustrating AF. Prefer to leave that out until the tech improves.
- Conversely, I want the ac controls on physical buttons because when I'm in driving and am in direct sunlight, or when I've just jumped in the car after doing some heavy work, I want ice cold Antarctic air blowing on my face. The ambient temperature of the general cabin is irrelevant to me. I do not want to be hunting around through menus to find the ac fan control slider.
- My wife's Ford Edge has the worst of both worlds. It has buttons for the stereo and AC but they're all flat capacitive buttons so they barely work when you touch them and you still have to take your eyes off the road to find them.
I recently got a Kia Niro and it has buttons on the wheel for most of the basic functions of the touch screen. Really handy
- Yes same here. Still reach for the volume control occasionally though. Moving up and down the cruise control and what have you is a bit fiddly as well, so I usually don't bother.
I've got changeable buttons in my car and I feel like it is a good compromise. They mostly control the AC, but they give me control of other things if I want it.

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.

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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
Naw fam, gotta get that GPS in braille form
/s
- Wait, are we still doing fam

More importantly, they are dangerous.

I just put on full self driving while I mess with the touchscreen. I've only hit 4 toddlers max in the last couple weeks.
- Ah, the mythical Democrat 4th trimester abortion.

The bathrooms in hell all have automatic sinks where you can't tell where the sensor is and an inconsistent delay.

I was in an airport bathroom and somehow the auto soap dispenser managed to squirt soap into my open cup of coffee. Fuck those things.
- I have questions about why you'd take an open cup of coffee into a public bathroom.
- this is disgusting I'd rather have soap in my coffee then take an open cup into the bathroom. I'd say that the dispenser is justified in its actions
Also the faucet hole is 1 centimeter from the back edge of the sink.

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

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.

Not having touch anything is a selling point for me. Bonus points if I can roll up the window too.

Personally I prefer a mixture of both. Touch screen for anything you don't need to operate while driving and physical for everything else.

Android Auto navigation, car system/audio settings, clock and system management, etc should all be a touch screen so you aren't navigating through turning knobs and pressing up and down buttons to go through various menus like your programming a microwave.

Knobs and dials and buttons for anything to do with audio volume, skip/reverse tracks, etc. and air conditioning.
Automakers will read this comment and think that everyone wants voice control instead of touchscreens or buttons.
- Just to be completely clear then (and I'm sorry for yelling):
  
  WE DON'T WANT VOICE CONTROL IN OUR CARS. AND IF YOU ADD AI WE'LL BURN YOU TO THE FUCKING GROUND.
- Please unlock the door
  
  Voice can not be authenticated please run calibration in the phone app
  
  Open the door
  
  Voice can not be authenticated please run calibration in the phone app
  
  Ooopen theeee dooooor
  
  Voice can not be authenticated please run calibration in the phone app
  
  Unlock the door
  
  Turning on cabin warmer
  
  The door unlock it
  
  Voice can not be authenticated please run calibration in the phone app
  
  Open the door!
  
  Voice can not be authenticated please run calibration in the phone app
- My Prius has a voice control option built in already. The only time I've ever activated it is by accident because it's a steering wheel button. It's a 2016 Prius so I doubt it's able to do a whole lot anyway. Thankfully, most of the controls do not require the touch screen or voice control. None of the essential ones do.

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 :)

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.

a screen is good for navigation and music, basically it

Pretty much. Give me a screen for Android Auto so I can interact with my preferred navigation and media apps, and then just let me control the car.

Like, if you want to add a menu for low-level tweaking of stuff I don't need(or shouldn't change) while driving, sure(like suspension settings). But for everything else, AC, seat warmers, forward/reverse, windshield wipers, headlights, etc, I want a button or knob.

Good. Can every other company please do this too??

I once rented a Mini Countryman and was pleasantly surprised by the highly tactile switches they use. They felt like aircraft switches in that they had weight and springy resistance to them. Much better than all this touchscreen nonsense.

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.

Pffft they're doing it because the EU is going to force this in a year or two, I bet

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.

My current car has a fairly large screen for media, gps, and some other in depth settings that don't need to be addressed while driving.

The rest is physical buttons and I honestly really like that hybrid approach to this.

Yeah, I'm fine with touchscreen for infotainment and navigation shit - as long as they give me a physical volume knob. HVAC and lighting and such should all be physical switches/buttons/knobs.

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 just got a new Hyundai and I think they already have the perfect amount of touch vs buttons. Everything you need to access has buttons, the things which would be too annoying to do during the drive are touch

Just make it a good amount of buttons. Not 500 that all look and feel the same. And it'll be alright. My car is old and has very few buttons. Plus a radio and 3 large knobs to control the AC. I think that's the best concept. I don't even have to look at them most of the times, because it's not that many similar ones.

"Annoying", "serious safety hazard", safe difference, right?

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.
- 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

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.

bet this will be a premium feature.

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.

Biggest button needs to be "Disable lane keeping assist" and that should sort most of the stress he refers to.

I recently had a Kona loaner with that. It was so dumb.

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?
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.
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.

I think, in general, the shift to having MOST functions be on the touchscreen is a good one.

When driving? You should generally only be futzing with (off the top of my head):

Windshield wipers
Climate control
Not the music but let's be honest here
Turn signals and headlights

And the rest make perfect sense to keep behind menus you deal with when you are parked. And with modern cars, climate control stops being about balancing the knobs and becomes about setting the preferred temperature and MAYBE tapping the defrost/circultaion button. Which actually also makes sense to not need direct button access.

But yeah. Still 100% need physical buttons and knobs for the rest.

I think it is Subaru who have the big display screen and then a small row of dedicated buttons below it?

Windows? Gears? Seat? Mirrors?
- You should not be touching your mirrors or seat while driving. That is what you do before you leave the parking space (... or at a red light).
  
  Good call on the windows and gear (although... there are arguments that you don't need to in an automatic) though. Forgot we live in a world where teslas are street legal.
Invalid opinion. There's still time to delete this.