- 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.”
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.
Don’t you still have to look at it to find it first?
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.
Some have tactile markings for location reference, like keyboars have
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.
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.
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!
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
First good news I’ve heard in a while.
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.
GM loves it’s damned buttons. Their new cars look like a piano.
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
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.
Good. Can every other company please do this too??
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.
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.
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
Voice can‽
Oh god, not this again…
PLEASE DRINK VOICEIFICATION CAN
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.
bet this will be a premium feature.
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.
If I’m being blinded by the car behind me and I can’t pull off to let them pass I’m adjusting the mirrors.
Invalid opinion. There’s still time to delete this.
Removed by mod
Personally I don’t even need that, just give me aukx 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
A monitor with HDMI over usb-c input
There should be the mandatory inclusion of a set of open APIs that pass info like:
-
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
The best is when they display the “next step” right on the dash.
Ahhh that sounds awesome!
Naw fam, gotta get that GPS in braille form
/sWait, are we still doing fam
Yeah fam, “fam” is hella lit.
Like Sluggo
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.
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.
Pffft they’re doing it because the EU is going to force this in a year or two, I bet
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.
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.
