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In recent years, the "Tesla effect" has strongly influenced the interior design of new models, including those developed by Hyundai. Traditional physical controls like temperature selection have been replaced by virtual buttons on the touch screen. Designers liked the new technological solutions, but as Hyundai discovered, buyers did not.
What's more, the automaker admitted it made a mistake by going all-in on touchscreens, as many other brands have done over the past decade.
"As we added integrated [media] screens to our cars, we also tried to install touch-screen-based controls, but people didn't prefer it," HDNA vice president Ha Hak-soo told Korea JoonAng Daily.
"During our focus group testing, we realized that people feel stressed and irritated when they want to control something but can't," Ha said.
Touchscreen technology has allowed design teams to create clean, concise interiors and make available to the driver more configurations of vehicle functions than possible with physical buttons alone. And when the car is parked, using these touchscreens feels completely natural.
But when the car is rocking over bumps, you have to pull off the road for too long to find the digital switch, as you can't just reach out and find it by touch. Many drivers find it frustrating that making simple changes to a feature now takes more time and effort than when the feature was operated with a simple dial or button.
Hyundai has been aware of drivers' attitudes towards touchscreens for some time and has decided to keep physical controls in its cars. The recently updated Ioniq 5 already benefits from this thinking.
However, Hyundai's North American design team suggested that we could soon see a change in customer attitudes towards touch screens as new cars get more advanced driver assistance technology that allows them to relax more.
