Hyundai, a company that has been just as guilty in the past of spreading the touchscreen scourge in cars as any other, has been course-correcting lately, putting more buttons and knobs into its cars. The reason isn’t surprising: people hate touchscreens, at least for certain essential controls like HVAC systems, and they told Hyundai so.
“As we were adding integrated [infotainment] screens in our vehicles, we also tried putting touchscreen-based controls, and people didn’t prefer that,” Hyundai Design North America VP Ha Hak-soo told Korea JoongAng Daily in an interview that InsideEVs spotted. He said Hyundai, which was as infatuated with touchscreens as the rest of the industry at first, found that in focus group testing people got “stressed, annoyed and steamed when they want to control something in a pinch but are unable to do so.”
You can see the result of those lessons in cars like the Hyundai Ioniq 6 — an EV that, yes, has big ol’ touchscreens. But it also features physical buttons and knobs for a lot of common controls (though it does still use touch-sensitive buttons for climate controls). Still, although Hyundai is prioritizing buttons now, HDNA head of interior design Kevin Kang told the outlet that self-driving cars could move the needle back towards non-button controls.
Not everyone is keen on restoring buttons to their rightful place. Last month, Rivian’s Wassym Bensaid suggested that the future is actually voice control. Maybe that will help with the safety issues presented by touchscreens, which will earn some touchscreen-heavy cars lower safety ratings in Europe starting in 2026. But will it be less frustrating to yell at an LLM over the noise of screaming kids, construction, cruddy roads, or rain? Color me skeptical. Just give us the buttons, y’all.
