It’s kind of absurd, right? We’re told to keep our phones down while driving, understandably so, but then automakers turn around and slap iPad-sized screens in the middle of the dashboard. With the risk of sounding like an old man yelling at cloud, physical buttons are becoming an endangered species. Props to Hyundai, though. They’ve acknowledged that too much screen dependence actually makes some drivers feel “stressed, annoyed, and steamed.”
Hyundai is trying to keep tactile controls where they make sense the most. Not every function will have a button, but often-used features will keep hard keys. Senior Vice President of Design Simon Loasby gets it. It’s refreshing to hear someone in charge of car design call out touchscreens for what they are: a “distraction.”
In his chat with Autocar, he clarified that future interiors are built around one core idea: keeping the driver’s eyes on the road. That’s it. He even doubled down by saying, “You really don’t want people to look at the screen: you want them to look at eye level.” Muscle memory will help drivers adjust settings without taking their eyes off the road.
On a related note, the company’s design boss, Luc Donckerwolke, indirectly admitted what we’ve all been rightfully assuming: screens are a cost-cutting tool. Modern infotainments based around supersized displays “are ideal because you save a lot of tooling by only having the screen.” However, Hyundai claims people generally have a “love for analog interaction,” so the key is to find the right balance between buttons and jumbo-sized displays.
Photo by: Hyundai
Although Donckerwolke is optimistic that the auto industry will eventually scale back touchscreens and bring back buttons, Hyundai’s latest move tells a more complicated story. When the Pleos software platform was unveiled last month, the teaser images showed off a massive, Tesla-style display front and center.
Beneath the screen was a row of blank buttons, hinting that some level of physical interaction might still be in the cards. These old-school keys will likely gain functionality once the first models running the Android Automotive-powered operating system start arriving in Q2 2026. Hyundai expects this setup to reach over 20 million vehicles by 2030.
Of course, a giant screen doesn’t always mean the death of tactile controls. There’s still hope that Hyundai will strike that sweet spot between smartphone on wheels and good ol’ buttons.
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