The head of Hyundai’s design team says physical buttons are less distracting — and therefore safer — than touch screens in vehicle cabins.
SangYup Lee, the design chief, says it doesn’t apply to all touch screen controls, just the complicated ones.
“It’s a safety issue,” Lee told Top Gear. “OK, we’re talking about connected cars and digital content, but what is most important is safety. When you have your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel, and you get into this [touchscreen] one layer, second layer, third layer… it’s dangerous.
“Having HVAC controls [on the touchscreen] doesn’t really make sense. It’s perfectly fine when the car is stationary, but when it’s driving you should be able to grab it without noticing it.”
Simon Loasby, who works under Lee, elaborated, telling Top Gear that physical buttons are often more intuitive and require less thought.
“All those major functions, without looking away and from a tactile perspective, you find it and don’t have to look away from the road,” he said. “At a maximum it’s a glance away. We try and keep the eyes on the road as much as possible. You’ll see that develop in the future as well.”
The comments were made while the designers were discussing the new Hyundai Ioniq 9, which has both a touch screen and physical buttons for more complicated systems, like HVAC and the radio.
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard such claims. Their comments mirror others from BMW, Bentley Motors and Aston Martin, who’ve all suggested that touch screens are too distracting and not very luxurious.
It makes us wonder: Are in-cabin touch screens really the future?
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