Hyundai will stay true to Physical Buttons in Cars

The South Korean company Hyundai said that in the near future, it will definitely not give up physical buttons in the passenger compartment to control various functions. The automaker believes that the transition to full touch control is dangerous for pilot driving.

“Over the past few years, we have been using physical buttons quite heavily. For me, safety-related buttons have to be physical,” said Sang Yup Lee, head of design at Hyundai.

But it is worth considering that the functionality in modern cars is growing, because of which the control elements are simply not able to fit on the panel. Touchscreens or projection screens solve the problem with available space, but require visual attention, which is dangerous while driving. However, there is also voice control.

Sooner or later, Hyundai will still have to abandon the physical keys. But this will happen in a natural way – as vehicles with an autonomy level of 4 and above become widespread, when all decisions on the road will be made by electronics. Thus, the driver does not have to concentrate on the road, which means that it will be possible to be distracted from the road by the display of the media system.

By the way, an independent study was previously conducted that demonstrated the advantage of buttons in cars over touch screens.