- Hyundai is slowly backing away from the all-screen approach to interior design.
- Hyundai Design North America Vice President Ha Hak-soo said that people “get stressed, annoyed and steamed when they want to control something in a pinch but are unable to do so.”
Personally I don’t even need that, just give me aux and usb ports for my phone. It’ll be multitudes better than whatever hardware they use for the “infotainment” system.
I would rather have just a dumb display with an open standard that will mirror my phone and send touches back. Android auto is great but it’s a proprietary protocol that support could be dropped at any time. Same with apple. Everything that is not infotainment should be physical buttons so if I want to swap out my display for something else it won’t neuter my hvac
There should be the mandatory inclusion of a set of open APIs that pass info like:
display and audio signal (duh)
microphone audio (to pass voice commands)
whether the headlights are on (to offer auto dark mode switching on the display)
whether the handbrake is engaged (so things like video playback can be a parked-only feature)
crash sensor activation (so that a phone could, if the user desires, automatically alert emergency services)
For EVs, battery SoC (so that navigation software can include charging stops seamlessly)
whether the car is left-hand-drive or right-hand-drive (so on-screen buttons can always be close to the driver, not on the wrong side)
From there on, there can be actual competition in the space. You’re not just limited to Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. Any app would be able to use this API data.