Hyundai Will ‘Always’ Use Buttons and Knobs for Volume and Climate Control

Physical dashboard controls are making a comeback, and no automaker is as enthusiastic about that as Hyundai. The Korean automaker has been promising more buttons and knobs since 2023, saying over-reliance on touchscreens is dangerous and stressful for drivers. We’re starting to see the first tangible results of that policy, and Hyundai isn’t turning back.

Olabisi Boyle, senior vice president for product planning and mobility strategy at Hyundai Motor North America, said as much to The Drive at the 2026 New York Auto Show, emphasizing the importance of physical controls in the automaker’s future models—particularly the body-on-frame midsize pickup Hyundai plans to launch by 2030.

“We are always going to have—especially in a work truck—we are always going to have the buttons that people need to use a lot without looking at what they’re doing,” Boyle said, calling out volume and climate control as specific examples. She added that smartphone interfaces and other relevant tech will be included as well, but not at the expense of physical controls.

“[The] key things that you have to do repeatedly are going to stay manual knobs. They just are.”

Boyle said that in past, advocacy for physical controls has put product planners at odds with designers who, if left to their own devices, would “have everything electronic.” But that’s changing.

“To be honest, we don’t have to have the fight so much with design anymore,” she said. If the Boulder concept—Hyundai’s surprise reveal at the New York show—is any indication, those designers have indeed moved on. The one screen to rule them all has been tossed into the fires of Mount Doom, replaced by smaller screens accompanied by their own controls.

It’s unclear if this specific layout is production-feasible, and we’ll have to wait a bit to see the interior of the midsize pickup that will share the Boulder’s body-on-frame platform. The Santa Cruz received a few more buttons in the last refresh before its cancellation, but we’ll get a better idea of what Hyundai’s new era of dashboard controls looks like when redesigned versions of the Elantra and Tucson appear, likely as 2027 models.

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