I don't get it. We do have voice recognition for phone calls and navigation already. Do you really need AI to open the sunroof? Or turn the heat up? I'd rather see the money put into a better ride or handling. Some of this seems to be technology for the sake of technology. Sure, I like some comfort but there is a sensible limit. Being in the car taking a drive is a nice way to get away from work and sometimes family so I don't want to drag them along easily.
Good observation. Stuff that requires us to take our eyes off the road for more than an instant benefits from voice control. Other stuff, not so much. Opening and closing windows is a godd example of the latter. Opening the sunroof, on some cars, is actually pretty fidgety, with ambiguity as to waht opens, closes, or tips the sunroof. Might be marginally useful there.
Plus, there are two other factors:
(1) What seems unnecessary before we have it often comes to feel necessary. Was cranking a window ever really that hard? Motors added weight and complexity. Power windows aren't faster. They're a lot more convenient for the back seats, to be sure, but people just didn't roll down the back windows if nobody was back there in the old days. And some steering
wheel controls require more visual searching than their non steering-
wheel counterparts. From car to car, which switch changes audio tracks and which changes volume can get confusing. The controls on the radio itself are often more intuitive and easier to locate without searching visually. But once we get used to having conveniences, there's no going back. And the folks who get there first have bragging rights.
(2) With AI, once you start to incorporate the technology, the added burden of making it function for many operations rather than a few is pretty low. Once it can recognize words like "Volume" and "Window" and "Cabin Temperature," controlling any of them with "up" or "down" is pretty much as easy as controlling any one.
Also, right now, Genesis is beating a lot of the competition in tech offerings. If it wants to maintain that advantage, it needs to add new stuff. Is it really that valuable to most drivers? Probably not. I very rarely use cruise control, preferring my own driving to the car's, as a rule. But try offering a premium car without it. Do folks really want or need a lot of AI? Probably not. They'll fiddle with it when the functionality is new, show it off to their friends a few times, and then revert back to their customary way of doing things. Remember when cars would talk back to drivers? It was cool for about 5 minutes then everyone disabled it because it was driving them nuts. But tech drives purchases and it justifies prices (and some of it is genuinely useful). I don't think it's going away anytime soon.
