A nice vehicle that sadly fails to live up to expectations.
How often do you see a "feature" from a new car that causes you to hate your vehicle? Well, our 2023 Santa Fe has one. The backup alert on our Santa Fe Hybrid is the most obnoxious and unnecessary safety feature that I've ever seen on a car. Every time we pull this car out of a parking space we get stares from others in the lot looking for the delivery truck. It is - without a doubt - the worst decision ever made by an auto design engineer (I know it is no longer on the newer models). The (overly loud) speaker sounding the backup is even placed in the front of the car! So, my question Hyundai is: Can this feature be made into an option that can be disabled? I know that the speaker can be disconnected, but this also removes the electronic whirr sound when running in EV. Seriously, I've never seen anything more stupid in a passenger vehicle.
And while I'm on my rant, I'd like to mention a few other disappointments with this car:
Automatic hi-beam headlights. My Ford has an auto-hi beam feature. But the Ford's is a set-it-and-forget-it feature. Basically, once the feature is enabled every time the car gets over 35 MPH the high-beams turn on (if dark enough) unless it detects other cars ahead. It's useful, and fully automatic. But in the Hyundai the driver has to turn on the high-beams every time they drive the car. Once turned on the auto feature works fine, but why do I need to turn this on each time I drive to get high-beam functionality? The automatic wipers work properly, but the hi-beam functionality is a semi-automatic feature. Why???
Also relating to driver convenience, I can't believe that the electronic conveniences in the car reset every time you start the car. The entertainment screen (which is incredibly slow to respond to any button) resets to the confirmation/home screen. This screen is all but useless and the brainless confirmation is very annoying; if you were using a media player when turning off the car the audio resets to radio; and if you had seat or steering wheel heating/cooling enabled they too are turned off once the car is restarted. In other words, every time I get in and start this car I need to reset all of these functions. Very frustrating functionality, and incredibly aggravating on a long drive with multiple stops.
My wife is particularly annoyed with the "parking brake" safety feature. She occasionally picks up our trash cans from the end of our drive, putting the empty cans in the rear of the vehicle. The entire way up the drive the dash is screaming an alert that the rear hatch is open. Once she had a trash can fall out and had to stop the car. She was on a slight incline and the parking brake engaged. Then when she got back in the car the parking brake wouldn't release because the rear hatch was open! And don't forget that the equally piercing seat belt warning absolutely insists that you have your belt on for each one of these short jogs in and out of the driveway. These safety features somehow turn a simple function like this into an aggravating chore. Instead of your car being a helpful tool, it makes you feel like the vehicle is in charge of your task.
We also have yet to figure out the driver 1 and 2 settings features for remembering seat and mirror positions. My Ford is a one-button driver 1 or 2 setting. Seems far too complicated to set on the Hyundai.
We actually want to love this vehicle, but the "features" design just won't allow it! The car rides nice. It's quiet and comfortable, and offers nice space and gets decent fuel economy. And yet, we find ourselves hating this car. I voiced these same concerns on a response to the dealership, but have no expectations that anything was relayed to Hyundai.
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