Comfortable, safe, and reliable with terrible user interfaces
The Tucson never left us stranded, looked great, had plenty of room, and has great driver assistance features. It was well assembled with good materials. Dynamically, it was very competent, safe, and predictable, particularly in bad weather, and the standard Michelin tires were very much appreciated, but it would not be what I consider 'fun', particularly for an 'N' badged car, though it did have plenty of power. The ride could best be described as 'flinty' or 'busy', however it was never uncomfortable and soaked up large bumps well without crashing over them. There were three main demerits which eventually overshadowed all of the good attributes, and that would be 1) throttle response, particularly at low speed, with a pronounced delay that at times refused to respond while pulling into traffic and was extremely difficult to modulate smoothly at low speeds, 2) the haptic feedback controls and lack of physical knobs and buttons, particularly for the HVAC controls, were at best problematic, and at times borderline dangerous, and were a source of frustration every time the car was driven, and 3) the push button shifter was slow to respond, difficult to manipulate quickly, and was not intuitive to operate. (The shifter stalk design on the refreshed '25-up models is a marked improvement). Other annoyances (though much less irritating) were the extremely loud 'gong' backup warning sound, an overly sensitive hands-free rear hatch proximity opening feature, and poor rearward visibility. The throttle, shifter, and HVAC/radio controls were enough to make us trade the car in a year before the end of our lease.