I drive a Kia Seltos and while I got it because I wanted AWD, I found that anything past that has really made me second guess what Kia thinks a driver needs in the present day.
The first thing that I found wrong, was when I went to plug my IPod Touch into the USB socket in the front of the vehicle, underneath the control deck with the A/C. To find that it didn’t work except charge the IPod. When I did this with an old Sportage I drove, that was how I got my music when I didn’t want to listen to the radio.
But Kia thought we didn’t need this functionality. No, I will not fumble with ApplePlay to get music, because fuck Apple. Instead, I have to connect the IPod via Bluetooth which meant I could never pause/play, I have to risk taking my attention off driving to fiddle with the IPod to pause/play. I could also never see what song was playing nor can I navigate easily, because everything was No Info.
Speaking of this issue, I’ve had moments where I had to fight with the connectivity of the IPod and my vehicle. Where, the IPod would not be playing through the vehicle’s speakers, it would try to play from it’s little speakers. I don’t get this, it’s charged, it’s connected, the bluetooth connectivity is connected when I check both the device listing on the home dashboard and the IPod itself. But this is what the vehicle decides to do with my IPod instead of retaining connection to allow it to play on the speakers.
I actually have to randomly press buttons like disconnecting or changing devices and even sometimes having to stop Android Auto from hogging everything to finally get things working. SOME OF THE TIME, mind you.
Since I mentioned it, let me talk about Android Auto. I’m not a fan of it, it is a hog and practically takes hold of everything. Sometimes I can’t even change over to the IPod because Android Auto wants you to disconnect everything to even switch! Thanks Kia, for incorporating this level of obnoxiousness.
Other things I hate with Kia is when they feel they need to tell you what’s playing on the little screen where you need to know PSI, MPH and all that. When, we already see it on the bigger fucking interface screen on the dashboard!
The need to always hit ‘Confirm’ when presented this lecture of driving safely. Fuck off. I can ignore it when I go in reverse or just drive as normal, it’ll take awhile for it to go away.
Driving in reverse, presents the backup camera. I’ve noted that the backup camera will still remain on for a little longer even when driving forward. Why?
That stupid Auto Start/Stop system. A lot of vehicle manufacturers adopted this stupid feature. Kia included. I don’t see the point. Quite frankly, I see nothing but a huge safety hazard. What if you’re dealing with slippery conditions? What if you’re in snowy climates? What if there is no time for that when dealing with speedy drivers and heavy traffic? Who thought this was a good fucking idea?
I don’t care for Kia’s idea to digitize the dashboard and interface to finger-touching. Looking forward to cold conditions fucking it up if not already by making them dimmed or so. It’s just ugly.
I feel like a lot of these complaints are true of all car makers nowadays; some of these are complaints about safety requirements that they all need to implement and others are about general trends that they’re all following. The iPod thing sucks, but it’s old technology at this point and you’ll need to make sure that it’s compatible with things going forward - the manufacturers don’t have to support these things that are over ten years old.
Point is, nobody should feel they have to subscribe to shit like Spotify, SiriusXM or anything just to get music. Taking away the ability to plug in whatever you use for media is just that push to make people spend more money.
And if we want to talk about compatibility, why the hell do they still think people use USB sticks to put MP3s on today? That’s a feature in my vehicle, in 2025. Yet something like the IPod? Nah “too old”.
I agree that you shouldn’t be forced into a subscription, but you can still put music on your phone, no? Also, why not just put them on a usb stick if it works? At this point, they’re cheaper than buying an old iPod.
My phone is not meant to be an everything-device for it is only for communcation and on-the-go internet for things like paying bills when I’m not at home and/or information I need to know about while on the go. I’ve learned my lesson a long time ago when I once had an all-in-one copier/printer/scanner. When one functionality broke, so did the rest of it. If my phone was gone and I put everything on to it, well what did I just lose? Everything.
The USB stick idea did indeed work, but it felt so backwards doing so.
Unfortunately, there’s probably a decent amount of overhead for them to get their infotainment systems to be compatible with all the edge cases, so they make them compatible with the products that most people use. You would think that the iPhone and the iPod would be similar with regard to how music is accessed on them though.