I. HATE. TOUCHSCREENS!
108 in a 30. Someone speeding that much has no time for a ticket.
Marques Brownlee?
Someone speeding that much won’t be having much time left in general.
Touch screens have no business in dashboards. I don’t care how sleek it looks to replace all the physical buttons. You have to look at a touch screen to use it. That alone makes them entirely unfit for the purpose. Physical buttons that can be identified by touch and provide tactile feedback are the only interfaces that make any fucking sense at all.
This fees like something so obvious that I cannot understand how we got here.
Yep real knobs and buttons make more sense, but i guess touchscreens are cheaper these days.
You touch the gauges behind your steering wheel?
There often is a button or too within the dash cluster to change things like the trip meter or cluster brightness
How else should a blind man know how fast he is travelling?
Dangle a tin can on a string out the window and listen to the rate of the jingle jangle on the pavement?
Got a hearty chuckle out of me.
It does spark more though
Does it spark as much as a Star Trek high-tech panel?
If not, it’s not futuristic enough.
I am partial to the windshield projection style. It is truly fantastic for keeping your eyes on the road while seeing your speed
I’m dying for good windshield HUDs
Volkswagen has a pretty awesome one but it costs like 10k more for that level of trim.
Even worse, then you have to drive a Volkswagen
What’s wrong with that?
They’re notorious money pits, partially because they’re also notoriously stupid to work on.
I love my HUD, I’m currently driving a rental without one and I hate looking down at the speedo.
Don’t they sell add-on projector Huds which snake a wire down to OBD-ii port?
The two-tiered cluster of my Civic really grew on me. The speedometer is up really high so it’s almost always in your line of sight.
Oh my SIL had one of those for a while, it looked pretty nice.
Our Mazda projects the speed, cruise control status, and icons for vehicles next to us on the windshield. It really is very nice - one of the few things about that car that I actually like.
What are the things that you don’t like? I’m in the market for a new (used) vehicle and Mazda seems to top a lot of charts for the past several years but I’ve never driven one.
The Civic’s split dash was apparently generally hated, but I really liked it, for just that reason… The year after mine they switched it back to a single cluster, which I think is unfortunate
I don’t understand how anyone can buy a Tesla. The lack of a dashboard + the only interface being a tablet alone are a deal breaker for me.
You’re being sold a feature that is really just massive cost cuttings playing impostor as a luxury feature at a premium with 100x worse usability.
And on top of that, at any moment, they (Tesla) can remove pretty much any feature they feel like in a push update, which they have done… Personally, I think removing existing features from already sold products should be illegal, flat out
I get having a digital cluster, because you can display way more information than using analog gauges.
Put it in front of the driver.
Also, make the text bigger.
So many displays have tiny, hard to read text that could easily be twice as tall and wide without even impacting the blank space that separates them.
Heh, it’s not digital, but our pickup has small km/h speeds printed on the speedometer, like most cars. But when I was driving in Canada, I found they were nearly illegible (my eyes just weren’t good enough to read the small print). I had to switch to the digital speed display in the dash so I could read my speed in km/h.
I’m looking at you, Tesla.
And the Volvo EX30.
This one sparks joy.
So does this one.
So does this one.
Used to love Super Pursuit Mode.
Even made the cars on the overpass go faster.
🥵
Rad
This one (my '97 Prelude) sparks so much joy.
The best looking dials on a dashboard I have ever seen is the dashboard from the Saab 9000 CSE.
This isn’t exacty what I remember, but close enough:
I love the green and orange colors, the car diagram, the turbo, temp and fuel dials are just great.
Granted I was a kid when we had that car, but the colors were beautiful
I have two thoughts.
Damn thats beautiful and Saab as in the guys who made jets for various European nations during the cold war? Is this a Toyota situation where they make cars as well as military equiptment.
SAAB Automobile is the company that built the cars, their parent company was SAAB AB the aerospace and defence company that is still going these days.
SAAB Automobile was sold to GM back in 1989, and the SAAB 9000 series was produced under GM leadership
Huh neat. Also its always fucking GM.
That looks just like my Sunfire’s dash, other than mph being more prominent than km/h and it redlining over 7k rpm.
Is that an S2000?
Man, I miss my Sunfire so much it hurts my heart
Nope. 5th gen Honda Prelude.
I had an s2000. My redline was about 9000 rpm and the gauge cluster was lit up orange, but lit up in such a way that it didn’t really look like it was back-lit. It was an amazing gauge cluster.
I think the Prelude’s cluster is great for a manual daily driver. And I think that for a track car, they nailed it with the S2k’s cluster.
I had an auto Prelude as a kid. I traded it in 2015 for a CVT HR-V and regretted it ever since. I always told myself if I got another, I’d hold out for a manual. So getting to own another is really meaningful to me.
I’d love to get to drive an AP1 at least once, though.
I so very much preferred speedometers like that which had every 10 marked rather than every 20 like so many seem to do
I had a 97 prelude sh 5 speed. Great Lil car and a lot of fun to drive. But then I got my hands on an 02 s2000. Funnest car to drive I’ve ever owned.
Hey, my '97 is also a Type SH. I’m the eighth owner according to the Carfax. Somehow, the interior is complete (sans radio), it has the original wheels, and was never resprayed. Except for the trunk lid when some dingbat removed the spoiler. The VIN sticker was painted over. But you can make out the numbers. All VINs match. Somehow, this car has driven 257,000 miles, and is still 99.9% complete.
I’d love to drive an AP1 at least once, but I had a Prelude when I was a teenager so getting to own another (especially with a stick) is deeply meaningful to me. I was having my midlife crisis at 31, I guess lol
Oh wow, what car is that!?
C4 Corvette!
There reason this one and the analogue dials spark joy is because there’s something tangible happening in front of us. Either needles are moving or lights are being lit.
The modern iPad display just feels… disconnected, I guess
Also, a digital display may be quicker to read a value, but an analog dial is infinitely superior for displaying both range and rate of change, which for rapid readouts is much more significant.
If dial gauges weren’t what you chuckleheads grew up with (I’m 38 so I understand the nostalgia) you’d realize they aren’t really all that well designed. There’s no reason they go as high as they do, especially when they were “capped” at 85, and they display a terrible amount of information for the amount of space they take up.
I dislike many digital dashboards, not because they don’t interface well or they don’t look good, but because I can’t customize them to my own liking. I want my average speed, instantaneous speed, average miles per gallon, instantaneous miles per gallon, range, engine temperature, music track, outside temperature, inside temperature, tire pressure, time, vehicle orientation, all at once. They’re normally all available, but hidden in different menus and screens. Put it all out there, I’ll learn where to look for the info I want. And let people who desire less info have the ability to set up their dashboard for that as well.
If dial gauges weren’t what you chuckleheads grew up with (I’m 38 so I understand the nostalgia) you’d realize they aren’t really all that well designed.
That’s not actually true, studies show that analog dials (or digital imitations) are better than regular numbers or bars as speed displays.
The thing about analog dials is that they offer a lower mental load than a simple number. Seeing the dial move is a better indication of speed change than a number changing, and the “wasted” space in the dial offers a comparative idea of how fast you’re going.
The human brain is just much better at perceiving relative changes than absolute ones. Seeing a 20 rise to 80 doesn’t convey as much info as seeing a dial in the bottom rise to the middle.
I want my average speed, instantaneous speed, average miles per gallon, instantaneous miles per gallon, range, engine temperature, music track, outside temperature, inside temperature, tire pressure, time, vehicle orientation, all at once. They’re normally all available, but hidden in different menus and screens.
The reason this information isn’t readily available is probably because putting more information only serves to increase the mental load on the driver which might cause distractions, and consequently, more accidents.
Yeah i have a background in human factors engineering and something like that is just asking for unsafe driving. If it can wait until you aren’t driving then all you should see of it is a little notification telling you fo check it when needed.
A dial gauge can impart certain information that other ways cannot. I can notice a sudden change in movement without looking directly down, or see certain patterns of movement that simple numbers won’t. An old example of the loss of that was found in some classic luxury cars (my grandmother had a Cadillac that I noticed it in). The speedometer wasn’t a dial, it was an analog bar that would go right to left as your speed increased. It was very hard to judge change of speed by this, much like it’s hard to see from a few digital numbers that rapidly change. I’ve also noticed that even digital dial gauges can suffer from this if their refresh isn’t fast enough to simulate an analog accurately.
Doesn’t mean you can’t get used to a display or find other ways to get the same input, but dials aren’t just old nostalgia, they do have advantages. I would bet for some measurements an analog multimeter is preferred over a digital, and vise versa.
Dials and digital displays are like clocks, the position can relay a lot of additional contextual information that doesn’t come from a simple number.
The thing about a digital display is that you can have things display however you want. You want numbers? Fine. You want gauges? No problem. You want sliding bars and thermometer looking things? You got it. You want a time chart of values over time? Can do. You want an of the above at once? Got it.
In theory, anyways
If they added the options to choose what to see it would be fantastic! Most don’t though.
Yeah, the potential of digital dashes is amazing, but the practical application of them , especially from OEMs, is pretty mid.
Some aftermarket ones are pretty customizable though.
Good luck getting an auto manufacturer to allow you to customise your dash lol
Yeah, it’s mostly aftermarket ones, which is harder to do on modern cars ( I think? I haven’t actually seen anyone try to use aftermarket dash software on a built-in dash screen)
I can’t imagine trying to flash software to my car; it would almost certainly be illegal in my jurisdiction (I can’t even retrofit LED lights on my Ford 🥲)
Can you give examples?
Both clock and auto?
Because other than time, I’m having a hard time seeing what else a clock is telling you by being analogue.
You know how the shape or spacing of something can provide information?
An analogue clock makes it easy to glance at and see the difference between two times. If it is at 10 you can instantly know if you have two hours until midnight (or noon) because there are two hour spaces. If it says 10 you have to mentally calculate the two hours. If you want to do something in 15 minutes it is a lot easier to glance ahead the distance on the clock than to calculate 15 minutes from now based on a digital display.
The same thing is true for well designed analogue speedometers and tachometers. On my last car 75 mph was basically noon on the speedometer so I could see if I was going the right speed out of the corner of my eye because the line being vertical doesn’t require direct concentration. Same with the tach, I knew where 3500 rpm was to know when to shift when the music was too loud to hear the engine.
Both require some familarity of course. I actually had a pain learning how to read an analogue clock until an uncle explained how he used the spacing and then it clicked. Speedometers vary from car to car, so it takes getting used to a new one.
Both come down to how quickly we can recognize shapes and expected positions of things compared to reading numbers. My current vehicle has a digital speedometer and I hate it because I have to actively read it, can’t just glance at it like the old analogue displays.
Car manufacturers could’ve used the example of an aircraft. Their primary flight display shows speed nicely with current speed, good indication of changes in speed, settings like cruise control and max speed all in one clean display. I’d prefer that one. But no, it’s not even an option of course.
Yeah, but the second one is much cheaper to make and appeals to people that think it costs more, so now we’re stuck with this useless, tacky shit.
The second one is also far more readable. If it’s read only and behind the wheel, it’s strictly better imo.
I guess I’m in the minority: I prefer to see my speed as a number instead of a dial.
Yes, it does need to be in front of the driver.
An advantage of a proper dial is that you can instinctively see the change in speed by how quickly the needle moves.
Also, range. You don’t even need numbers on the RPM dial to know it pointing past 12-o-clock is not good.
Different people have different considerations.
When I’ve rented vehicles with a digital speedometer I haven’t felt like I’m missing anything without a dial. I haven’t found myself in situations where the movement of the needle helps me.
When I get into rental cars with a dial, I feel like I need to watch it closely because I’m not familiar with where the ticks are. It doesn’t work for me at all.
The Citroen C4 had a the speed right under the windshield which was a lot easier to read than a analog speed gauge in the dash.
A picture:
Renault have been doing this for ages. I had a 2009 Mégane which gave the speed as a digital number. Fuel and oil temps were bars to either side. Revs was a physical dial.
It was such a great car, just a shame about the engineering…
I love a digital speedometer but dials as back up feel important
No, the top one sparks gasoline. And the bottom one sparks … I don’t know how electric cars work.
True and based
Speak for yourself. I’d love an easy to read screen.
