The Chevrolet Bel Air had a gigantic fan-shaped instrument cluster.
The Ford Thunderbird features an enormous horizontal speedo.
The '86 Buick Riviera holds the title of being the first car to have a media touchscreen.
The only big screen in a car should be the windscreen. There, I said it. Somebody had to, because display screens can not only be ugly, but their ever-increasing size and role can cause serious practicality problems and are even, arguably, unsafe.
Tesla wasn’t the first to put a screen in a car, but Elon Musk’s electric car company did it on a scale we’d never seen before when in 2012 the Model S made its debut sporting a display no less than 17.0 inches in size.
Until then we’d only associated 17.0 inches with wheel sizes. Now there was something as big as a full-sized alloy from a Toyota RAV4 leaning against the dashboard. And it controlled everything – still does – well almost everything, from the cabin temperature, seat heaters, radio and sat nav to things less climatey and mediary like the suspension, steering, acceleration and energy consumption.
That was in addition to a 12.3-inch instrument cluster the Model S came with, too.
I’m not even going to talk about the thousands of video games owners of a Tesla can now download and play on the screen, either.
It was enough to make the 9.0-inch portrait screen in 2015’s new-generation Volvo XC90 look tiny.
Not to be outdone other carmakers have gone the way of giant screens with Mercedes-Benz wowing us with long double screens that stretch halfway across the dashboard in its 2016 E-Class. Now the C-Class and S-Class have enormous ‘Tesla-style’ portrait displays.
Land Rover decided against the giant portrait style and opted for double-decker screens, so did Audi, while BMW most recently has gone for billboard style which stretched from driver to centre console.
Porsche’s electric Taycan goes further, with a giant centre console portrait screen, another display above it for media and a matching display for the front passenger, as well as a driver display.
It’s as if being the first fully electric Porsche sports car with the ability to slingshot itself from 0-100km/h in 2.8 seconds isn’t exciting enough so here are some screens to help pass the time.
Large screens are no longer just a prestige car thing, either. Generally, technology trickles down from luxury cars to more affordable ones, only it’s not a trickle now, more a torrent. The new Ford Ranger ute and its Everest SUV twin have a 15.5-inch portrait display along with a digital instrument cluster.
And if Ford has it then that’s the new standard. The screens have become showpieces. The new BYD Atto 3 is one of the most affordable electric cars you can buy and it comes standard with a 12.8-inch media screen that rotates from portrait to landscape orientation.
All the brands are doing it. Some are doing it well like Hyundai and Kia with their sleek, expansive screens brimming with interesting colour and icons. Other brands can’t help but make their screen ugly like Toyota and its gigantic tombstone-style displays.
But all brands are ditching regular buttons and dials in favour of large displays.
And there-in lies the problem. As physical controls for simple functions such as climate control, heated seats and music volume are removed and placed within a menu on a display, practicality can be lost.
You can reach out to a dial to turn the temperature down or the volume up without looking at it but can you do the same if that control is embedded in a screen?
Carmakers would argue that many physical controls remain on the steering wheel and this is true, but we’re not just talking about skipping to the next track or adjusting the volume.
I would also argue that many controls are only accessible now through a screen such as safety systems like lane keeping assistance; convenience functions like the heated steering wheel, seats and lighting; vehicle set-up from suspension to drive modes; and even the engine stop/start function.
All used to have a physical button that didn’t require trying to navigate through menus on a screen just to turn the seat heater off because you now felt like a boiled egg.
Car screens are also now embedded with apps like a phone from news and weather to traffic conditions and, if you’re in a Tesla, fart noises too.
Carmakers would also argue that Siri-style personal assistants like ‘Hey Mercedes’ and ‘Hey BMW’ mean drivers don’t need to weave though menu mazes anymore. But as somebody who has almost been in tears while asking one of these systems to just turn the temperature down, only for it to keep telling me that it doesn’t understand and to repeat the command, I’m not convinced.
The legal and safety implications of using the systems while driving could also be significant. When the car is switched on most ‘infotainment’ systems ask the driver to agree to not let the content on the display distract them while driving.
In the case of BMW, the touch screen prompts the driver with: “Use this system only when traffic conditions permit. Safe vehicle operation is the driver’s responsibility” The word “OK” must be pressed before the system is unlocked.
The wording of these sorts of disclaimers – which are found in a number of manufacturer’s models – is usually there as part of a contract absolving the carmaker from any responsibility or blame in the case of an accident or injury caused by the driver using the screen.
And indeed police forces Australia-wide consider any activity in a motor vehicle to be illegal if it means the driver is not under full control of the car.
This can mean anything from eating a pavlova or wearing a deep sea diver’s suit to entering the address of a destination in the sat nav or changing the colour of the ambient lighting through the touchscreen while driving.
Apple CarPlay and Android Auto have taken phones out of peoples’ hands by mirroring the devices’ apps for music and maps onto the screen. This has no doubt prevented crashes, too.
But I’d like to see a car without screens. With dials and physical buttons. A car with real analogue gauges – how they used to be.
Surely we look at enough screens throughout the day already without also having to do it while driving?
And what happens when the screen breaks? If it’s the instrument cluster then the vehicle is most likely undrivable or at least illegal to drive, despite the mechanical parts themselves being in good working order.
It’s too late now. The carmakers are in an arms race, only it’s not warheads they’re producing but ever more impressive media screens and fully digital driver displays and head-up displays too – all of them.
It’s now essential to have expansive displays with buttonless cabins to compete. The dealership showroom impact of the customer opening the door of a car and seeing what awaits if they just step up to the next grade works so well.
The Chevrolet Bel Air had a gigantic fan-shaped instrument cluster.
The Ford Thunderbird features an enormous horizontal speedo.
The '86 Buick Riviera holds the title of being the first car to have a media touchscreen.
It was always going to be this way. You only have to look at the dashboard for a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air with its gigantic fan-shaped instrument cluster. If the technology had existed to make it a screen Chevy would have used it. Progress to 1964 and look at the Ford Thunderbird’s enormous horizontal speedo – again if Ford had the tech it would have been digital.
But it was the 1986 Buick Riviera in the United States that holds the title of being the first car to have a media touchscreen. Sure it was a simple monochrome display but it was the start of something that can’t be stopped it seems, whether it’s about the lower cost or customer expectation or both.
Keyword: Should big screens be banned from cars?| Opinion