Ford's new 48-inch digital dashboard is a lot of Android for one car

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/22/24045932/ford-android-screen-display-size-os-apps-gaming-lincoln

by rntn • 3 years ago

26 78 3 years ago

theverge.com

whycome• 3 years ago

Screen failure and you lose everything?

vidanay• 3 years ago

Including all the money in your bank account to pay for the repair.

doodlebugging5• 3 years ago

I agree with this. It will be expensive.

Reminds me of my sister's Ford F150 oil pan leak issue. The oil pan is plastic (for weight control, certainly not durability). After a while they leak. There are thousands of F150s with leaking oil pans and there are no aftermarket oil pans that one can buy to replace the OEM pan.

Her truck is on its 3rd or 4th oil pan. They must replace the pan when it develops a leak. It isn't as simple as replacing a gasket or squeezing some sealant on the old pan and torquing the bolts. You must replace the pan. This means logistically that you are trapped in a supply chain problem when you buy the vehicle since the new pans need to exist before you can use them to replace a leaky pan. When you take your truck to the dealership they may have it for weeks waiting on parts.

Once they get the pan you can relax since it will be installed by trained Ford techs with approved Ford parts. Well not really. Turns out that Ford's bulletin goes into detail about the procedure and in the end reminds the tech that any deviation from their bulletin procedure will result in a leak which will require replacement of the replacement pan since it is now an unreliable, used part.

Vehicle cost a lot of money. Hers has been out of service for this single issue several times for a total of more than a month of lost time.

Somehow I am supposed to trust that a company that produces a vehicle with a plastic oil pan which is not a part that anyone familiar with automobiles would ever consider to be a wear part, can reliably produce a digital display that can remain in service, working perfectly for at least a decade and that once it fails it can easily and cheaply be replaced by the owner if the owner chooses to keep the vehicle.

This is not rocket science people. While scanning wrecking yards looking for parts for a couple of my older, but still well-maintained vehicles, I have found cars and trucks in great condition that are in the wrecking yard because the owner thought they couldn't afford the repair. For one of my vehicles the repair part that the junk donor needed was widely available at any auto parts store for under $100 and could be installed by anyone who had a phillips screwdriver and a metric socket set that included a 10mm socket.

I can't imagine that a digital gauge display will be user-replaceable or inexpensive.

jbverschoor• 3 years ago

I'd love to have a strip of 6" tall array of lcd screens like that in the back of my desk. A large version of the touchbar :-)

jimnotgym2• 3 years ago

Dear Ford,

I will stick with real gauges even if it means driving a 20 year old car

bluGill3• 3 years ago

Your 20 year old car had digital gauges too. They just moved a mechanical needle so they looked mechanical, but it was all digital to the cluster. Now they are just replacing the cluster with a LCD.

vel0city7• 3 years ago

Yea, my 2000 Honda Accord's instrument cluster just had a digital wiring harness to drive it. Even an older somewhat cheap 2002 motorcycle I owned had a completely digital instrument cluster.

SoftTalker3• 3 years ago

Those gauges are still working after 20 years though. Will that be the case for the LCD?

jimnotgym2• 2 years ago

Yeah, but i got to look at physical guages.

Worse than the guages are touchscreens. Ok for the radio, not ok for the windscreen wipers

from-nibly• 3 years ago

You can pry my late 90's early 2000's cars from my cold dead hands. I have a mechanic and I'm going to go find the fountain of youth so I can keep him alive forever.

AndrewKemendo2• 3 years ago

This is the move

Analog Knobs and buttons

No spyware

You can even do gas to electric conversion cheap and easily if you’re not about that petro life

There’s more than enough usable vehicles in the world some just need more maintenance than others.

The last thing we need is more cars to be produced.

sufficer• 3 years ago

No no no. Need to keep producing! Capitalism baby!

PaulHoule2• 3 years ago

My son needed a car in a hurry to commute to his job. He hates the aesthetics of newer cars and badly wanted a boat from the 1970s but I did some searching and we wound up with a 1996 Buick Park Avenue. He has had to put quite a bit of money into repairs (brake lines, fuel lines, lots of gaskets) but we think it is likely that we'll soon have replaced everything that rots out over time. The cost of newer used cars is astronomical so we don't feel bad about our repair bills yet.

enragedcacti• 3 years ago

I admire the spirit but I question your definitions of cheap and easy. Most conversions I've seen are neither and a scant few are one of them but not both, though I'd love to be proven wrong.

coldpie• 3 years ago

The trouble with people who like us who want cars to not suck is we also don't buy new cars, because only suckers do that. So manufacturers don't care about our wants and only build cars for people stupid enough to buy new ones. Hence touchscreens, automatic transmissions, pickup trucks, and battletank-sized vehicles.

(If they're the stupid ones, what does that make us...?)

dalyons2• 3 years ago

That era is dramatically less safe than say, 2010+ though. That’s why I ended up upgrading, the survivability stats are stark

el_don_almighty• 3 years ago

Vehicle design or operator usage?

Do new cars appear to be safer because new car owners drive more defensively?

Perhaps bad drivers can only afford old cars and smash them up?

Data is a slippery fish

webdoodle• 3 years ago

Yep, plus in the end properly maintaining older vehicles is considerably better for the environment than mining, processing, and building new vehicles from scratch.

FredPret3• 3 years ago

Good news:

- There are physical buttons (not many)

- It still supports CarPlay (somehow), and

- > The car will recognize the driver and adjust the settings accordingly. And the interior displays can be configured to as much — or as little — information as desired.

However, the speedometer and other critical info will also be driven by this Android system. Hope it doesn’t “crash”

GenerWork• 3 years ago

I believe that it's able to support Carplay because Android is just the UI dev layer. It's not an all or nothing scenario.

FredPret3• 3 years ago

I suppose Carplay would go on the central main screen only - I was wondering if it would go on the 48” strip screen.

WorldMaker• 3 years ago

Yeah this is a funny situation where Google's brand naming strategy does them no favors: Android Auto (their CarPlay equivalent) != Android Automotive (their Car OS) and Android Automotive supports both Android Auto and Apple's CarPlay, except when turned off (as GM is doing for reasons that escape everyone except presumably GM executives).

jwells89• 3 years ago

Yeah, I’m not averse to things like critical information being on a screen, but the software powering that screen needs to be ridiculously stable and well-built, which is unfortunately unlikely as long as big car companies continue to contract out dash/infotainment software rather than develop it in-house.

Grazester2• 3 years ago

For a car to (temporarily)operate you need none of this "Critical Info". I have driven vehicles that only had a working gas gauge so you knew when to actually fill it up.

FredPret3• 3 years ago

Pretty important to know if you're sticking to the speed limit though

alwa• 3 years ago

Does anyone prefer the digital gauges to real ones? I’m rabidly allergic to the screen-based car controls, and I feel like I see a lot of that in the comments here and in conversation with friends and relatives.

Where is the pro-digital-control constituency hiding out? Surely the manufacturers wouldn’t be going so hard this way if market research bore out quite that degree of resistance.

andy99• 3 years ago

I think it's a kind if lock-in. Digital stuff isn't repairable and requires the dealer to fix it, plus they force you into a digital ecosystem they control so they can upsell, show ads, harvest information etc. I think it's all driven by what they want to force on people rather than what people want. What's the point of regulatory capture if you don't use it, right?

bluGill3• 3 years ago

Gauges have been digital for decades now. Even in the 1990s many of them were digital not analog. Sure there was a needle so they looked analog, but the data came in digitally and them the computer on the display decided how to move the needle to whatever digital position. (I can think of 3 different ways to implement this and I'm not an electrical engineers - who I would expect to know more than me about what works)

Kon-Peki• 3 years ago

Yeah, people need to understand that their cars have been rolling computers for a really long time. If you live in a wealthy country, the chance that any car you are still driving isn't highly computerized is very low.

For the past few years, we've started to see major UX changes (buttons & mechanical gauges going away) and huge amounts of new infotainment that are now possible because we've stopped hiding the digital nature of everything.

Lots of us hate that, but it does no good to focus the hate on the wrong thing ;)

bee_rider2• 3 years ago

I think they are talking about the UI, so a pointy-needle that is controlled by a computer would not be considered digital. The details inside the engine are less relevant to the user, the point I think is that the display is fixed-function.

hwbehrens• 3 years ago

I prefer digital gauges to physical ones, primarily because I can customize which ones are displayed. For example, on my previous car, roughly 40% of the cluster was populated by a tachometer that is totally unnecessary for the underpowered, automatic econobox it was in.

I still prefer physical controls over digital ones, which seemed to be conflated in your comment. I think this preference bears out in the market as well, since we're seeing some car manufacturers bring back physical controls for certain tasks.

On the other hand, there's also the blatantly counter-consumer choices that also suggest that simply ignoring what people want isn't out of the question. See GM's removal of mobile integration, Mazda's rejection of touchscreens, etc.

NegativeK• 3 years ago

I'm fine with it. My digital dash is a screen above the center console, and it shows me the actual driving data I need right next to the steering wheel: speed, cruise control set point, and blinkers. The lack of physical buttons is also fine for me; the touch screen controls aren't settings I need while driving (those are handled with the controls on the wheel), with the exception of needing to bump HVAC by a few degrees maybe once a month. Obviously YMMV with both the user and the vehicle, but the way I use the UI in my car just gets the car out of my way so I can keep my hands on the wheel.

Where is the pro-digital-control constituency hiding out?

Like so many debates online, this one gets polarizing and hyperbolic really fast. Communities around specific car models are more likely to have fans of the UI, and they're unlikely to venture out into other forums discussing the stuff because of how adamant people are that they're wrong.

magicalhippo• 3 years ago

My Renault Megane e-Tech has a digital display instead of "regular" speed/rpm gauges. I really like it, as I can easily select what I want to see.

This is especially handy if I'm navigating new places, where I can get the map right there in front of me. No need to look to the side, so can keep my eyes on the road more.

That said I think Renault has struck a nice balance between digital and physical. AC controls are physical, as is volume/mute and a few more.

All the physical buttons are still available via voice commands, which I also like. If a lot is happening on the road it's sometimes better to be able to keep both eyes on the road and hands on the wheel.

And as much as I dislike touch, at least it works well and the hardware driving the screens is snappy and responsive, like a good tablet.

leetharris2• 3 years ago

Me.

The reason nobody talks about it on forums like this is the same reason moderate people almost never post online. The internet is full of aggressive people who think it's OK to be a bully if they are morally justified. And this is one of those topics where people feel like they have to "defend" their preferences aggressively.

I've posted about this in another HN thread and got some good discussion going. If anywhere is going to have reasonable discussion, this is likely the place.

On to my opinion: I have a 2022 Model Y Performance and a 2023 Model 3 RWD (base model). I am a personal fan of minimalism and I can absolutely see their "intent" with the minimalist approach, but I do think it needs more work in several areas.

Elon once said, "All user input is error." I can see what he means by this. In an ideal world you don't have to change much in a car as it knows your intent.

Where this works well, it works REALLY well. Stuff like climate control, maps/charging, seat adjustments, and more are just "handled" in modern cars and by putting 10+ buttons that are rarely touched out there, you're cluttering up the physical space and increasing manufacturing complexity.

Where this works poorly, it can REALLY hurt. For example, their automatic windshield wipers that use Vision only. They fluctuate between being acceptable to unusable every other update. They are clearly trying to make it better, but a cheap rain sensor would have likely saved them millions in software engineering at this point. And because the windshield wipers are built to be automatic... the manual controls SUCK on a touchscreen.

Personally, when I get into a non-Tesla now, I feel extremely cramped and the cars feel extremely messy to me. The Model Y has a good amount of interior space, but it feels EXTRA big because there's so little visual noise. And realistically, I probably interact with my touchscreen once per drive on average.

I think people tend to think of worst-case scenarios with minimalist screen-centric approaches and pretend like they are frequent occurrences. For some people they will be. If I lived in Costa Rica in the mountains where it rains 95% of the year, I would be really annoyed to have these crappy auto-wipers. But, a simple rain sensor could have made this so much better.

Though today's interfaces are not perfectly optimized or at their end-state yet, I think Tesla is a good example of where we're heading and I love it. Hopefully within 5-10 years I can get into a car, state where I want to go, and everything else is magically handled for me. That is the ideal end state and I think these minimalist interfaces are a step in that direction.

Whether or not this is the future some people WANT is a completely understandable discussion though.

jfim2• 3 years ago

I think people tend to think of worst-case scenarios with minimalist screen-centric approaches and pretend like they are frequent occurrences.

But, they are. In intermittent rain one wants to be able to adjust the wiper speed, not press a button on the left stalk then have to touch a tiny button on the touch screen. Likewise, if the windshield is fogging up, the last thing one wants to do is to have to look away from the road and navigate the climate controls on the touch screen.

SoftTalker3• 3 years ago

Windshield wipers are a critical safety item. I cannot imagine burying the controls for them in a menu on a touch screen. That seems recklessly irresponsible.

apocalyptic0n3• 3 years ago

My CR-V has a digital main cluster. It's much smaller than Ford is introducing, just replacing the bit behind the steering wheel. I have found that I greatly prefer having the exact speed displayed digitally rather than as a typical speedometer. It's just much easier to register my speed at a glance while driving. It also has screens for showing me how well I'm driving with regards to re-charging the hybrid's battery, which is useful.

masklinn• 3 years ago

Does anyone prefer the digital gauges to real ones?

Yes, at least in theory: I can remove gauges I don't care for, and have the ones I do care for instead.

However in my experience (mostly renting low-end cars so it might be a lot better on the higher end)

- the customisability is very limited, and usually does not have what I'm interested in

- digital screens are used as an excuse for completely worthless animations

- some of the digital readouts ridiculously low granularity / functionality, I've seen digital fuel jauges taking the entire height of the dashboard yet only having 8 segments, that's worse than even the most basic of fuel jauges from the 80s

Anyway like digital displays, I just wish they were more functional, and less shit.

Digital (dematerialised) controls however, are a whole other kettle of fish.

genman2• 3 years ago

I prefer head-up display. I barely watch anything on the dashboard level now I have it available.

vel0city7• 3 years ago

I greatly prefer my car with a large touchscreen and few physical buttons on the center console to my car with a lot of physical buttons and a small touchscreen. So long as all the things I should actually be messing with while driving are physical, I prefer having the larger screen.

The example of my car with a lot of buttons:

https://media.ed.edmunds-media.com/hyundai/santa-fe/2017/oem...

What benefit do I get from PHONE being a physical button? Or INFO, or SETUP, or BLUELINK? I shouldn't be using those buttons while the vehicle is in motion. I shouldn't even really be using MAP or NAVI or MEDIA while the vehicle is in motion either, I should be adjusting such things while the car is stopped. And the SEEK/TRACK buttons and volume knob are actually redundant, those controls are also on the wheel so I shouldn't be using those while driving either. And what, I'm going to navigate folders of media while I'm driving with the FILE/ENTER knob?

If the car is stopped, why should I care if its physical or not? I'd prefer the larger screen to actually see more of my media or the navigation or what not when stopped. All these buttons just get in the way when stopped, they're not helpful in the slightest.

And then when I'm actually moving I'd prefer the larger screen as then the navigation and map is much larger so its way easier to understand what its telling me with a fast glance if I'm unsure about the next turn.

About the only buttons I actually need to use here when the vehicle is in motion is the defroster. Everything else here is stuff I probably shouldn't bother touching while in motion. The climate control is auto, so I only end up touching it a few times a year.

I do understand the other poster here talking about a convertible though. Driving when its cold out with the top down I'd probably prefer more physical buttons, but this isn't a convertible.

In the end, all the controls I should actually be using while driving should be on or directly around the steering wheel. I shouldn't have to touch anything in the center console while the vehicle is moving. Ideally, I shouldn't have to take my hands off the wheel at all while the car is in motion.

As for digital gauges vs having needles, I'd probably always take a decent digital gauge. The needles were already digital for decades so any talk about reliability or vendor lock or maintainability is moot. They take up more space than just showing a number. Combined with the fact the digital gauge also shows other useful information like the next turn information for navigation, LKA information, auto-cruise information, etc its way more useful than just a big circle vaguely showing my speed and a big circle showing me RPMs which isn't really necessary 99% of the time in an automatic. There's a slight argument to be made about brightness with night vision but they're usually able to dim pretty dark when you're truly out there. I haven't had a problem seeing while driving around at night even far out in the country with no streetlights.

lemonberry• 3 years ago

I'll be driving my little Mazda hatchback for longer than I expected. It's a manual transmission. Automatics are much better than they used to be, but I still love the feel of shifting gears.

My next vehicle will be a used something.

Does the definition of Luddite change with each generation's shift in technology?

doodlebugging5• 3 years ago

Same here. 2015 Mazda3, manual transmission. Very good car. It does have a touchscreen in the center display but it also has dedicated buttons to navigate near the drivers hand on the center console. Our touchscreen has glitched on us and evidently we missed the free replacement period. In addition, two of the corners have developed cracking like shattered glass due to age. All things considered this is a great fuel efficient car.

I definitely would not buy a vehicle with a full-screen digital display like the one in this article. The Mazda3 is our newest vehicle. My other daily drivers range in age from 32 years to 16 years.

ciconia• 3 years ago

I find those new car screens a total turn-off. When driving I don't want a giant screen just in the periphery of my view to take my attention off the road. The passengers anyway don't need it - they each have their screens, so what's the point? Just give me a good electric car with good range and the usual accessories and features, minus the screen.

SoftTalker3• 3 years ago

The passengers also upgrade their screens every few years. How will that work in a car?

These are just gratuitous technology, that will live in a very harsh environment (many people have to park outside in winter cold or summer sun). It is nothing more than a 1,000 new possible points of failure, yet it will only be repairable as a total system replacement. And after five years, forget it -- the parts will no longer be available.

Car makers brag about their manufacturing being "zero landfill" and are trying for "zero carbon" but how does that square with adding all this unnecessary crap?

kotaKat• 3 years ago

But I don't want to have to rely on Google Assistant as the default voice controls in the vehicle and then rely on that requiring a connection to the Internet to use.

And I still don't want to sign in with a Google Account to my vehicle. What happens in those horseshit "my Google account got yeeted by someone in Mountain View with no warning" situations we see every now and then? Then I just... can't use parts of my car I paid for because another company says so?

jfim2• 3 years ago

It's an interesting design direction considering the current model year has a physical button to turn the infotainment screen off; it's the button between the volume knob and the source button in this interior shot https://carbuzz.com/cars/lincoln/nautilus/photos-interior#5

hn_throwaway_992• 3 years ago

Not surprised to see the "give me my analog buttons!" comments that come out ad nauseum whenever articles about vehicle touch screens are posted.

That said, while in many ways I agree with that sentiment, I have seen vehicle touch screens done well when they are appropriately augmented by physical controls. For example, my car is mostly touch screen but there is a physical spinner in the central console for volume, plus a switch on the steering wheel for volume as well as forward, back and pause buttons. That is, the controls I'm most likely going to want to touch while driving are physical, but controls that I'm likely to use while setting up stuff beforehand (like searching for and selecting a playlist) are on the touchscreen. The biggest screw up in this car is that the buttons for opening/closing the garage door are virtual and behind a menu that autohides after a while, which makes no sense given that 99.9% of the time you're going to be pressing this button twice.

Main point being that car manufacturers definitly screwed up when they followed Tesla's lead of "everything is a touchscreen!", but I don't think pulling everything back to no-touchscreen is the right solution either.

ninkendo2• 3 years ago

To me it’s not about physical vs touchscreen, it’s about being able to do common controls without having to browse through contextual menus. I should be able to pause the music with a dedicated button (I don’t care much if it’s physical, but it’s very rare for touch screens to have “dedicated” buttons because it’s a waste of touch screen space.)

It’s important while driving that I’m not required to read what’s on the screen to perform common actions. Having to browse to the music app just to pause means I’m spending several seconds not looking at the road.

Just taking a typical infotainment UI and adding a jog dial doesn’t help me at all here.

hn_throwaway_992• 3 years ago

I mean, it sounds like we completely agree?

It’s important while driving that I’m not required to read what’s on the screen to perform common actions. Having to browse to the music app just to pause means I’m spending several seconds not looking at the road.

Exactly, which is why I love that on my car I can just press a physical button with my thumb on the steering wheel to pause the music.

nightski• 3 years ago

I know it will severely limit my options in the future, but the last thing in the world I want is android/google in my car. I specifically do not buy an android phone.

nvahalik2• 3 years ago

Drove a rental Mustang Convertible a couple of weeks ago. It had a fully touch-screen UI.

All of the analog buttons were on the steering wheel, which wasn't necessarily bad, but trying to adjust all of the little things like seat heaters and volume, was a HUGE pain. Especially with gloves on in the cold weather.

We have a 2019 Mustang Convertible and it has buttons for everything. It's trivial to adjust volume, seat heating and climate without having to waiting for feedback.

NoPedantsThanks2• 3 years ago

'96 Cobra here. The only touchscreen in it is on my phone, for which I built a dock. Nothing else was or is needed.

https://imgur.com/a/VnXFA3d

nvahalik2• 3 years ago

You put a lot of trust in that 30-pin connector. (:

That's pretty awesome, though!

genman2• 3 years ago

If you think that the car designers can't go any more stupid then this is the proof that for sure they can.

Anything that forces the driver to take the eyes of the surroundings is bad. Now there is more than meter of it. Some of it so far from the driver that for some of them getting any usable information would take considerable amount of focusing.

Why? Do they want to get people killed?

jacknews• 3 years ago

Woah, what's the replacement cost for that panel - probably not far off the entire car.

And I'll bet you can't operate the car at all without it.

Modern electronics and 'smart' features etc are just a way to obsolete products that much quicker.

sklargh• 3 years ago

“Ultimately, the goal is to keep drivers from looking at their phones by giving them enough information and functionality in the infotainment screen.“

Perhaps simply less information and greater focus on operating a moving vehicle is appropriate.

Ford's new 48-inch digital dashboard is a lot of Android for one car

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