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Anyone who attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in recent years, they have seen the main players of the automobile being muscled on the consumer tech turf. Autonomous driving, AI-powered voice assistants and masses of high-definition touchscreens have been employed to snare column inches and take over TikTok feeds.
This year was no different, BMW chose the platform to present the latest generation of its iconic iDrive infotainment system which, unsurprisingly, now involves a frankly terrifying amount of screen real estate.
Due to arrive in the next electric SUV BMW Neue Klasse X, with the system slated to spread to all new BMW models in the near future, the Panoramic iDrive offer features a 3D head-up display in front of the driver, a mammoth 17.9. -inch central touchscreen and, above all, a separate head-up display that stretches the entire width of the windshield.
As is the way with most infotainment systems now, the central touchscreen is customizable, as drivers can pin their most used apps and key information to the home screen. Judging by the images and videos released by BMW, there are at least three tiles that are available to constantly display information.
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In addition, the epic Panoramic Vision head-up display (HUD) offers space for six fully customizable widgets, while the three directly in front of the driver are reserved for key vehicle information such as speed and remaining battery charge.
Already, we are up to 12 points of information, and this is even before considering the third and last head-up display that is projected on the windshield in front of the driver, which will show huge animated turn-by-turn directions when A BMW navigation is in use.
Some of the examples mentioned by BMW when it comes to the tiles that can be attached to its Panoramic Vision HUD are a weather app and a compass. Now call me old fashioned but can’t you just look out the window to see what the weather is doing and when was the last time you used a compass while driving? It’s 2025, not 1925.
Finally, there’s been no word on how BMW’s flashy panoramic display and slightly angled central touchscreen will interact with the likes of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto – two systems that the majority of the driving public are perfectly happy with.
An industry problem
To blame only BMW would be wrong, because Hyundai Mobis also revealed that it has created the world’s first full-windshield holographic display, which transmits an amount of information across the width of a windshield.
According to the Korean automotive supplier, its system uses a specialized film that is embedded with a Holographic Optical Element (HOE), which uses the “principle of light diffraction to project images and videos directly to the eyes of the viewer”. say what you do?
Using a Kia EV9 as a testbed at this year’s CES, it’s easy to see this kind of technology appearing in some of Hyundai Motor Group’s more premium products in the coming years.
Harman also debuted its home theater-grade Ready Display, featuring local dimming technology based on Quantum Dot and Blue Mini LEDs. It’s a high-end TV specification, pared down to something that fits in a family SUV and will probably rarely be fully appreciated.
After all, when was the last time you watched an entire Hollywood blockbuster while waiting for your EV to charge?
They kill interior design
Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz is ready to release its new CLA model to the world soon and it comes with the promise of a “user-friendly MBUX Superscreen” that, at least in the first concept cars, occupies the entire width of the cockpit.
It’s not that they are necessarily anti-touchscreens in vehicles; I write for a technical site, after all. However, dedicating a lot of space to them, as Mercedes-Benz and BMW have chosen, leaves little or no room for individual acts of interesting physical design.
Rewind a few years and the cars’ interiors all looked very different: it was easy to differentiate between the eccentric interior flourishes of a Citroën and the higher polish of an Audi, for example.
But the over-reliance on the digital space means that, without interior designers pushing for more unique physical elements, the interiors of modern vehicles look eerily similar, especially when they’ve been fueled.
Consider the fact that many manufacturers have returned Epic gameswhich offers its Unreal Engine to produce much of the interface, and even the digital domain becomes homogeneous.
I noticed that the interface that displays an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), for example, is practically the same in many modern cars. The tiny digital representations of trucks, cars, and motorcycles that exterior cameras capture look largely identical, no matter whether you’re in a Tesla or a Volvo EX90.
Of course, the notion of good design is a very personal thing, but there is also the sticky issue of user experience. brands (er, Volkswagen) have had their fingers burned in the past, unleashing bouji, sprawling interiors that might look like an LA A-lister’s apartment, but prove to be nightmares to use and live with.
Cluttering a vehicle’s interior with screens and irritating tactile buttons typically comes at the expense of easy-to-locate physical switches that, when you’re in the middle of driving (a brain-taxing task), are essential for distraction-free motoring and sure.
Concept for the future
Now, it seems that car companies are designing vehicle cockpits for a time when high levels of autonomous driving are both legal and commonplace.
I’m not just talking about SAE Level 3, which allows drivers to “fun” blindfolded driving under some fairly strict parameters (highways, speeds below 30 mph, etc.), but Level 4 and 5, where the vehicle does most of the activity. heavy lifting.
We are still a few steps from this technology becoming a reality, and an even bigger leap from lawmakers creating a proper legal framework for widespread adoption. So it begs the question, why do manufacturers choose to offer so much potentially distracting information now?
As well as protecting themselves from a potential flood of driver distraction accusations, most modern manufacturers are also working with artificial intelligence and major language models to allow drivers and occupants to interact with their vehicles. via natural speech prompts, negating the need to produce around a touchscreen. or hunting for buttons.
Having a vehicle predict when you feel cold with a state-of-the-art suite of bio-sensing technology is a very expensive and complicated way to admit that burying the climate control in a series of annoying sub-menus was probably a bad idea.
Listen, I understand that the interior of space age vehicles is, essentially, what technological progress looks like and I am not suggesting that we go back to the days of walnut wood cutting and cigarette lighters ( although wooden interiors are still cool, IMHO).
But designing vehicles — which are slated for release soon — with NASA control room levels of interactive displays seems counterintuitive.
Until the day comes when I can actually relax and enjoy what’s streaming from those screens, I want to be able to drive a vehicle – not the Falcon 9 pilot.
