Does anyone have a fully non-mechanical instrument cluster in their car?

[Mr. Scram]

I have to admit that I prefer the part mechanical part TFT cluster of the pre-facelift Niro to the full TFT Facelift model...

Maybe that's because I have the Pre-facelift though!

That's horrid. It took me a literal 12 seconds to find the indicated speed.

[e100]

I find it fascinating that dial gauge displays on modern aircraft glass displays look so different from their automotive counterparts.

I have to ask, what's your agenda? Are you contemplating buying a car with an electronic panel or manufacturer shares?

No, but I do have a deep interest in the usability of systems, the human/machine interface and how accidents can be caused or avoided. As another example of the diversity look at the ubiquitous industrial DIN panel meters. You won't find that style of meter used in cars or aircraft, and if you tried to use a car style cluster in an industrial setting you would be out of a job.

In the automotive world I find it odd that the purely numeric speed indicators manage to get through the regulatory process as these types of displays whilst being more precise take longer to read and therefore take your eyes off the road for longer. The people implementing these systems are well aware of that.

[tszaboo]

I have a fully mechanical one.

I don't like the "whole thing is one display" because if whatever drives it breaks, you lose all instruments instead of only the one. That might be why aircraft have separate mechanical instruments even if only as backup.

Most new cars are almost drive by wire. If your power steering breaks, you practically cannot turn anymore.
BTW an electronics system, without moving parts will be approximately infinitely more reliable than any moving parts. Unless it is made by Peugeot, or some German engineer, who designed it to fail for a trip to a service.

You can accept a call without using the touchscreen. Same with the volume of the stereo.

Wow amazing. How about air conditioning. Hidden in a menu.

[Sal Ammoniac]

IMO one shouldn't be accepting a call while driving, it should be illegal to do so. They have passed silly token laws that mandate hands free despite numerous studies showing that hands free makes no difference, it's being engaged in a phone call that is distracting. I know I sure can't pay attention to doing something else while I'm on the phone and judging by what I see on the road these days neither can most other people. Distracted driving is an epidemic in densely populated areas.

You shouldn't listen to music while driving or hold a conversation with a passenger--those activities can be distracting too.

[SiliconWizard]

I don't like the "whole thing is one display" because if whatever drives it breaks, you lose all instruments instead of only the one. That might be why aircraft have separate mechanical instruments even if only as backup.

I agree with this. Of course, this has nothing to do with the instruments being mechanical or not. You could still have fully digital instruments in your car, but one per function, and able to work independently. This is not very likely to happen though, because obviously regulatory matters are not as stringent as for aircrafts, so this wouldn't be strictly required. And if it's not, you can be sure that no manufacturer will do it (except maybe in the luxury cars industry.) Instruments in a car, for the most part, are not safety-critical. Knowing your current speed or RPM is NOT safety-critical. It's a convenience, and may help avoiding getting fined, but very rarely the absence of instruments in a car will lead to a catastrophic accident (unless you are really a bad driver!)

The monolithic digital instruments block in recent cars are not just looking modern. They also cost a lot less, which is the main driving factor.

[e100]

Knowing your current speed or RPM is NOT safety-critical. It's a convenience, and may help avoiding getting fined, but very rarely the absence of instruments in a car will lead to a catastrophic accident (unless you are really a bad driver!)

I think the majority of pedestrians who have to cross busy roads would disagree with that bit about speed not being safety critical.

[PA0PBZ]

You can accept a call without using the touchscreen. Same with the volume of the stereo.

Wow amazing. How about air conditioning. Hidden in a menu.

No, voice control:  "Temperature 20"

[schmitt trigger]

Pretty soon all vehicles will be similar to KITT, from the 1980s "Knight Rider" TV show.
Display Porn! All that we are missing is some Nixie Tubes.

[SiliconWizard]

Knowing your current speed or RPM is NOT safety-critical. It's a convenience, and may help avoiding getting fined, but very rarely the absence of instruments in a car will lead to a catastrophic accident (unless you are really a bad driver!)

I think the majority of pedestrians who have to cross busy roads would disagree with that bit about speed not being safety critical.

Uh huh. If you need to look at your tachometer to avoid pedestrians on busy roads, I think you have a serious problem, and fully qualify for the bad driver syndrome I was mentioning above.

[Neilm]

I don't get out much at night, but from what I've seen a lot of vehicles have rather garish, and very bright, blueish-white displays. This seems like a bad idea to me with regards to night-adapted vision, though I guess most driving is done in well lit areas these days.

Maybe some cars are badly designed, but the garish lighting is usually the owner being an idiot with the settings. Cars generally adapt the LCD brightness pretty well to the light level, and often switch the format of the display to a night mode when the headlights are turned on, to further improve its appearance in the dark.

My last car had a couple of green lights from the dash that didn't dim as I adjusted the lights. When the display went to night mode (which I couldn't control) these lights dimmed from the day mode to the night mode. However, if I turned the display brightness down they remained at the same brightness - basically dazzling me. If I am driving near / accross Salisbury plain I like my cabin dim and those lights wreaked my night vision. The excuse was the were "safety critical" lights that couldn't be dimmed. Yes - having my front parking sensors or headlights on are safety critical.

With the Tesla Model 3 I now have I didn't have a problem with the display being too bright.

[e100]

Knowing your current speed or RPM is NOT safety-critical. It's a convenience, and may help avoiding getting fined, but very rarely the absence of instruments in a car will lead to a catastrophic accident (unless you are really a bad driver!)

I think the majority of pedestrians who have to cross busy roads would disagree with that bit about speed not being safety critical.

Uh huh. If you need to look at your tachometer to avoid pedestrians on busy roads, I think you have a serious problem, and fully qualify for the bad driver syndrome I was mentioning above.

It's the pedestrians avoiding the cars, not the other way around. Remember it's a game of consequences, the driver knows that in the event of a collision with a pedestrian that they are protected by a metal box, a seat belt and an airbag. The pedestrian on the other hand knows they are going to die.

This makes the pedestrian highly motivated to make the right decision. The car driver is less motivated, which is why they are staring at their mobile phone, fiddling with the radio, or asleep at the wheel.

Before crossing a road the pedestrian calculates how many seconds they have based on the perceived speed of the traffic.
Once they start crossing it is literally a matter of life and death. If a faster than expected vehicle comes along then they run out of time and die. The car driver will say "I didn't see them".

Personally I am so looking forward to a time when cars are driven by computers because people just aren't up to the job.

[ve7xen]

I find it fascinating that dial gauge displays on modern aircraft glass displays look so different from their automotive counterparts.

I have to ask, what's your agenda? Are you contemplating buying a car with an electronic panel or manufacturer shares?

No, but I do have a deep interest in the usability of systems, the human/machine interface and how accidents can be caused or avoided. As another example of the diversity look at the ubiquitous industrial DIN panel meters. You won't find that style of meter used in cars or aircraft, and if you tried to use a car style cluster in an industrial setting you would be out of a job.

In the automotive world I find it odd that the purely numeric speed indicators manage to get through the regulatory process as these types of displays whilst being more precise take longer to read and therefore take your eyes off the road for longer. The people implementing these systems are well aware of that.

This aspect is really quite interesting to me too, since my subjective experience differs from it so much. My vehicle has both the traditional mechanical round dials, and the centre digital speed display. I find myself almost never consulting the the mechanical dial anymore, it seems to take more focus to read and is harder to track in peripheral vision.

Not sure if this is a result of its poor resolution (it goes up to 250km/h or something absurd when driving speed is like 1/3 of that) or perhaps the size of the scale markings vs. the much larger characters of the digital display. It definitely doesn't feel easier or quicker to read, though, and intuitively that sort of makes sense - you need to determine both the position of the dial between scale markers, then read the associated markings, and then interpolate.

Not really related, but I've toyed with the idea of trying to hack one of the auxiliary displays in my vehicle with an IMU and display a simulated PFD.

[coppice]

Not sure if this is a result of its poor resolution (it goes up to 250km/h or something absurd when driving speed is like 1/3 of that) or perhaps the size of the scale markings vs. the much larger characters of the digital display. It definitely doesn't feel easier or quicker to read, though, and intuitively that sort of makes sense - you need to determine both the position of the dial between scale markers, then read the associated markings, and then interpolate.

Spot on. In a country like the UK, where speed cameras are spread like dust across the landscape, there are numerous streets where you really need to control your speed tightly. Its not enough to be around 30MPH in a 30MPH zone. You need to be pretty sure you aren't exceeding the limit at all. Adaptive cruise is a huge boon in these places. If you are driving without cruise turned on you need to check your speed very frequently, and the the rather squashed analogue gauges aren't ideal for checking down to the last mile per hour. Nice big numbers are much quicker to read in these circumstances. I never look at the analogue speed gauge when there are digits available.

[SparkyFX]

Any idea why old stepper motor tech is still being used in so many cars?

Simple, cheap, readable, everyone knows where to look, no learning required on the side of the user, no configurable position, therefore no issues with customers not finding where to look - NO SOFTWARE ISSUES  (well, sort of), that might redraw that area or whatever.

Is it just that the auto industry runs several years behind the rest of the world?

• experience with broken LCD displays from the infotainment screens, the well known tab connections and zebra strips.
• the readability and update rate at low temperatures to stay legally correct
• the need to heat these displays to be spec´d at -40 to 85 °C ambient temp
• wear through vibration

This isn´t a gadget sitting in your well tempered, humidity-stable living room.

[Ranayna]

I don't have a picture, but the VW Golf (Sportsvan, I think) that I occasionally drive, has the classic mechanical instruments, but in addition to that, a multifunction display smack in the middle. Generally I have set this to speed when I drive, and I virtually never look at the actual dial.

On a side note, on my main car, an Opel Corsa, I had it happen that after I started the car and I began to drive, that none of the instruments worked, except for the fuel gauge 
The car drives fine when that happens... After turning the car off and back on, everything works again. Happened twice now in four years. No idea if it is a dodgy connection or a software glitch.

[Mr. Scram]

Spot on. In a country like the UK, where speed cameras are spread like dust across the landscape, there are numerous streets where you really need to control your speed tightly. Its not enough to be around 30MPH in a 30MPH zone. You need to be pretty sure you aren't exceeding the limit at all. Adaptive cruise is a huge boon in these places. If you are driving without cruise turned on you need to check your speed very frequently, and the the rather squashed analogue gauges aren't ideal for checking down to the last mile per hour. Nice big numbers are much quicker to read in these circumstances. I never look at the analogue speed gauge when there are digits available.

Both the resolution of analogue gages and the ability to spot trends on them is better which makes them more suitable for adhering to speed limits.

[Gyro]

Spot on. In a country like the UK, where speed cameras are spread like dust across the landscape, there are numerous streets where you really need to control your speed tightly. Its not enough to be around 30MPH in a 30MPH zone. You need to be pretty sure you aren't exceeding the limit at all. Adaptive cruise is a huge boon in these places. If you are driving without cruise turned on you need to check your speed very frequently, and the the rather squashed analogue gauges aren't ideal for checking down to the last mile per hour. Nice big numbers are much quicker to read in these circumstances. I never look at the analogue speed gauge when there are digits available.

Both the resolution of analogue gages and the ability to spot trends on them is better which makes them more suitable for adhering to speed limits.

Both is best. I have a dial, but leave the centre multifunction part of the cluster set to digital speed readout.

[tszaboo]

Spot on. In a country like the UK, where speed cameras are spread like dust across the landscape, there are numerous streets where you really need to control your speed tightly. Its not enough to be around 30MPH in a 30MPH zone. You need to be pretty sure you aren't exceeding the limit at all. Adaptive cruise is a huge boon in these places. If you are driving without cruise turned on you need to check your speed very frequently, and the the rather squashed analogue gauges aren't ideal for checking down to the last mile per hour. Nice big numbers are much quicker to read in these circumstances. I never look at the analogue speed gauge when there are digits available.

Both the resolution of analogue gages and the ability to spot trends on them is better which makes them more suitable for adhering to speed limits.

Lol no.

UNECE regulation in that they specify that:

The indicated speed must never be less than the actual speed, i.e. it should not be possible to inadvertently speed because of an incorrect speedometer reading.
The indicated speed must not be more than 110 percent of the true speed plus 4 km/h at specified test speeds. For example, at 80 km/h, the indicated speed must be no more than 92 km/h.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311193191_Analogue_versus_Digital_Speedometer_Effects_on_Distraction_and_Usability_for_Truck_Driving
By the looks of it, most tasks digital is better, speed change is practically on-par. I think it can easily be improved by adding an arrow, indicating the change. Digital instrument cluster is clearly better, with an extra analogue scale.

[Ysjoelfir]

Lol no.

UNECE regulation in that they specify that:

The indicated speed must never be less than the actual speed, i.e. it should not be possible to inadvertently speed because of an incorrect speedometer reading.
The indicated speed must not be more than 110 percent of the true speed plus 4 km/h at specified test speeds. For example, at 80 km/h, the indicated speed must be no more than 92 km/h.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mathilde_Francois2/publication/311193191/figure/fig1/AS:434143596158976@1480519307131/Total-off-road-glance-duration-in-milliseconds-with-standard-deviation-for-the-two.png
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311193191_Analogue_versus_Digital_Speedometer_Effects_on_Distraction_and_Usability_for_Truck_Driving
By the looks of it, most tasks digital is better, speed change is practically on-par. I think it can easily be improved by adding an arrow, indicating the change. Digital instrument cluster is clearly better, with an extra analogue scale.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mathilde_Francois2/publication/317349399/figure/fig7/AS:677306968322049@1538493973594/Mean-scores-on-Likert-scales-between-1-strongly-disagree-and-5-strongly-agree-with.ppm

I absolutely can't relate to those results. I drive very much per year and I WAY prefer my old, completely analog Volvo 940 instrument cluster over any digital display. To check the Speed I just glance down for a few msecs and decide that the needle is about right. back up with the vision to see where I'm driving.
EVERYTIME I drive a car with a full digital HUD It takes me literaly seconds to get which speed I'm going at, not to speek of the distraction those flicking numbers in my peripheral vision are causing, compared to the smooth movement of an analog needle. I also tend to completely ignore any other information displayed there as it is bothersome to read for me. analog meters instead - no problem. I even added more of those to my volvo to get (un)neccessary information like battery voltage and charging current...

Please note: This is just me telling you my personal impression. It may well be that many people whose eyes are glued to their smartphone 24/7 aren't comfortable using analog gauges anymore, so those results could be absolutely different for those people. But for me? I just hate digital displays in cars. If I ever need to get a new (private) car I doubt it will be one with a full digital HUD.

[Rerouter]

Depends on the country, in Australia, most Chinese import vehicles are allowed to have -1% +40% of reading on there speedo's,

Just about every greatwall ute out there is factory calibrated for the option group that would give the lowest reading combined with the largest tyres you can fit on it, and doesn't care if that is not the normal, so you end up with them reading 100kmph while travelling closer to 78kmph

Most european vehicles however will read within the margin you give, and have weird hacky things to accomplish this, e.g. most of them have 3 calibration factors, the one used by the ECU, the one used for the odometer, and the one used for the speedo pointer, so what you end up with is the OBD speed and odometer are better than 2% most times, and the speed pointer is out by about 8kmph at 100kmph,

[mikeselectricstuff]

Fully tft clusters are fine as long as the layout has been well designed - a problem is thet designers can start adding unnecessary wank-factor.
e.g. on my Kona - the speedo in normal mode is an analogue dial, but in sport or eco modes, they replace the dial with other not-very-useful data like power or how much regen on the last braking period and replace the analogue dial speed indication with digits in the middle, which I find much less intuitive to read. there is literally no point in doing this and it's really annoying.

[Urs42]

A CityEl from 1992

[dzseki]

This ain't no crappy LCD, this is CRT, oh yeah... 


Aston Martin Lagonda Series 3

[coppice]

Spot on. In a country like the UK, where speed cameras are spread like dust across the landscape, there are numerous streets where you really need to control your speed tightly. Its not enough to be around 30MPH in a 30MPH zone. You need to be pretty sure you aren't exceeding the limit at all. Adaptive cruise is a huge boon in these places. If you are driving without cruise turned on you need to check your speed very frequently, and the the rather squashed analogue gauges aren't ideal for checking down to the last mile per hour. Nice big numbers are much quicker to read in these circumstances. I never look at the analogue speed gauge when there are digits available.

Both the resolution of analogue gages and the ability to spot trends on them is better which makes them more suitable for adhering to speed limits.

The difference between 31 and 32 MPH on my analogue gauge is less than 1mm. Do you really think people can quickly assess a spacings like that  as they glance down? To read my digital gauge I only have to register a couple of 3cm high digits. The analogue dial may be good for trends, but for following a precise speed to lock yourself to the speed limit, they are very unsatisfactory. I would really like to see some statistics for accident rates on roads with speed cameras. I suspect people are looking away from the road to check their speed far more often than they otherwise would, which has to be bad for safety.

[amyk]

The difference between 31 and 32 MPH on my analogue gauge is less than 1mm. Do you really think people can quickly assess a spacings like that  as they glance down? To read my digital gauge I only have to register a couple of 3cm high digits.

Fortunately, speed limits almost always correspond to the graduations of the dial, so the "am I at the right speed" is basically "is the pointer on the mark", far easier to see and more useful than the numerical value.