Anyone who has attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in recent years will have noticed that major automotive players have been getting into the consumer technology space. Self-driving, AI-powered voice assistants, and a slew of high-resolution touchscreens have been used to snatch up vertical inches and take over TikTok feeds.
This year was no different, as BMW chose the platform to introduce the latest generation of its popular iDrive infotainment system, which, unsurprisingly, now includes a terrifying amount of screen real estate.
The upcoming BMW Neue Klasse A central two-inch touchscreen and, above all, a separate head-up display that runs the entire width of the windshield.
As with most infotainment systems now, the central touchscreen is customisable, as drivers can pin their most-used apps and essential information to the main screen. Judging by the photos and video released by BMW, there are at least three tiles available to constantly display information.
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Furthermore, the panoramic head-up display (HUD) provides space for up to six fully customizable user interface elements, while the three directly in front of the driver are dedicated to key vehicle information, such as speed and remaining battery charge.
We already have up to 12 points of information, and that’s before we even think about the third and final display projected onto the windshield in front of the driver, which will show massive, animated turn-by-turn directions when BMW’s navigation system is in use.
Some examples that BMW cites when it comes to tiles that can be installed on the Panoramic Vision HUD are the weather and compass app. Now call me old fashioned, but can’t you look out the window to see what the weather is doing and when was the last time you used a compass while driving? We are in the year 2025, not 1925.
Finally, there was no word on how the flashy panoramic display and slightly angled central touchscreen would interact with the likes of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto – two systems that the majority of the driving public are quite happy with.
Industry issue
To only rebuke BMW would be wrong, because Hyundai Mobis also revealed that it has created the world’s first 3D full-head-up display, which broadcasts a wealth of information across the entire width of the windshield.
According to the Korean auto supplier, its system uses a specialized film embedded with a holographic optical element (HOE), which uses “the principle of light diffraction to project images and videos directly onto the viewer’s eyes.” He says What?
Using Kia’s EV9 as a test car 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 a home theater-quality off-the-shelf display, with Quantum Dot-based local dimming and Blue Mini LED technology. This is high-end TV spec, pared down to something suitable for a family SUV and will likely rarely be fully appreciated.
After all, when was the last time you watched a Hollywood blockbuster in its entirety while waiting for your electric car to charge?
Kill the interior design
Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz is set to launch an all-new CLA model to the world soon, and it comes with the promise of an “intuitive MBUX Superscreen” which, in early model cars at least, takes up the full width of the MBUX Superscreen. Cockpit.
This doesn’t mean I’m necessarily against using touchscreens in vehicles; I write for a technology site, after all. However, devoting so much space to them, as Mercedes-Benz and BMW have chosen, does not leave much room for individual works with interesting material design.
Go back a few years, and the car interiors looked vastly different: it was easy to distinguish between the quirky interior of a Citroën and the more luxurious polish of an Audi, for example.
But an overreliance on the digital space means that without interior designers seeking more unique physical elements, the interiors of modern vehicles look eerily similar, especially when they’re turned off.
Consider here the fact that many manufacturers have turned to Epic Games, which provides its Unreal Engine to produce a large part of the interface, and even the digital sphere has become homogeneous.
I’ve noticed that the interface depicting the Advanced Operational Driver Assistance System (ADAS), for example, is practically the same on many modern cars. The tiny digital images of trucks, cars, and motorcycles taken by outdoor cameras look pretty much identical, regardless of whether you’re in a Tesla or a Volvo EX90.
Of course, the idea of good design is very subjective, but there’s also the thorny issue of user experience. Brands (ahem, Volkswagen) have burned their toes in the past, unleashing sparse interiors that may look like an A-lister’s Los Angeles apartment but prove to be a nightmare to use and live with.
Cloaking a car’s interior with annoying tactile screens and buttons usually 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 safe, distraction-free driving.
Design for the future
Right now, it feels like car companies are designing vehicle cockpits at a time when high levels of autonomous driving are becoming legal and commonplace.
I’m not simply talking about SAE Level 3, which allows drivers to “enjoy” driving without looking under some fairly strict standards (highways, speeds under 30 mph etc.), but Level 4 and 5, where the car does the majority of the tasks. Heavy lifting.
We are still a long way from this technology becoming a reality, and it is an even bigger leap from lawmakers creating a suitable legal framework for its widespread adoption. So the question is: Why are manufacturers choosing to provide so much potentially distracting information now?
As if to protect themselves from a potential torrent of accusations of driver distraction, most modern manufacturers are also working with artificial intelligence and large language models to allow drivers and passengers to interact with their cars via natural speech prompts, eliminating the need to prod at a touchscreen or fumble for buttons.
Having a car that predicts when it’s cold using a sophisticated array of bio-sensing technologies is a very expensive and complicated way of admitting that burying the climate control adjuster in a series of annoying submenus was probably a bad idea.
Listen, I understand that space-age vehicle interiors are, essentially, what technological progress looks like and I’m not suggesting we go back to the days of walnut trim and cigarette lighters (although wood interiors are still cool, IMHO).
But designing the vehicles — scheduled for launch imminently — using interactive displays at NASA’s control room level seems counterintuitive.
Until the day comes when I can relax and enjoy what’s emanating from those screens, I want to be able to fly a vehicle — not pilot a Falcon 9.