Car dashboards have become a bewildering array of screens, buttons and knobs to control functions like the radio, ventilation, advanced safety systems and Internet services.
Looking to simplify such cockpitlike controls, automakers are starting to take design cues from a familiar household device, the tablet computer.
Ford announced that it would adopt a new touch-screen, tablelike system to replace its much-criticized connected-car designs. It’s a reflection of the radical transformation of vehicles as automakers wrestle with how to integrate smartphones and online services into cars without increasing driver distraction — and frustration.
“We looked at what aspects of tablets made sense,” said Don Butler, Ford’s executive director for connected vehicles and services, referring to the Sync 3, the next generation of the company’s in-dash system, which will appear in models this year. Ford plans to offer Sync 3 across its entire line in the United States by the end of 2016.
♦ Based on an eight-inch touch screen, Sync 3 uses fewer and larger icons that can be recognized at a glance. The touch-sensitive areas are bigger, and drivers can use more than one finger at a time, allowing for gestures like pinching to zoom in on a map. A bar along the bottom of the screen always displays primary functions like climate control, navigation and audio.
♦ Tesla Model S owners, for example, can view a reverse camera angle of the car while driving forward, as well as view other information, all of it illuminated on a vast 17-inch touch screen. The bigger size is better because it means the buttons can be larger. Adjusting braking and suspension settings while driving is easier on the big screen.
♦ Ford said that it was keeping an eye on voluntary guidelines set in 2013 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which recommend that any single interaction not take more than two seconds. In that time, a car can travel 176 feet at 60 miles an hour.
♦ One of the most anticipated new touch-screen systems is coming from Volvo. The centerpiece of its new XC90 sport utility vehicle, is a new connected-car system that has a nine-inch touch screen. There will be only eight buttons, including what the industry calls hard controls for front and rear defrost, skip track, pause and a mandatory hazard warning light switch. There is a large knob that can control the volume. In the new Volvo system, drivers will be able to say, “I’m cold,” and the heat will come on.
♦ One of the most positively reviewed connected-car systems of the last year has been the Chrysler brand’s Uconnect, another QNX-based system. It uses an 8.4-inch touch screen in its top-of-the-line system. The graphics look less like a tablet, but the controls are simple and unembellished.
♦ Not all automakers are embracing touch screens, including Audi. Rather than using a single iPad-like screen, multiple touch screens might be a better solution. (Audi is about to introduce its next-generation connected-car system, but it would not say whether it will adopt a touch screen.)
Nevertheless, many automakers are clearly on a tablet track. What’s less clear is how they will work with the companies behind those tablets. Nearly every car manufacturer insists it is working closely with Apple and Google, each of which will be promoting its own software — CarPlay and Android Auto — this year.
While that happens, the tablet revolution rolls on.
Read the original New York Time story.
