Interior of the 2022 Jeep Grand Wagoneer.LUCAS SCARFONE/Courtesy of manufacturer
A screen is a screen, whether it’s in your living room, on your desk or on the dashboard of a wildly expensive Porsche or frugal little Kia.
Screens all look the same, and in cars they all function the same way too, if a driver chooses to use Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. But the sameness of all this in-car technology isn’t just boring, it presents a problem for car companies that need to distinguish their products, and doubly so for luxury brands that need to justify high prices.
There’s a lot of hand-wringing in the automotive world about the notion electric motors could make all cars feel very similar, thereby flattening any high-performance edge a brand had built up and killing any perceived prestige once afforded by big V8 or V12 combustion engines. (There’s a kernel of truth there.) The bigger threat to brand prestige, excitement and diversity in the car world? Big screens. They’re already everywhere and they’re making so many new cars look and feel the same.
Take Porsche’s all-new Panamera, for example. It’s a 270-kilometre-an-hour luxury express for drivers willing to part with roughly $130,000 for the privilege of having a fast four-door sedan with a Porsche crest. Sliding into the driver’s seat, you’re faced with up to three screens: one behind the steering wheel, one in the middle of the dashboard, and a new 10.9-inch screen for the front passenger. The latter was an $1,850 optional extra on the Panamera 4 that I recently test drove.
The centre and passenger screens on the Porsche Panamera 4.Matt Bubbers/The Globe and Mail
Despite the fact the Panamera is all-new for 2024, it felt oddly familiar, like I’ve seen it before. And I had, sort of. The 2022 Jeep Grand Wagoneer has a very similar-looking dashboard, with a front passenger display and an array of screens running the width of the dashboard. Like the Porsche, the Jeep’s central and passenger displays are sandwiched between two horizontal trim lines that run across the cabin. Both the Jeep and Porsche feel similar to the Mercedes-Benz EQS with its 56-inch Hyperscreen. (It’s a fancy name for a single glass panel covering three separate screens; there’s nothing “hyper” about it.) Even Ferrari also offers a dedicated touchscreen for front-seat passengers to fiddle with.
The higher-end 500 model of the 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQE SUV comes with the massive hyperscreen that spans the width of the dash.Petrina Gentile/The Globe and Mail
Adding insult to injury for all those luxury brands and their big screens is the fact you can get nearly identical technology in mainstream cars that cost a fraction of the price. Screens are cheap. The new BMW i5 sedan costs nearly twice what the Hyundai Ioniq 6 sedan does, but the cabin design and in-car tech are all too similar. Both cars feature dual widescreen displays plonked atop the dashboard above a colour-changing LED light strip. The materials in the BMW feel slightly better, but probably not different enough to justify the hefty price premium.
When you sit in a new car at the dealership, big screens and so much flashy tech might initially seem futuristic, but the novelty quickly wears off. Consumers are increasingly annoyed by all the useless technology stuffed into cars. For the first time in the 28-year history of J.D. Power’s 2023 Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) study, satisfaction among new-vehicle owners declined for the second year in a row. The results are based on responses from 85,000 owners of new 2023 model-year vehicles after 90 days of ownership.
The dash of the 2024 Hyundai Kona Electric uses the same side-by-side dual-screen layout as the Ioniq 5 and 6.Jason Tchir/The Globe and Mail
“Despite the technology and design innovations that manufacturers put into new vehicles, owners are lukewarm about them,” wrote Frank Hanley, senior director of auto benchmarking at J.D. Power.
Lukewarm would be far too kind a word to describe my feelings when searching through menus on the new Porsche Panamera’s many screens to find a way to adjust the direction of the air vents. There’s no need for such complication. Physical vent controls – like the ones seen on every base-model Toyota in 1987 – would be an improvement.
Such complicated screen-based infotainment systems, systems that car companies have spent billions to develop, are not resonating with consumers, J.D. Power’s report concluded.
Even for a simple task like playing audio, the survey found only 56 per cent of owners prefer to use their vehicle’s built-in system, down from 70 per cent in 2020. Instead of the built-in system, more drivers are opting to use third-party software like Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. They’re easy to use because they’re so familiar; they effectively turn the in-car screen into an extension of your phone.
In addition, these dashboard screens, even if they’re running third-party software, are distracting and dangerous. It’s a danger Transport Canada has been aware of since at least 2003.
Despite this, car companies show little sign they’ll stop trying to stuff more and more screens into cars. It’s a safe bet we’ll see more triple-screen and quad-screen dashboards as the technology trickles down to more mainstream models, which will only exacerbate the monotony. The feeling of déjà vu when getting into a brand-new car is going to become a regular occurrence.
It’s not entirely car designers’ fault. There are only so many ways to package giant rectangular screens on the dashboard of a car. Sitting in the driver’s seat is starting to feel like being stuck at your desk in front of a computer. Haven’t we all had enough screen time? Sadly, car companies think not.
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