> Imagine being able to both see the road AND quickly sketch out an idea with a co-worker on the windshield during your commute
This is quite a disingenuous take on the screens in a car though. They usually only allow limited interactions while the vehicle is in motion, so that example of sketching out an idea with a coworker already isn't supposed to be happening with the current systems while the vehicle is in motion.
My passenger can't type something while the vehicle is moving, and if they scroll through lists too fast it'll go into a timeout mode for a few seconds because it assumes the driver is paying too much attention to the screen. Coupled with driver attention tracking systems on current Euro cars (and it sounds like future US cars as well) it can really enforce that a driver doesn't pay too much attention directly to the screen or other things in the car.
Is it disingenuous? I'd say perhaps hyperbolic or satirical. I remember a time when cars came with DVD players that wouldn't play if the car wasn't in park. People didn't like that so they worked around it. The lockout systems that you describe sound like the impetus for a market of bypasses. I would argue that if such restrictions are necessary then we should reconsider if the screen which necessitates them is necessary.
We seem hard-pressed to consolidate all of a car's functionality into a touch screen, but the UX is often much worse than a physical input whose position never changes and can be felt with your fingers in the dark or in situations where you cannot look at it. This consolidation also seems like it creates a single point of failure: what happens if your screen breaks?
It all seems like tech for tech's sake, things to justify charging more and more for new vehicles while providing manufacturers with a means of pushing updates, displaying ads, and selling services to extract more incremental value from consumers.
I'd like to see a car w/ a screen for a map. That's it. You input your destination on your phone, it shows the map on the screen. The screen is for display only and it's decoupled from all other controls in the car.
> The lockout systems that you describe sound like the impetus for a market of bypasses.
If we're talking about modifying and buying 3rd party changes then the car not even having a screen from the factory is within the same world of people making changes are bad with excessive touchscreen interaction while moving. We're no longer talking about whatever the OEMs are shipping.
I get your point, but I think it does create a lower bar to clear than if there were no screens at all. A software flash is quick, easy, and cheap compared to installing and integrating your own custom equipment. More people will pay $500 to unlock / replace their head units than would pay $5000 to have their screen-less car retrofit with one.
How much does it cost to just suction cup a used iPad on to the dashboard? Or buy some double DIN Android-based head unit that fits in a 90's era car that'll play Netflix while on the road? Less than your $500 example?
If people are going to abuse it, they're going to abuse it. The car shipping with no screen might be even easier to abuse than one with everything in the car being routed through it.
On my old 2000 Accord replacing the headunit with one with a screen running regular Android was <$500, and it didn't have to mess with the AC system. Replacing the system on my Mach E? It'll be a custom job, probably incredibly expensive, and will most definitely hurt the resale value. There's no shops out there advertising "$500 to flash Android on your Mach E!" despite being on the market for a few years. I'd sooner have your example of swiping around on a presentation on my 2000 Accord than I would on my Mach E, despite the Mach E coming with a big screen.
And this isn't limited to just EVs. My >5yr old Hyundai ICE also has a touch screen. Even though it has a lot of buttons, its hard to know what those buttons are doing without the screen and stock OS on it. Sure there's buttons to turn the temp up and down, but you don't actually know what you set it to except for the screen. There's no notification to what air vents are open except on the screen despite there being a button to change modes. Then there's a number of other settings and features to the car that are largely only configurable on the screen (while stopped). All of that goes away if you swap out the head unit on the car or end up flashing a custom Android build on it instead of whatever highly modified version Hyundai put on it.
Once again, if you're opening it up to people doing whatever modifications to it to be these distraction boxes with a budget of $500, then I guess a 1984 MR2 Spyder or a 1993 Ford Ranger or a 2000 Honda Accord also come into the fray as cars which could be modified to allow for distractions like your example.
I have an aftermarket head unit like you describe, but I wouldn't have installed it if my car didn't already have a space for it in the dash and a whole harness wired and ready to connect. I leave it off unless I need to pull up a map.
Your point about being unable to use the features of your car if you replace the factory unit makes sense, but is that type of lock-in a good thing? Again, what if your screen breaks and now you don't know what your AC is set to? What else can't you operate in your car without the screen?
The existence of a screen conditions people to expect and depend on a screen. The manufacturer increasingly requires you to use it to operate the vehicle. There may not be shops advertising flashes yet, but I expect they'll come; that or legislation that prevents anyone from tampering with them.
You could make laws to discourage people from attaching devices to their dashboards and interacting with them, but it gets murky when all the cars come from the factory with a device already in the dashboard that you have no choice but to interact with.
> There may not be shops advertising flashes yet, but I expect they'll come
It's been over a decade since the first car that I bought new which had a touchscreen, and it wasn't a pricey high end car. When is this market going to come?
I do think it's not necessarily a good thing for all the stuff to be routed through the screen. I do agree there should be some amount of things operated by physical buttons and switches like gear selectors and turn signals and wipers and what not. But between my car with a ton of buttons and a tiny screen and my car with few buttons and a large screen, I'll take the one with the large screen every time.
The one with lots of buttons has a small screen, making it harder to put in an address or using it while stopped. It's harder to fully understand the navigation at a quick glance on the smaller screen. The vast majority of buttons are practically worthless wastes of space 90% of the time and really shouldn't be used while driving anyways.
> wouldn't have installed it if my car didn't already have a space for it in the dash
Well, there's not a spot to install one in either of my cars with screens in them, but all the cars which didn't have them were easily upgraded to have them. So once again it's easier today to play videogames while driving in my 2000 Accord than my Mach E on something "built-in" to the dash.
This is why I say your point is disingenuous. In a 1993 Ranger, today, I can spend $500 and do your distraction filled example. It would cost me many thousands to do it on either of my touchscreen cars, requiring massive, invasive modifications. This is true of every car I've owned which didn't have a touchscreen from the factory and every car with a touchscreen from the factory, for well over a decade.
Maybe once enough people get stuck with a head unit they don't like, but can't change without a lot of cost because it's vital to the operation of the car. I do expect this to be a relatively small market, but who knows? I have an ECU and a TCU flash, they're performance modifications, but they do also modify the output on the small stock screen in the middle of my gauge cluster. I think the average consumer is more likely to buy a mod for their head unit than their engine, but whether enough people care for someone to make the mods is yet to be seen.
> In a 1993 Ranger, today, I can spend $500 and do your distraction filled example. It would cost me many thousands to do it on either of my touchscreen cars, requiring massive, invasive modifications.
The way I see it you could spend $500 and add a screen to any car, but if your car already contains screens then now you have n + 1 screens (where at least some of those n are necessary).
It's not really about whether you choose to integrate the screen into the dash (or anywhere else) or not, it's that the manufacturer already decided to do it for you. They started you off with n screens, they made you use them. If anything becomes possible, easier, faster, etc. to do on another device then you arrive at n + 1 screens. You can't control what people do, but you can start them with 0 necessary screens.
> The one with lots of buttons has a small screen, making it harder to put in an address or using it while stopped. It's harder to fully understand the navigation at a quick glance on the smaller screen.
Totally agree, gimme big map. That's why I changed my head unit; so I could stop using my phone for navigation. I'm not against big-ish "dedicated" map monitors, but I don't want them to become necessary for operating anything outside of the map and playing audio. I genuinely don't think they're better suited to driving related tasks than conventional gauges and controls.
> If anything becomes possible, easier, faster, etc. to do on another device then you arrive at n + 1 screens
That's kind of the whole point of Android Auto/Carplay. New software feature out there? It's there. Things too slow for the features you want? New phone, faster CPU/GPU, new network connectivity, etc.
Even though my Hyundai is >5 years old it's running apps that were last updated yesterday. It's had a few UI changes, mostly for the better. It didn't take a new screen.
This is quite a disingenuous take on the screens in a car though. They usually only allow limited interactions while the vehicle is in motion, so that example of sketching out an idea with a coworker already isn't supposed to be happening with the current systems while the vehicle is in motion.
My passenger can't type something while the vehicle is moving, and if they scroll through lists too fast it'll go into a timeout mode for a few seconds because it assumes the driver is paying too much attention to the screen. Coupled with driver attention tracking systems on current Euro cars (and it sounds like future US cars as well) it can really enforce that a driver doesn't pay too much attention directly to the screen or other things in the car.