When I saw the announcement that Lincoln was putting a four-foot curved screen into the dashboard of its new Lincoln Nautilus I was convinced this was a silly gimmick. Between heads-up displays and dash screens, the automotive industry had solved the problem of screens in cars (a problem they also created). I was wrong. As ridiculous as it seems, the A-pillar dashboard screen is the best way to do screens.
The spread of screens across cars is not my favorite technological outcome. This tech is something long-promised by automakers, but the application has been mixed. Encouraged by Tesla, automotive interior design quickly moved to having larger and larger screens in the middle of the dash, doing more of the work that buttons used to do.
At first glance, this minimalistic design has an easy appeal, but the novelty’s worn off and the usability of such systems is often mixed. Even worse, the budget version of this has just been to float what looks like an iPad somewhere in the center stack, and that’s what has proliferated most.
Head-Up Displays Are A Mixed Bag For Automotive Uses
The head-up display has been around in various forms for pilots going as far back as World War II and, with helmet-based displays, is a major part of modern aviation. If head-up displays didn’t work then pilots wouldn’t use them. That’s my theory, at least.
Automotive head-up displays have been featured on various concepts throughout the 20th century, but it wasn’t until Nissan unveiled one for the 1993 Silvia in Japan that anyone ever put one in production. Here’s a bit from the press release:
A major benefit of HUDs is that they allow the driver to watch the road ahead at all times while reading the displayed information. Another advantage is that they shorten recognition time over conventional meters because eye movement and eye focusing movement are greatly reduced. Recognition time refers to the amount of time it takes to read the display and return the eyes to their original line of sight. Nissan’s data indicates that the new HUD cuts recognition time from 0.46 to 0.33 seconds, a reduction of approximately 30%.
Here’s what the design looked like:
As far as I can tell, it’s only displaying speed information, which is the most important detail a driver needs during a usual drive. In general, I find speed-based HUDs helpful. GM has a decently usable one for performance cars that I’ve used in a track setting.
The problem with these HUDs, at least for me, is that the quality usually isn’t high enough to quickly use and, because it’s projected so close to the windshield, I end up getting distracted. It’s marginally better than looking down, and the eye doesn’t travel as far from the road, but I find them to be only minimally useful. Because the image is projected it’s also hard to see under numerous light conditions.
Dashboard Screens Are A Bad Solution
Some automakers are moving towards screens that cover the entire dashboard, often embedded from end to end. The first company to seriously attempt this in the United States was Mercedes with the company’s Hyperscreen in the all-electric EQS.
While the display in the EQS is high quality, this feels like a solution in search of a problem. Navigation or other tasks using a Hyperscreen, in my experience, isn’t much better than just having an iPad-like screen glued to the dashboard. It’s also extremely distracting. Having giant touchscreens is altogether a bad idea as there’s no tactile feedback, which means you’re inevitably going to move your eyes towards the screen for complex tasks.
I haven’t seen a single touchscreen made by anyone that’s had all the information I need in one place and doesn’t require a lot of searching around for information. Mercedes has tried to utilize something it calls the “zero layer” of information to make things easier to find, but like most of these solutions, it would be better if there were just a bunch of buttons.
Any time your eyes have to get off the road it’s bad, and now that everything is going onto screens, the problem is only getting worse.
Lincoln’s Curved A-Pillar Screen Is Actually Kinda Brilliant
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7CLsLhrX_e/
I had no plan to drive a Lincoln Nautilus, but David’s Jeep developed a smelly fuel leak which sent us looking for an alternative vehicle to get us to Palm Springs for the launch of the 2024 Ford F-150 and 2024 Mazda CX-70 (review coming tomorrow). Conveniently, Autopian co-founder Beau has more than a few options available. I was surprised when he suggested we try out the new Nautilus and, since Beau drives everything, I was more than curious to find out why he liked it.
Sitting down in the Lincoln’s comfortable seats, the screen is momentarily distracting because there’s so much of it. The curved screen appears to stretch from A-pillar to A-pillar, but the 48-inch 4K display is actually two 24-inch screens joined together in the middle. The effect is stunning and, unlike some screens, it’s difficult to see where the screens are split. I did a high-exposure version of a photo to show you where the screens line up:
Because Lincoln uses a vignette graphic between the screens it’s not easy to see where the seam is unless the sun is directly facing into the screen, and even then it’s nicely fitted together.
Here’s how the screen is divided:
Because the screen is so far forward on the dash it has to be a high-quality unit or it’s not going to work. This particular screen (or screens) is 4K and powerful enough that you can see it in the bright sun of the desert and not just the dark of a parking garage. Not all screens are created equal and I’ve been in plenty of cars where the center screen was less usable under bright conditions.
It is insane I like this given that one of the things I most love about my old BMW is that it doesn’t have any screens beyond the single-color red display in the dash and gauge cluster. This is just such a surprisingly good solution to the problem of too much information in a modern car.
Why This Works
The placement of the screen near the A-pillar of the car makes it almost flush with the windshield, so it just acts like a much clearer and cleaner HUD. If the idea of all these systems is to prevent the driver’s eyes from being off the road, this limits the departure from the field of view by a significant margin as you can see in the graphic above. If the dotted line is looking down the road, depending on how tall you are, the screen (solid line) isn’t far from the road ahead. The 11-inch center screen is a touchscreen and requires the driver to look away (dashed line) from the road by a large percentage to operate, which is how many of these systems work.
You’ll notice the wheel is designed to be slightly squircle, which makes sense given that it doesn’t want your eyes to have to peer over the wheel to see the screen. I’m tall, so this works for me.
The main, 48-inch screen isn’t a touch-screen and that’s maybe its best feature. It’s very much designed to just be a thing you look at and not something you need to interact with at all. There’s no need to switch between a bunch of screens to get the information you need because most of the information you need is right there in front of you. Even using Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free driving system there’s more space than you need to get all the data you want.
This means that the Lincoln system doesn’t require a lot of swapping around between screens. I drove this around Southern California for a few days and put 300+ miles on the car and I didn’t have to interact with the display much, and when I did it was mostly through tactile buttons on the steering wheel. Partially this is because so much data is viewable up top, but there’s another good reason.
It Gives You Two Maps!
I’m going to nerd out here for a minute so be warned. I was a geography major in college (Gamma Theta Upsilon 4 LIFE!) and I love maps. I see the world in maps, and my biggest frustration with Google Maps/Waze/Whatever is that I only want to see the turn right before the turn. Otherwise, a map should show where I am in relation to my final destination. A map that only tells you immediately where you’re going is a bad map! It means you don’t know where you are.
This is the default view for most navigation systems, although some have gotten better at zooming out a little in between turns. I do not like this.
This system is way better:
As you can see, I’m using Apple Maps via CarPlay for a trip. In this case, it’s taking me from Santa Monica to a BMW dealership in Temecula. Normally, I’d have to just interact with the main screen to see where I’m going, but Lincoln designers smartly put the turn-by-turn directions right up in the middle of the pillar screen. This means that I don’t have to look very far from the road to see where I’m going.
Even better, if I want a quick reference to where I am in space and the route (is it taking me on I-10 or cutting down to the 105?) I can glance down at the center touchscreen. In other cars I have to try and zoom out with my fingers, which is extremely distracting.
This might just be a perk for me because I’m a weirdo. I’m ok with that. What if you’re not a weirdo? When I use my phone to navigate the single most distracting thing I regularly do is page between navigation and anything else my phone needs me to do. This system is also beneficial because it allows you to answer a call, switch your music, et cetera, without having to lose your directions. It’s simple, but it’s great.
A Remarkable Part Of An Otherwise Unremarkable Car
The Nautilus is another five-seat, premium crossover in a world full of five-seat, premium crossovers. I drove it to Palm Springs to test drive the CX-70, which is a near-premium five-seat crossover. When I got home, I drove my kid to school in my non-premium five-seat crossover.
After three hours in the Lincoln, the thing that David and I both immediately noticed was that we noticed nothing at all.
“Did we drive here?” David asked, half-seriously. “That didn’t feel like…anything.”
Ford’s 2.0-liter turbo inline-four gets about 29 mpg on the highway, puts out 250 horsepower via an eight-speed transmission, and drives as soft as any other two-row, five-seat crossover (there’s also a hybrid option). Everything about this car is tuned, as a Lincoln should be tuned, for comfort above all else. If you’ve got a very long road trip down exceedingly straight roads this isn’t a bad way to go.
If there’s anything special about the car that isn’t its screen it is the fact that it’s built in China and sold in America. There are a few cars sold in America that are built in China, but only two are from American brands (this and the Buick Envision). Could anyone tell it was a Chinese car? Yes, but only if you’re used to Chinese cars.
There’s a specific Chinese interior design style that matches simple lines with ornate details. In the Lincoln, this means a smooth dash/screen offset by the clear, jewel-like rotary volume knob and overly-textured switches. BMW’s iX is another example of a car that, while not built by a Chinese company, feels like a Chinese car.
Everyone Should Just Copy Lincoln
If you have to burden a driver with a ton of information I haven’t seen a better way of doing it. I had to check with David to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind, but he drove the Lincoln a bit and came to the same conclusion: This is the best way to design a data-rich cabin.
Nothing about this seems extremely hard. Automakers are putting all sorts of screens into their vehicles and curved screen technology is old hat at this point.
The biggest issue is probably cost. This screen is standard across the Nautilus lineup, which means the cheapest way to get it is to fork over $50,000 for a base model. Could someone adapt this screen for even a $40k car? What about a $30k car? I don’t know exactly how much the part costs, but my guess is this isn’t that cheap.
Still, screens of any kind were once a luxury in any car and now screens are plentiful. If the industry was smart, they’d see this as a better way forward.
My 2 cents as a myopic person – this would kill me at night. For me, I need SAAB’s night mode, not Maximum LEDgasm. I’m sure it dims at night, but on long drives at night even the cruise control light is too bright for me. ALL screens off.
This feature would be a hard no for me, even if the Ford chime wasn’t already my hard no.
Knowing most car companies, they’ll finally implement some sort of user-controllable dimmer switch, but if you dim it, some stuff will become basically unreadably dim while other parts will still be glowing with the power of 1,000 suns.
I really think car interiors peaked (from a usability standpoint) just before LCD screens and multi colored displays crept their way in. I generally liked those little square-dot-matrix single color display thingies (they were red in VW products, orange and then eventually green in Saab products…). They were relatively small and enabled communication of a bit more complex information.
From a stylistic standpoint, I largely think car interiors peaked when we still had dashboards largely made of metal and what few lights existed in the interior produced a nice soft dim light, back lighting just the gauges and nothing else.
Seconded, myopia and astigmatism. With lighting and screen tech progressing the way it is, I’ll have to stop driving at night like I’m a half-dead old geezer who’s got one foot in the nursing home and one foot in the grave.
As a geography major you really appreciate my grandkid. Never asked “are we there yet”, instead asked “where are we”. The kid has really great spacial awareness in the geographical sense. Very good at directions and likes to look at aircraft tracks on FlightRadar24. Great kid.
I don’t want to be That Guy but this is a display layout that the gen2 Prius had in 2004 and it was good then too. Center panel touchscreen, driver critical up under the windscreen. Prius had a LCD on a long mirror and some indication LEDs but that’s an implementation detail.
The Prius version is arguably even better because the mirrored display gives it an impossibly long focal length that requires even less change in focus when looking between the road and display.
NO thanks – can you imagine how much and/or how hard this would be to get out of warranty if it were to fail, or if a wayward child were to throw something towards it that accidentally damaged it?
How often have you experienced damage to your analog instrument cluster from children throwing something at it?
Modern glass and plastics are pretty tough.
Wiimote + TV = Shopping trip to Best Buy
*Mario theme* Dah Dah da dah duh Dah, WHAM.
My analog instrument cluster on my 2009 Hyundai Accent hatchback? No, because my seat, my body and the steering wheel are in the way of the cluster and the center stack is physical buttons, chunky plastic knobs and one little digital strip for the radio screen.
My friend who has a Polestar 2 EV whose 5-year-old, in a tantrum, threw a toy from the back seat which hit squarely on the giant touchscreen in the middle of the dash and shattered it out of warranty to the tune of something like $6000 CAD? Well…he has experience, so from my vicarious experience through him, I’ll take my chunky buttons and plastic knobs thanks.
Screens BAD and we should bring back ROTARY DIAL TELEPHONES!!1!1! Now be quiet Matlock is on!
Nah. I may be a victim of self-selection as a zillenial who seeks out “old salty” forum/social media like this, but I’m seeing this, looking at my ADHD tendencies, and saying “this is a recipe for overstimulation while driving.” I would legit have to train to handle such a vehicle.
There’s a new Matlock show coming out, so, uh. . .
More proof that I’m completely out of touch with the 21st Century pursuit of data. Don’t want it, and don’t need it, much. I’ve lived here for decades, so I know the roads and the destinations. Traffic info is nice – no, better than nice, but a quick check now and then is enough. Give me a speedometer, and a clock and a temperature gauge and I’m almost done. I operate from the guiding principle that nothing inside the car is as important as what I should be seeing outside the car …like that cement truck barreling my way! Facing an illuminated screen like this, and with side windows tinted, a driver would have almost no situational awareness at night. Our eyes seek brightness, not the shadow of a pedestrian in a black hoodie in the dark. No wonder pedestrian casualties continue to increase.
So I ask, what’s the purpose of all this data? There’s a recent book called “Ghost Roads” that describes the autonomous mobility future. When our cars can drive themselves, we’ll be free to be fully distracted by the same kind of limitless data we face at home. The paying portion of this will be ads, as your algorithms call out the stores and restaurants as you pass by. You won’t see them, as you’re too distracted trying to find the heater controls. The Future will be fabulous, but will it be fun?
Doesn’t the “autonomous mobility future’ support your guiding principle of, “nothing inside the car is as important as what I should be seeing outside the car”
In my little opinion I think that looks absolutely terrible.
It’s a bunch of unnecessary information delivered in a way that is passively but continually reducing your night vision. The glut of information available is in itself a dangerous distraction.
Also, this is another used car killer. I’m guessing the cost of replacing that screen in 10 years will easily rival the cost of a motor. Who is excited to total a car over an errant parcel bump or a critical manufacturing flaw?
It’s a luxury car. It’s supposed to have indimidating-to-repair features. That’s why they depreciate faster.
Counterpoint: It stinks.
The goal should be to reduce the size of the screen to the minimal amount required for the backup camera and your favorite mapping software. Everything else should be handled by physical controls and analog gauges.
I have a ’94 toyota pickup with no screens (or power steering… or a radio) and thats not enough screens, a 2015 Volvo with a 6″ screen and that’s enough screens and a 2020 Explorer with an 11″ ipad hot glued to the dash in portrait mode and that’s too much screens. I sincerely hope that these giant screens end up in the waste basket of history with automatic seatbelts and 3D TVs.
I have owned a 3d tv and a car with motorized seatbelts.
The car (1991 240SX) survives with its new owner. The 3dtv is dead in my garage.
How were they at night? Could you turn some of them off?
Since it’s the main gauge cluster you can’t turn it off, though a Saab-like night mode would be dope.
That was right where my mind went. I wish that was a universal thing: a button on the dash that turned off most of the lights. Though that is probably a very specific-to-me wish.
I won’t buy a car whose screen can’t be turned off. Ninety percent of the time, that’s how I drive.
Yeah, no thanks.
Your local Ophthalmologist community likely disagrees.
I didn’t know my Acura would have a HUD until I was test driving it. I figured it would have been a gimmick, but the fact that it projects as if it’s at the end of my hood (rather than on my windshield as I would have expected) makes it incredibly useful, because there’s no need to re-focus my eyes to look from the road to my speed. It’s basically always legible in my peripheral vision, which is great since it also displays navigation instructions.
does it work with polarized sunglasses?
edit- never mind, saw your reply below.
I did a little experimenting on the way home, to make sure I was giving accurate info. With polarized sunglasses, the display does fade if I lean to one side a couple of feet (fades more to the left than the right for whatever reason). Without sunglasses it still fades but much more slowly. It’s fine either way as long as I’m sitting normally, however.
I’m glad too; it hadn’t occurred to me that some might be compromised by something so simple and common as polarized sunglasses!
yeah, my old E60 had HUD and it was great, just so long as you weren’t wearing nice sunglasses.
Can you put a live-feed ticker tape crawl across it? What other uses could you use it for? Hmmm…
Why TF is the clock all the way over on the other side of the car?
If there is one thing Matt is good at, it’s bad takes. Oh and obsessing over Elon.
And cooking chicken! My air-fryer can also do rotisserie and it rules.
let’s be real. The air-fryer is doing all the work isn’t it?
Why are you reading and commenting on his articles then?
Who says the OP read the article? Actually reading articles is for people who don’t have a flashy 4 foot display to distract them from everything else going on. 😛
HUDs are great, but some become invisible when you’re wearing sunglasses, or maybe, certain types. My mom had a 2019 X5 and BMWs HUD disappears if I wear my sunglasses, my mom reported the same thing.
That screen looks pretty cool, I’ll give it that. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I spend all day at work staring at computer monitors. The last thing I want is to get in my car and have another giant screen in my face. I wish I could turn off the dashboard screen in my Sportwagen without turning off the whole sound system. It’s very basic and mostly useless. I only ever need it if I want to pause a song, and when the backup camera comes on.
only bad ones. Good ones can do polarized lenses. My Yukon is no problem at all with sun glasses.
I don’t have a problem with my Acura’s HUD and sunglasses, but it doesn’t surprise me to hear that some have that issue. I suppose it depends on how the company projects the HUD.
Half the time I feel like an old man yelling at clouds, but I’m with you on the screen front – after 8-10hr of work on three 24″ screens, I’m absolutely obliterated by it at the end of the day. My car is a retreat, and I like only having to deal with minimal screens so I can enjoy driving.
Am I alone in disliking this much ambient light inside a vehicle at night? What happened to Saabs Night Panel idea? That’s how I prefer to roll at night.
That’s my initial reaction. I don’t want the interior of my car bright at night. I trust Matt and David to have a good handle on things like that, so I’m hoping they address the actual experience of driving this at night.
You are not alone.
Even the center screen in my 2017 INFINITI was too bright. When it was off. (Because it didn’t actually turn off but “off” – black with the backlight still on. grrr)
I understand a certain appeal for that – but when I don’t know where I’m going I need the nav screen.
Plus I’ve always found the various dimmed interior lights to be comforting at night.
Some light inside the cabin makes the glare of the oncoming BroDozer less startling too.
I want that and I want it cheap. Any way to retrofit this into a ’98 civic?
All I can see – and try as I might I can’t unsee it, is a giant albatross sitting atop the dash laying in wait to total the car the moment it bricks out of warranty.
HUD’s in cars were available on the Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo starting in 1990, predating the Nissan implementation.
Olds Cutlass Supreme had it in 1988
see even earlier!
I really like the navigation implementation, and it does seem to put the data in usable places. How is it at night? It looks pretty bright in the night photos, but I recognize that it’s entirely possible that the screen is not as bright and disorienting as those photos make it seem.
I might have to see about test driving one of these.
I have cheap Amazon HUD displays in all my cars, they draw power off the OBDII port and read speed off GPS. I love them, particularly at night. I dial in cruise control based on actual, not indicated speed.
How responsive is the screen in terms of brightness? Is it fully automated to dim with changes in outside lighting conditions? I always wonder about these things with screens in cars(super sensitive eyes).
And I will second the fact that a dual layer navigation would rule
Of course it auto-dims.
It’s a Lincoln.
Very interesting take. I would never have thought about it reducing distraction, and while at face value I have a hard time accepting that it does, I trust y’all enough to reserve judgement until I drive one myself, which will almost certainly never happen, but oh well. It’s a unique feature and I don’t hate it. I definitely prefer the look of this over the stupid ipad screwed to the top of the dash, but that’s not saying much as I hate those with a passion rivaling that of the passion Lumiere Rouge patrons love tail lights.
I’m sorry but I don’t get the appeal and I have no interest in EVER owning a car with that much screen in it. We should be trying to alleviate the amount of information and distraction in front of drivers, not enabling it.
I agree with Matt; I find that this big screen REDUCES the distraction because it allows you to have information at eye-level that you might otherwise have to look down and search through a center-stack screen for.
How about you look at the road, and not the 50 other data points that don’t matter. A nice HUD that shows nav would be something that actually reduces distractions.
People are on the road to drive, they shouldn’t have all this in their face.
I agree, but also, it’s 2024. Cars have big-ass screens that transmit tons of data. That’s just where we are.
I get it, and I often piss into the wind on here. But unless someone mentions a bad thing is bad, how do we ever stop it?
I take David at his word on this because this is coming from a man who drove across the country in a 60’s Mustang with very limited gauges, No infotainment and No radio. He can stare out the glass at nothingness for hours on end.
Yes, I don’t think he’s lying to me. I just don’t think 4 foot screens are any sort of solution to anything in a car.
My girlfriend still suspects me of being a serial killer after hearing I drove cross-country with no music.
Admissions commonly come off the cuff.
Better no music than Kid Rock or something.
I take it you didn’t mention the lack of heat.
Navigation matters. if I don’t know where I’m going, I’m frantically looking for directions or a place to pull over and figure it out. And I agree with Matt, it’s cool that they include the separate “step-by-step” and overview level map views.
Time matters. Am I going to be late? How late?
Speed. Gear. You should be used to seeing those already.
And of course, what song (or source) is playing, but off to the side a little because that’s less important than the rest.
There’s not much more information on those screens than in my Prius v, before or after I installed an Android Auto head unit in it.
I also think there’s something to be said for people learning how to drive, or about to learn how to drive–being able to see many of these things from the back seat or passenger seat could be informative. That’s also part of why I like the center-located instrument cluster in my Prius.
I think the graphic showing what is on display illustrates the OP’s point. Does “other stuff” need to be displayed all the time? by definition, its superfluous and potentially distracting. Like a TV at a restaurant – it could be c-span 6 running up there, its still going to catch my eye.
Matt’s big insight is that the large screens are not touch screens, and a different feature altogether from most car screens today. That makes them just instrument clusters, with a little extra. But not a lot extra compared to most cars built in the past 15 years: gauges, navigation, music, clock.
I kinda dig this.