2014's battle for dashboard supremacy #1
There's a battle ahead, one that many may not have seen coming. Perhaps because it's starting for an odd reason. You see, the auto industry has, more or less, ceased making bad cars. These days they're all pretty good. They'll start on a cold morning, idle happily in traffic on a hot afternoon, protect you in a crash, and look pretty good while doing it. Sure, that last point is always debatable, and certainly some cars are better suited for different tasks than others, but the key is that it's genuinely hard to buy a "bad" new car.
While that's a very good thing, it has the interesting side effect of making it mighty hard for auto manufacturers to stand above the crowd. So, while performance and efficiency continue as strong talking points, in-car technology has become one of the most important points of differentiation for auto manufacturers. The amazing pace of advancement of mobile technology has raised the bar. Most car shoppers walk into the dealership with an incredibly advanced and easy-to-use piece of consumer electronics in their purse or pocket, and so it's natural they'd want their next car to offer some of the same appeal.
Carmakers have spent years and millions of dollars creating ever-more-advanced infotainment systems and, tragically, none holds a candle to the appeal of any current mobile operating systems. To most consumers, it seems blatantly obvious that the phone should simply handle all the heavy lifting. In 2014 that finally begins to become a reality across the industry, but the issue isn't as simple as it seems.
Look at a modern smartphone. Then, go tap on any of the recent touch-screen interfaces found in a modern car. By and large, the shift is jarring. These infotainment systems are often slow, frequently sluggish, and quite generally aesthetically challenged. This is why so many consumers simply want to replicate their phone on a bigger touch screen in the car and call it a day. Sadly, that won't work.
The primary challenge is driver distraction. Quite simply: mobile operating systems aren't safe while driving. Never intended to be thumbed whilst behind the wheel, study after study shows that trying to do so makes you about as capable as the average drunk. An interface safe to use while driving must be significantly simpler, significantly tighter, and, often, uglier. There are now regulations and testing procedures in the US, EU, and Japan specifying what is allowed, things like maximum time spent looking away from the road and minimum size of graphical controls. Out of the box, none of today's mobile phones satisfy these requirements.
The other concern, which frankly most of you won't care about, is that of branding. Vehicle designers are well-trained -- and well-paid -- to craft beautiful, stylish, and distinctive exteriors. So too are interior designers, spending years chasing proper materials and sculpting desirable ergonomics for their cabins. A hugely important part of the equation is the center stack, the waterfall of controls between the front seats. Manufacturers demand that this be just as strongly identifiable as any other part of the car. If it's simply a dumb terminal, a view into your phone, they're giving up that piece of experience. They're again no better than the competition.
That, for car brands, is a very bad thing. For consumers it could be a very good thing, and in this battle consumers are finally winning.
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