Lexus CT200h is one of the best interiors ever designed. The design language was tactile: every single button or control had a different action or feel.
There’s a roughly 7 inch above the vents that flips up whenever the car is off, but using the screen is optional. The screen is up near the road, and it’s very safe to use. There’s a small joystick to move the cursor.
CT also has a stateless “springy gear selector” which works the same way as a manual gear selector, but after selecting the gear it springs back, so it’s stateless. It also has tactile blocking for gears you can’t enter yet. It felt extremely satisfying.
CT got a 10/10 from me, like a small aircraft cockpit. Enough knobs and computers to be exciting, but not OTT. Made a hybrid micro hatchback feel exciting.
BMWs interior pre-iPad-glued-to-the-dash is of the same quality. The automatic gear shifter is stateless, by it has an extremely satisfying clunk, buttons and dials for everything. Note that a stateless gear shifter isn't ideal if you ever need to move your car on a dead battery. In a BMW you need to go under the car and screw in a bolt that pushes the parking pall into neutral.
Whoever started this trend has a lot to answer for. It looks tacky as hell and is a technically-inferior solution to just having a dock that would let a customer bring their own tablet. It's truly the worst of both worlds and a seemingly pervasive problem across multiple manufacturers in the automotive design space.
You can’t have a dock for the users tablet because, despite appearances, the system is actually safety rated, and rated to temperature Class H (125degC) as well.
This is in contrast to consumer electronics which are not hard realtime, also they would probably melt and catch fire if left inside the car in direct sunlight.
What do you mean interior EV design? Why does it have to differ from an EV to a gas powered car? You might have some different gauges, a control or two that is different, but other than that, why does an EV have to look a certain way?
> Why does it have to differ from an EV to a gas powered car?
Because they have different design constraints.
It didn’t take long for car manufacturers to figure out that a horseless carriage doesn’t have to look like a carriage. Early ones such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Velo certainly did. You can even see it somewhat in the Ford model T.
Similarly, an electric car doesn’t need an exhaust, and if the engines are in the wheels it doesn’t need a transmission tunnel.
That changes the design constraints, so chances are the optimal design looks different.
It still looks like a big computer screen, I'm afraid. Although, making it seamless with the dash is a step up, you're right. That tiny paddle gear shift looks horrendous, though.
I would really like to have analog features back, buttons and all that, in an EV.
Taycan relies too heavily on touch. Not even vent directions are manually adjustable on a Taycan. BMW i4 interior is much better in that aspect: many physical controls. I hope Porsche fixes its mistakes soon.
It literally is just a big minimalist computer screen. I drive a taycan and it would be significantly better if they were to remove the massive touchpad and replace it with a cluster of physical controls.
Rivians don't even have a physical vent control (to aim the vents). That alone disqualifies it from anything close to "excellent". And that's before mentioning all the missing physical buttons that should've been there.
Touch screen buttons, especially the ones on the far edge of the center screen, are harder to accurately hit for most people. More physical buttons = better = more premium.
looks like a weird mix of nothing, pointless clock, that screen on the right, that only creates discomfort. The big screen that is big only for the trend.
In tesla ( trend setter for this) big screen is functional, and it can show you multi media, when you charge you watch netflix.
Their interiors look high-end, functional and not just a minimalist big computer screen.
https://www.caranddriver.com/photos/g46528574/2024-porsche-m...