Fifty Years Ago, Car Makers Gave Us A Worthless Gauge And Now They’re At It Again

Ignorance is bliss. Well, that’s how most people are with cars. They know vaguely that pushing the STOP/START button will make something happen with sparks and oil to cause the car to move, or maybe there are a few dozen capybaras or hamsters that survive on gasoline that hop on a treadmill under the hood when summoned. Hard to tell.

To monitor the sparks, oil, capybaras and/or hamsters and make sure they’re delivering all they can, gauges and warning messages are relied upon unquestioningly. Would your car lie to you? They may certainly stretch the truth.

Car instruments are essentially the PR people of the engine compartment; they control the narrative and tell you what they want to tell you, and not always clearly. With the emergence of EVs and hybrids – and car companies wanting to really impress you with this technology – consumers may find the messages their cars are sending are getting even more muddled. Can we find a better way? Let’s take a look back first.

A Gauge To Show How Much You’re Pressing The Pedal

Long ago, American manufacturers realized that most car owners just wanted the basic information fed to them while driving, and they were happy to oblige by providing the bare minimum (and saving them money). From the sixties onwards, most dashboards were nothing more than a big horizontal speedometer, a gas gauge and a bunch of warning lights to illuminate when systems were in critical mode. That’s how people liked it; “enthusiasts” might want to see more but individuals like my grandma assumed that more gauges only meant there was more to go wrong. Here’s a good example of a typical setup in a 1972 Chevy Impala:

If you were mister money bags, you could even pop for a clock to replace the strange starburst thing that alerted people you could have had a clock, but were just too cheap to tick that box. (Never mind that you would still be without a clock soon enough even if you did pop for the timekeeper, as they usually died after a few years in those pre-quartz days).

As the seventies began, changes happened as we entered what we now know as the malaise era. In 1973, the great Oil Embargo drastically raised the price of what scarce fuel was available, and it hit carmakers by surprise. American manufacturers were particularly screwed, particularly when their typical “standard” products were things like this aircraft carrier-sized Pontiac Grand Ville convertible:

Ah, but if the car companies couldn’t give you economy, they could at least give you an economy gauge, right? This was the ultimate thoughts-and-prayers, “at least they’re doing something” bullshit they could cobble together. Here’s what that giant Pontiac barge above got in its dashboard:

Yes, it’s the kind of thing unimaginable in the days of 20-cent-a-gallon gas: a fuel economy gauge. American cars from a number of brands offered up this silly instrument in cars of all shapes and sizes. Many times it was huge, even eclipsing the size of the fuel gauge itself. With the instruments of this Chevy Caprice version of that Pontiac above, you can see the actual fuel level gauge gets relegated to a more distant part of the dash.

The giant Oldsmobile version of this giant GM sedan got one, too:

Man, GM went nuts with this gauge on everything from Monte Carlos to Grand Prixs: it’s the size of the freaking speedometer!

At least this one is the same size as the actual fuel level gauge:

Chrysler went all out and called it a “performance” gauge, a rather all-encompassing description:

AMC seems to have really added spin to the gauge by having a massive area of GOOD economy in the calibration. What is “good”?  Like 50, 60, 80 miles per gallon? [Editor’s Note: Really, this should have been labeled “Good Enough” at best  – JT]

Here’s another great thing about this instrument: in virtually all cases it was merely a vacuum gauge. That’s right: in essence, the gauge’s reading reflected little more than how much you pressed on the gas pedal. The deeper you got into the throttle, the greater the amount of vacuum the engine pulled, and the farther the needle fell into the “not economy” zone. This was great for car companies since it really just put the whole “economy” onus back onto you, the driver. Poor fuel economy? Well, that’s your fault, isn’t it?

The gauge was a joke by almost any standard, and the message from the dashboard seemed to be “could a car with an economy gauge really be totally inefficient as before?” It could indeed be just as inefficient, of course, but displaying economy – no matter how dubiously – let drivers know the automaker cared (or “cared”). The whole thing was pure theater, and gives me a sneaking suspicion we’re seeing a revival of the concept today.

Are Hybrid Power Gauges Any Better Than That Economy Gauge In That Old Pontiac?

A few months back, part of my business trip involved making a four hour run to Atlanta. A Camry appeared to be the best tool for the task on the Enterprise lot, which I realized was a hybrid when I loaded in my bags. The car was exactly what you would expect; quiet and comfortable but painfully dull. However, the “Hybrid System Indicator” in the dash was quite a conversation piece, though I struggled to think of what it was besides that.

Here’s another Toyota hybrid; the Hybrid System Indicator gauge is the thing on the left where the tach would be in a gasoline-only model:

What you have in place of where the tach would be was a needle that could rise into an “economy” and “power” area or drop into a section labeled “charge.” As you accelerated it behaved a bit like a tachometer, and then rapidly swung into the “charge” section when you hammered the brakes.

The gauge is meant to show you how much power you’re using. Does that mean power from the electric motor or the gasoline engine? Well, we don’t know. In fact, let’s look at the description of that gauge, specifically Point C:

Item C reads “gasoline engine power is not being used very often.” Very often. Well, that’s vague as hell, right?

Honda has a similar gauge in their hybrid models, and the video describes it the same way as the Toyota manual:

The circular area around the range, fuel, and mileage info is “POWER Gauge” and CHARGE/DECEL Gauge,” meant to show what percentage of available power is being used.

What do people think of this? Over at Reddit and in Honda forums, users seem to think a lot of wrong things. One person asked why there was no tach for the gas engine, to which one smug commenter asked “Why do you want a tach on a generator?” It only took a few lines for someone to correct them.

In the Honda hybrid, the engine certainly can act as a generator, but according to the manual there are three modes to the system:

EV Drive Mode – Active when starting from a stop, during light cruising and acceleration, and when braking. The gasoline engine is off in this mode and is decoupled from the drivetrain to reduce friction.

Hybrid Drive Mode –  The electric propulsion motor alone powers the front wheels, with the gasoline engine powering the electric generator motor, which in turn provides power to the battery pack. This either supplements the battery by providing added electrical power to the propulsion motor or charges the battery if needed.

Engine Drive Mode – Under certain conditions, such as when cruising at medium to high speeds, the high-efficiency Atkinson-cycle i-VTEC® gasoline engine provides propulsion via a lock-up clutch that connects the generator motor to the propulsion motor. This effectively sends power directly from the engine to the drive wheels.

What this means is that “under certain conditions,” the engine is very much not a generator and does indeed power the car directly to the drive wheels. Many if not most hybrid systems work this way.

This raises a few questions about the usefulness of this gauge. First of all, the whole “reserve power” thing might be a bit silly since, unlike internal combustion engines, an electric motor gives you maximum torque from the word go. Also, the car can indeed power the wheels with the gas engine, which means that you might want to see if the engine is running and at what speed.

Let’s face it: Honda engines have historically not provided maximum power at lower revs. The beauty of most Hondas is that they shoot for five-figure revolutions quickly, and it’s essential to getting the power you need out of them; you have two unique power systems in a car that behave very differently. If that’s the case, then this “hybrid” gauge is a bit of a seventies “economy” meter in terms of usefulness.

A few commenters online said that “the power flow schematic you can bring up on the center screen tells a far better story.” I agree with that completely.

My theory on this type of “hybrid” gauge is that, in an effort to emphasize the future-thinking EV aspect of a hybrid, manufacturers want to downplay the fact that the car has an internal combustion engine at all. Honda even eliminates a temperature gauge for the gas engine. A hybrid system is a rather complex thing with aspects of two kinds of technology in one vehicle; seemingly a lot to go wrong. So the car manufacturers likely figures., “why worry the owner about it?”

Honestly, I get that reasoning, and this “one gauge for all” solution is a valiant effort, but the car does have a gas engine with arguably many more needs for monitoring than the electric motor requires, and we want to be able to keep an eye on that stuff. I think we can do better.

Just The Facts, Please

There’s no reason not to have a tachometer in a hybrid. As one example of this, Porsche hybrid vehicles offer a real tach (mechanical on older models like the pics below) with a series of lights at the bottom to show when the electric part of the system is charging or powering the car.

The lights work better than a needle-type gauge because they can react more quickly. In a hybrid, you switch from accelerating or cruising to charging the split second you hit the brakes, which is why the “hybrid gauge” needle swings wildly when driving around town. With the lights, they just switch off and on immediately.

Why not break down the information that a driver might want to know? Namely:

• Is the battery charging?
• Is the electric motor propelling the car?
• Is that gas motor running?
• Is the gas motor propelling the car?

That’s pretty simple right there, and it would seem a regular tach and a pair of bar-graph gauges could easily give us this information. Here are the original gauges and then my proposal:

If the tach is zeroed, you’re all electric and the motor is off. The tach showing revs and the “electric power” gauge at zero, then you know you’re running on straight gas power. Whatever the combination, these three graphics will tell the story.

It could be even simpler than that, and even fun. A Dodge hybrid? How about using the “fratzog” logo for the gauge? Sections of the shape could glow to show what part of the hybrid system is working:

A Mercedes logo could do the same thing in a Benz hybrid, now that I think about it. Regardless, the less complicated the better, and the clearer the message.

Please Don’t Give Us Another Starburst Gauge

Are these concept gauges the answer? Maybe not, but with hybrid cars becoming more prevalent in a world where buyers are still a bit hesitant to go all-electric, we’ll see a lot more of them, and we need some better solutions. There’s no reason you can’t get drivers the information they need without scaring or confusing them. That’s what good PR is about, right?

Honestly, I think if you asked most owners about their current “hybrid” gauge that cars offered, they’d probably say that they’d get more use out of a cluster like this with a giant clock where that useless instrument was:

I think I’d have to agree with them, and that’s pretty bad.

What Are Your Favorite Car Gauges And Instrument Clusters? – The Autopian

Speedometers Are All Wrong And Stupid But I Can Fix Them – The Autopian

A Daydreaming Designer Envisions Some Car Instruments We Could Really Use – The Autopian

What’s The Most Beautiful Speedometer Of All Time? Autopian Asks – The Autopian