The switch from analog to digital instrument clusters is now at a point where the default new car can be expected to have a full-color LCD display acting as its instrument cluster. There’s lots of potential advantages to the flexibility offered by a full-color, high-resolution raster display when it comes to displaying information needed for driving, but so far, I think most manufacturers have barely scratched the surface. One thing that these displays have allowed is something that has never really been possible in cars before, at least not without a significant amount of modification and money spent. That something is the ability to have four simultaneous speedometers visible at once.
Yes, the dream of the quad-speed display has finally been realized, and I myself have managed to experience it recently on two wildly different vehicles. We’re in a golden age, people, and I sure as hell hope you appreciate it. The two vehicles I tried this on are a 2024 Polaris Ranger XD and a 2025 Volkswagen Atlas.
Here’s the Atlas first, because it’s got a full LCD instrument cluster like you’d see in most new cars today:
So, by using a few buttons on the steering wheel, you can quite easily customize the instrument cluster to display four speedometers, three numerical and one skeuomorphic-type analog gauge with a needle. Look at that! You really can’t be more certain of your speed than when you’re confronted with four instances of it, staring you right in the face!
The Polaris is a more interesting setup, because it doesn’t use a full LCD screen for the instrument cluster; instead, it uses a pair of actual analog physical gauges (tachometer and speedometer) along with three rows of backlit seven-segment numeric displays augmented with a few 16-segment alphanumeric display characters. The middle row can be customized, so with a little work you can get three speedometers showing in the instrument cluster, and then a fourth one on the center stack infotainment screen, which is a full color LCD screen:
So, the effect is the same: four speedometers, all at once. So far, four seems to be the limit of concurrent speedometers one can get on most vehicles without additional equipment. If you have a heads up display (HUD), perhaps you could have a much-needed fifth speedo? I really felt myself needing a fifth one, so I hope that’s the case. Maybe legally all new cars should be required to display at least five speedometers for, you know, safety?
I’m being silly, of course, because all of this is silly. LCD instrument clusters offer so much possibility, and yet so little has really been done to actually re-think what an instrument cluster should be, with most automakers just adding fancy futuro-seeming blue grids behind floating numbers that cast slight reflections instead of really coming up with some new attempts to convey information as effectively as possible.
At least there’s been movement away from rampant skeuomorphism, when everyone was just rendering realistic-looking analog gauges on LCD screens, a charming if faintly ridiculous thing to do.
Interestingly, the limitations of the earliest digital instrument clusters, which were mostly seven-segment numbers and shaped elements that could be illuminated, caused more creativity of design, because automakers literally could not recreate analog gauges. They had to try some new ideas, and they definitely did just that:
I’m not saying these approaches were always successful, but at least they were trying something. The potential for novel instrument designs and customizations is nearly limitless, and all that most modern cars let you do is shove four speedometers into the display? That’s absurd, and these systems should be smarter than that.
A number of years ago I made some sketches of possible new approaches to instrument cluster design:
I’m not saying these are perfect either, but at least I was trying some new-ish ideas. Why aren’t carmakers even doing basic things, like displaying the full description of OBD codes when a check engine light is on, or letting owners have real customization tools, like letting them drag and drop and resize instruments of their own choosing in whatever arrangement they like?
The drag-and-dropping could be done on the center stack screen, which is almost always a touch screen, and then the chosen arrangement can be sent to the instrument cluster. Why hasn’t this happened already? It feels so obvious!
Being able to customize an instrument cluster to display four speedometers is funny, but it’s also a good reminder that carmakers are not exactly putting that much effort into the information design and UX of crucial components like these. There’s shockingly little innovation happening here, and I for one would love to see more experimentation.
Besides, it’s software! Companies could hedge their bets by including some traditional layouts and designs along with bolder ones with new ideas. There’s nothing to lose here!
Until then, we’ll just have to make do with four speedometers when it comes to innovation.
Let Me Explain What’s Mildly Interesting About My Beetle’s Instrument Cluster: Cold Start
Why The Oil Warning Light Looks Like It Should Release A Genie
Attention Car UX Designers: Explain To Me Why Touchscreen HVAC Vent Controls Aren’t Idiotic, Please
I’d love to see better display around peak efficiency and peak performance feedback for the driver.
You would love the Prius. It has several alternate displays.
Or you could get a vacuum gauge, remember those?
U-haul has those in their trucks, pretty nifty
Jason you address a crucial issue, that we have all these screens but no innovation. Then you casually drop in skeuomorphism into our daily lives. Brilliant. I recently rode in a new Mustang. The skeuomorphic options for “classic” gauges were a gimmick and looked like cheap crap. What’s the point of having a car with 5 different instrument cluster options when they all suck?
Separate speedometers based on different inputs – wheel revolutions, GPS, LIDAR/sonar, etc could be useful as a reality check.
I’d also like to see more prominent speed limit info displayed, especially reflecting local laws and conditions. Are you in California on a roadway with a strictly enforced absolute speed limit and much lower speed limits for towing? A Texas roadway with a more flexible posted speed limit? A road with a basic speed limit?
How about a display of the speeds you need to be at to catch ALL the greens?
“California on a roadway with a strictly enforced absolute speed limit” you jest. where I live traffic settles in at about 85 mph, just under 90 in the carpool/toll lane. Except when it’s stopped.
For a while in the late 70s – 80s Manhattan stop lights were timed for 65 mph on the major avenues.
Yeah it’s YMMV depending on what mood Johnny Law is in or if the local coffers need a boost.
The point is California law does not technically allow wriggle room so if Officer Friendly is in an unforgiving mood your SOL. Texas law OTOH does allow for wriggle room but the burden of proof is on you to show it was safe.
“For a while in the late 70s – 80s Manhattan stop lights were timed for 65 mph on the major avenues.”
Sweden had a great system in the early 80s with digital speed signs posted after each light to tell you what speed to go to catch the next green. Do it right and it was smooth sailing the whole way through.
Unfortunately adaptive traffic signals killed that system (and probably the one in Manhatten too) but its being resurrected now with road to vehicle communication so the dash displays the ideal speed in real time.
Yes, but driving 65 miles an hour in Manhattan even in the middle of the night is not that great an idea aside from being I think 30 miles an hour over the speed limit at that time. It’s gotten less now, but there were also foot deep holes in the pavement randomly distributed and a lot of big bumps from subway construction projects. There is a particularly large bump on sixth Avenue in the 30s it would send cars a foot into the air if they were fast enough, and I went and saw a stretch limo get broken in half. NYC in the 70s, “fun city”
Not sure if it is still the case but in the 80’s and 90’s highway 65 through Mason City, IA had their lights set up so going the speed limit you would hit every light on green. My aunt and uncle would mess with my cousins and I making us think they were controlling the lights as we rolled up not braking for a red light that would change just in time for us. We caught on eventually but we only visited a few times a year so it probably took longer than it should have.
Makes me curious though. Can you switch them all off, or select different views so you don’t see the speed at all? Or is this a regulatory thing that will intervene with the UX?
You inspired me to go check, and as far as I can tell, in the UK the only gauge that you must have is the speedo, which has to be always visible by the driver. (and must be marked at least every 20mph if it’s a dial, among other things).
There doesn’t seem to be any regulations about any other gauges or displays, which somewhat surprises me.
(src https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6703b785a31f45a9c765f1d6/individual-vehicle-approval-inspection-manual-passenger-vehicles.pdf)
I always fear a car maker will put a speedometer right in front of the passenger. “Gee, Honey! Look how fast you’re driving! Good for you!”
All time limos, 1930s for example, had a speedometer in the backseat
I think they already have. A bunch of brands have passenger screens now that can display various information about the car. I have to believe speed is one of them.
The only way these are superior to physical gauges is if you can skin them like Winamp. A low-res reproduction of an analog gauge completely misses the plot.
Give me theme packs so I can make my cluster look like my gramps’ Citroen or a Star Trek console or a Sting Ray. I’d even pay for those.
Llama approved
Wouldn’t it whip ass, though, for real? Pimp my gauges! The manufacturer could provide an SDK with very strict parameters for what is and isn’t allowed (e.g relative size of elements, color contrasts, etc) and designers could go ham without breaking the law.
I think one Ford vehicle has a limited version of this. Maybe the mustang, and only with a couple of factory skins? More car makers should offer this.
I like the ones (I think most commonly seen in VWs/Audis) that show your Google maps view between the speed and rev readout. That would be handy instead of having to glance down and left all the time. Everything else I’ve seen so far on digital instrument displays I’m fairly indifferent to.
In terms of usability I tend to default to reading a digital speed readout if it’s available – my Ford Territory offers both via an analogue gauge cluster with a small B&W TFT screen in the middle and I don’t often look at the analogue readout.
My Toyota Crown only has the analogue cluster (even though it features a pretty high-res cookout TFT screen in the middle, it doesn’t show speed), but I don’t really mind, perhaps because it’s actually a very clear dial with more tick marks making it much easier to read than the Territory’s.
In terms of readability HUDs trump all though. I miss the HUD from our now-sold Mazda3.
I do think people will start missing gauge clusters for the way they look. A lot of all-digital car interiors these days look pretty boring and samey – especially when they’re off and the screens are blank.
Re the Polaris:
Who TF approved those large digits displaying MPH and D?!?? They are the LCD equivalent of curdled milk mixed with anxiety. I am going to have nightmares about them tonight.
I’ll continue to ignore all of them and instead rely on the heads up displays on both of my cars. The best speedometer stays in your line of sight, be it through HUD or a high-mounted digital speedo like the 8th/9th gen Civic (loved it on mine!) and the current Prius.
My two BMWs do have the ability to have a single analog and a single digital speedometer display. Because I coded in the ability for the little 2-line display in the instrument panel to display uncorrected digital speed. Out of the box you get just the analog speedo. The digital one is coded to be accurate. I actually prefer the analog speedo to be :”corrected” in BMW-speak – means it reads about 4mph high at highway speeds. Gives me a bit of margin on speeding tickets since I tend not to think about it. You can code that out too.
My Mercedes has both out of the box, and both are accurate. I never use the digital speed display in either one. I only did the coding on the BMW because it’s a nice easy first thing to try when you start messing around with coding. My other cars only have digital displays for the radio station, and good old-fashioned 0-9 plus a dot multi-segment LCDs at that.
Not displaying codes is a sop to dealer service departments, but a lot of Chryslers used to be able to display OBD codes in the digital odometer display.
That said, given the ubiquitous giant displays of today, displaying fault code information should be a *requirement*. Of course, they would want to make it a subscription.
I’m convinced all critical driving data and alarms like speed etc. should be transmitted in real time to your cellphone since that’s all anybody is looking at anyway.
I think it would be fun to pull out my phone at parties to show people my CEL or low blinker fluid reminder.
I proudly exhibit my fleshy, round, voluptuous and juicy Torque Pro dash gauges on my phone at every party I go to. It’s always an instant success.
The Elantra N and Kona N have a configurable performance monitor feature on the infotainment screen. You can display G force, temperatures, boost, power, a bar graph for tach, and even a track map. You should be able to do that for the gauge cluster, too–on any car with a screen for a dash.
(Choir: Lovely screens! Wonderful screens!)
Waitress:
Shut Up! Bloody Vikings!
You can’t have egg, bacon, screen and sausage without the screen
Wife:
I don’t like screens!
Sshh, dear, don’t cause a fuss. I’ll have your speedo. I love ‘em. I’m having speedo speedo speedo speedo speedo speedo speedo tach speedo speedo speedo and speedo!
Without that fifth speedometer Jason went “Wee Wee Wee” all the way home.
In my Camaro: The analog speedometer, the center screen can have a digital readout, the head up display has a speedometer, then if I opened google maps on CarPlay it has another digital speed readout, so up to 4 at one time all within my view
They should be focusing on putting that many horn buttons in there, you can never find the horn when you’re angry
The beep horn is that shiny ring just a finger flick away, a hold of the finger will turn “beep” to “Blaaat” . The full on freight train I am traveling so much faster than you in a car with brakes that faded in 1973 and if you do not get out of the way now horn is the one in the middle of the steering wheel, next to the advance / retard and throttle levers.
Also the foot operated Klaxon. Yes two speedometers, one for those in the back so they can understand why the driver is not going fast enough.
+ extra horn fluid reservoirs
I can have an analog and digital speedo on my Leaf at the same time, plus a third GPS digital speedo on Google Maps/Waze.
I want a heads-up display that mimics the star-streaking effect of going to light speed in the Millennium Falcon whenever I mash the throttle.
I want the Forza style telemetry so I can pretend to understand it in real life just like in the game.
How am I supposed to hit a clean apex if I can’t even know if my tires are 204° or 208°?
The engineers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they never stopped to think if they should.
Engineers wouldn’t start working on it without a written product definition with measurable targets defining success.
We like rules, unlike those science maniacs.
We live in very dark times, gauge-wise.
We are pretty much smack dab in the middle of the 80’s digital crazy, except when they did it back then – digital gauges were actually more expensive to build now and were supposed to be cool, while nowadays digital is presented as cool and cheaper.
Round gauges with needles (digital or analog gauges, real or on a screen, doesn’t matter) are not born out of a happy coincidence or because someone felt like it. They are the most intuitive to use, and simply need to be glanced at, not looked at.
If a gauge can’t be read in the peripheral vision (not in a “this is the precise value” way but in a binary “Things are ok/things are out of whack way“) – it’s mostly useless.
A cluster of gauges, no matter how many, with all needles staying in a similar position when values are within spec, allows the outliers to be caught at a glance. They are the ones with the needle that is not pointing in the same direction.
Gauges nowadays should be divided in:
Boy, I hope this insanity stops at some point.
If I was standing next to you, and not very weak, I would put you on my shoulders and walk you around the town square while you read this out loud, over and over again.
Way north of 250lbs, but I’ll read very, very loud.
You two are going to be the greatest friends ever. I find this thrilling, not sure why.
And he just revealed in a different thread that he live(s)(d) in the village next to mine…
OMG it was meant to be!
I wish to subscribe to your newsletter just to find out how you feel about 20 band graphic equalizers and helpful robotic voice reminders that my door has somehow turned into a jar.
Is it wrong I miss the bouncing bars?
The cassette says “hiss”. I mean “muted hiss”. I have the Dolby.
I had a deck with Dolby C and DBX, so no hiss – but also the dynamic range of the average K-Pop star.
Bad experience with editing posts (it all gets compressed in one long sentence), so – I don’t hate the 80’s dash experiments. They were extravagant, they were of course ridiculously ugly, but they were honest.
They required a genuine effort, an investment, they were more expensive to build and more complex than the simple mechanical equivalents they were meant to replace.
What barfs me up with the current crop is its laziness, and most of all – the cheapness of slapping a screen, presenting it as something better, and charging more for it.
You and me both. It’s really quite offensive.
I will give credit where credit is due – at least Musk was honest about going all-in on the giant screen because it was cheaper. But starting this trend is yet one more reason for me to despise the man.
If the equalizers were mechanical sliders – all good. I could set them up just by feeling them.
The jar-jar-ding door is something I missed on entirely indeed, I was in a non-anglophone country back then and the only talking car I had any talks with was a friend’s Renault 25.
https://youtu.be/5Azn8ECNRnk
Right on about BMW. How a company that built the absolute perfection that was e28-e39 instrument panels and user interfaces can do what they are doing today is proof that there is some serious shit being poured into the water in Munich. Thier latest concepts show some hope for the outsides, but the insides just keep getting worse and worse.
Sooo dead to me now.
It’s been California and not Munich ever since the banglebutt I believe. But basically – obnoxious entitled kids with tablets, stepping on the shoulders of giants.
It’s forty and fifty year olds who’ve had the soul of creativity beaten out of them after countless arguments with other departments. There’s only so many times you can fight the sentence “It’s not dynamic enough” before you just throw random shapes into Adobe Illustrator and then just send the .zip file over to be reviewed.
BMW actually had amazing exterior design in the pre-beaver teeth decade. Not sure what that would be – 2012-ish to 2020-ish ? Some of the best designs came then.
It’s on the interior that they messed up since they went tablets glued on the dash style. Not sure if those were also a Domagoj Dukec (beaver tooth man) idea.
Luckily he’s going to uglify RR now, which I don’t give two figs about.
The bosses that sign off on this crap are still very much in the four towers in Munich. Of course, at this point all they see is the cost savings.
And of course, the average cellphone addicted idiot does think it’s cool.
“you kids get off my damned lawn”
But as I have said, they are doing me a favor by completely removing any need of may giving them $50K+ at a time ever again.
I’m utterly with you on analog displays with aligning needles.
I’d even like the speedo to be continuously updated with the current speed limit at 12 o’clock. Needle to the left? Speed up, needle to the right? Slow down. Gauge not set to have increasing value in the clockwise direction? Burn the factory and home of the manufacture to the ground.
I do like a digital speed display so I can set cruise/limit to precisely whatever speed it is won’t get me a ticket. It’s only any good for reading a static value though.
I think my Wrangler’s optional extra (digital) speedometer would come in handy if I needed to see my speed in km/hr, especially since the built-in gauge doesn’t have the second set of hash marks like the Grand Cherokee. I do like being able to customize the instrument cluster in any vehicle, especially if Android Auto is taking up the entire touchscreen and I can’t tell what’s playing on the stereo.
If car manufacturers are letting us customize displays a bit, I wouldn’t mind some extra color schemes. Many aftermarket head units offer this; it’s fun! (Or you can be a boring, mature adult and select the color that best matches your existing dashboard lights.)
These days I find I cannot drive anywhere without a readout telling me what the relative humidity is outside or how many people are currently logged into instacrap.
Why aren’t they allowing people to re-gauge willy-nilly? There might be federal requirements for minimum gauge size (in square inches) for visibility reasons. I was reading my state’s vehicle safety inspection regulations and was a little surprised to see minimum required areas called out for things like brake lights and mirrors.
OTOH I must say en-gauge-ing* the interior is much easier when there is no need for a bulky dash-mounted mechanism fed by a mechanical cable and a gear drive situated who-knows-where on the vehicle but definitely within 3-5ft of the gauge.
*also called Picarding
Mechanically driven speedometers have been the exception for decades now. Simple transponder to an electrically driven gauge – or these days, the feed from the wheel speed sensor that is there anyway for the ABS. Even in the ’80s, few cars that weren’t holdovers from the 70’s had mechanically driven speedometers.
Actually cheap shit economy cars still had transmission sourced mechanical cable-connected speedometers into the early ’90s (most because they first started being built in the early ’80s). For example the Cavalier/Sunbird were like that until their 1995 redesigns. And the Mustang kept one until 2004!
There are always exceptions, but those were holdovers. The vast majority had long since gone away from mechanical by then.