I’m going to come out and say it: if you’re buying a car because it has the most advanced software or assisted driving features or the biggest touch screen or the best wifi or whatever, you’re doing it wrong. To put it as delicately as possible, you’re being a drooling simpleton being bent over and brutally mistreated by pretty much every automaker. But don’t feel too bad, because it’s not entirely your fault; the whole way we approach tech in cars is kind of stupid, and we should rethink it all.
The fundamental problem is this: electronic technology advances far too rapidly to be something that gets permanently integrated into a car that you may want to own for more than, say, five years or so. There’s nothing that ages an otherwise perfectly-fine car more dramatically than integrated technology that was cutting-edge when the car was new.
Don’t believe me? Look at the center-stack display/infotainment system from this 2010 Maybach Zeppelin, a car that cost almost $500,000 when new:
(Photo: Maybach/Mercedes-Benz)
At the time, this was hot shit, the bleeding-edge of automotive tech at the time. Today, the crappiest Mitsubishi Mirage has a display with far better resolution than this gleaming chariot of the elite. And that was only 15 years ago; the lifespan of a car like a Maybach should be far, far longer than that! Is it not a precision engineered machine? Is it not an ultimate expression of driving comfort, luxury, and refinement?
And yet, when almost anyone gets into this thing, one of the first things they’ll notice is how embarrassingly backwards the tech inside is. That doesn’t seem fair, right? If we look at a Maybach from close to century ago, they don’t suffer from this issue. Look at the dash of this 1933 Maybach DS-8 Zeppelin:
(Photo: Bonham’s)
So what’s different here? It’s not like this car is free of technology; it is technology. But it’s a different sort of technology, and, more importantly, the intent of the technology is different.
(Photo: Bonham’s)
Of course, the dashboard here is full of dials and gauges; this car was extremely well-instrumented for its era. But the intent of all of this instrumentation wasn’t to showcase the absolute latest tech; it was just the application of the best available tools for the job. These are not the sorts of machines that change and advance dramatically. A good mechanical speedometer or tachometer or temperature gauge is still a good speedometer or tachometer or temperature gauge eight decades later. The fundamental technology hasn’t changed, and as a result, the instruments themselves can wear their age with pride, secure in their timelessness.
There’s a reason why absurdly expensive cars like the Bugatti Chiron decided against having any sort of center-stack screen:
(Photo: Bugatti)
Sure, I have my issues with cars like these Bugattis, but I do think they understood this fundamental concept: technology can date a car deeply. And rarely well.
There are some exceptions to this rule: some kinds of extremely-advanced tech can age well, or at least interestingly, not from a perspective of usability, but from a novelty perspective. This really only works if something is among the first of its kind, like the CRT touchscreens in 1980s Buicks:
(Photo: GM)
…or perhaps the CRT dashboard instruments of the Aston Martin Lagonda:
What these systems have in common is interesting hardware that was way ahead of its time. Neither would be great in a daily driver perspective, but from a historical interest perspective, they’re fascinating. If they work. Which, especially in the case of the Lagonda, is wildly unlikely.
Now, I’m no luddite. I’m under no illusion that we should be banning modern digital tech in cars, because that would be idiotic, and no one wants that. But what I am suggesting is that all modern tech in cars, anything that is likely to rapidly advance over the years, needs to be easily and readily replaceable, because the whole experience of an otherwise great car can be ruined by outdated technology that just taints everything.
And that means we need industry-wide standards. We had them once – the DIN and double-DIN standards for head units was once very effective, and there was – and still is – a thriving aftermarket for new head units that can quite easily bring old cars into modernity with greater ease than new ones.
For example, you can upgrade a 2002 Toyota Corolla to have modern tech with the latest version of Apple CarPlay or Android Auto far cheaper and easier than you can, say, a 2022 Toyota Prius Prime. Here’s a double-din unit that’ll drop into a Corolla for about $200, giving the car the ability to interface with a standard and devices that weren’t even introduced to the world, in their earliest forms, for a solid five years after the car was sold.
If you wanted to upgrade your 2022 Prius, if you had one that, say, didn’t have CarPlay or Android Auto, you can either tack on a clunky extra screen to just give you that, or you could find a used OEM entire center stack for about $1,600 and replace the whole middle of your dash. There’s no upgraded versions for new tech, this is just the optional stock one from Toyota.
Here’s what I think should happen, in an ideal world: all the major carmakers would agree on a set of car tech standards, ones that define both physical dimensions and connector standards. If carmakers want to have HVAC controls on screens or other functionality, no matter how insipid, they need to agree on standards to control those.
If you spend a crapload of money on a car you really like, it’s ridiculous that it should be stuck with rapidly-aging display and infotainment hardware. At some point fairly quickly into your car’s life, your phone, which many people upgrade every few years, will significantly eclipse your car, technology-wise.
This is not always something that can be fixed with exciting OTA software updates; sometimes you need new display and computing hardware. Remember how Tesla had to upgrade the internal computers in many customers’ cars so they could run the latest versions of their FSD driver-assist software? This could have been made vastly easier if these cars adhered to some sort of car-tech standards that were designed for easy upgradability.
I realize there will be some sacrifices in design and packaging if everything must meet universal standards of some sort. Also, I don’t care. It’s not like any carmaker has made such fascinating center-stack display designs that the world will be impoverished for their loss. I would much rather be able to have a crapton of options to replace the clunky old system in my otherwise-fine car with something new.
Of course, carmakers will not like this idea at all; they’re generally loath to standards of any sort, and technically, it’s not a trivial task: there needs to be connector standards, we need to know what signals and inputs can be read, from cameras to temperature sensors to radar units. Then there’s outputs, like being able to control servo motors for vent direction (if so equipped) or fan speed or other hardware. There’s a lot!
Here’s the overall point, though: standards are good! A thriving aftermarket is good! We shouldn’t let what we had in the rapidly-declining DIN/Double-DIN standard days go away. It’s madness that we spend so much money on a car and find ourselves locked into the tech that was current when the car was new.
It’d be like buying a house with a built-in television and game console, and that’s just what you’re stuck with as long as you own the house. Would you want that? Stuck playing your Sega Master System on a 15″ Sony Trinitron in 2025? I mean, I have a basement full of old Ataris and similar archaic stuff, but that’s by choice.
We deserve better from our cars. I just wish I knew how to make this happen.
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As a Mercedes-Benz owner with the same craptastic COMAND system as that Maybach – mine was outdated when it was new in 2009. The fact that it was being sold in 2010 in a car 9X the price is just ridiculous.
Porsche is the one manufacturer who produces replacement head units that can be used to upgrade older models:
https://www.suncoastparts.com/product/SKUCLASSIC.html
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/porsche-navigation-radio-for-classic-sports-cars/
It’s not just aesthetically outdated and maybe functionally (oh no, I can’t update it to get the latest emojis and the data gathering isn’t AI!), but life span. What’s the cost to change out one of these old displays and who’s going to make them in the future when there are so many different ones they’d have to cover? With DIN standard, just rip it out and swap it. So many damn companies just shove a display up in the air, anyway, so is it really any worse to have it sticking out the front and up from a DIN standard unit? At this point, all the infotainment should be is a DIN standard drawer with a display for a larger phone interface and maybe a slot like an old cassette player to insert your phone into to charge it while the infotainment is running off the phone’s OS. The other good thing is that it can be completely isolated from the rest of the car, precluding security issues and necessitating actual physical controls for vehicle operations instead of them running through the stupid touchscreen. Of course, that will never happen because that means the OEMs lose their revenue from data gathering and new sales after the expensive failures of these systems that are sometimes sole interfaces to use standard operating features like climate control push people into newer vehicles earlier than they otherwise would. That would also mean that their cars would have to be released with finalized software that just works like they used to be, which is an apparently impossible ask nowadays.
The double din standard is still fairly common in Japan, where a lot of cars (especially in the kei class) sell without head units – specifically so people can install their own. It’d be cool to see this come back once the fad of controlling HVAC via the infotainment screen dies a well-deserved death.
On my car (2013 Crown) a local(ish) outfit has figured out how to jack into the video feed of the main screen on the centre stack, taking it over with a long press of the “hang up” button on the steering wheel to display Android Auto/Apple Carplay. It works reasonably well – and you can switch back to the standard infotainment system if you need to adjust any settings (which is not often, the HVAC is controlled by a separate touchscreen below the main one – a system that I actually think is a better compromise than jamming everything into the one screen).
A downside is the screen is definitely not as sharp and contrasty as modern displays, but at least I get basically all the functionally I was missing from a 2020+ car.
I just backdated my sealed beams to candlesticks.
I put a double din Pioneer in my Astro van and my 95 Riviera, man, what a fantastic upgrade. Waze is the best nav software I’ve ever used, phone/music integration, it’s all just fantastic. The Riv turned out even better, because originally it had a 1.5DIN radio/cassette, and then lower in the dash it had a single disc CD player in a 1DIN slot, so during the upgrade I replaced the CD player with a storage pocket. So now I have a better, modern deck, AND more storage! 🙂
I do think that cars could ‘future proof’ tech if they had a nice resolution touch screen, and just made sure the I/O for that screen was a separate component that could eventually be replaced with whatever we use for phones decades from now. Just keep the HVAC and all the other car features OFF that screen. Screen should be for nav/music/coms only.
But yeah, DIN/Double DIN is awesome. Bring it back. It’s one of the reasons I don’t want a new car at all.
My non-iDrive BMWs are aging like fine wine. No BS, nothing I don’t need in them to enjoy the drive. The relatively limited by modern standards little screen and Comand system in my Mercedes is “OK”, but it just doesn’t add much to the party. It has NAV, but I rarely use it – my phone does it better. So I simply plan to avoid “modern” cars entirely. I very much doubt I will buy another car much newer than my 2011 BMWs in my remaining driving days. I have one car that is 51 years old already.
The CIC-era iDrive did a pretty good job of balancing functionality and relative simplicity and doesn’t rely on gawd-awful touchscreens (disclaimer: I have CIC in my 2010 BMW and enjoy its ease-of-use for playing music, nav, or making phone calls). However, I definitely don’t like newer ‘infotainment’ stacks in modern cars.
I have a 2006 XJ8, and it has no screens at all, save for a small LCD readout on the radio and HVAC stack. I’ve been wanting to upgrade this car to a later model, something say maybe around 2013ish, but when I look at the XJs of that period, the screen looks so janky, at least compared to what we’re used to today. So this viewpoint makes a lot of sense to me.
It’s a thinly veiled call to just do away with the screens altogether of course, which I can also get behind.
The optional X350 screen setup in my ’04 XJ is still fairly usable, even these days, in spite of low-res graphics and dramatically outdated maps for the navigation. What helps is that one isn’t reliant on the touchscreen to do most of the car’s functions, be it HVAC or entertainment; at the same time, the screen’s options are pretty clear/simple and easily accessed via actual buttons, etc.
I like to think I can be a drooling simpleton without wanting, or having, any of those things, thank you.
I have often had the same thought. I think the solution is DIN (or double, whatever) infotainment holes that can be swapped out with aftermarket units.
You know, kind of like it was in the 90’s when all factory-installed radios were garbage and tossed in the garbage almost immediately after purchase. I feel like factory radios have come a long way and are perfectly functional these days, but a standard mounting space would go a long way to making sure these cars can be used after the warranty period expires.
This means the radio should not be tied in to other non-‘infotainment’ functions of the vehicle, which should be obvious anyway. I’m pretty sure my 1998 Civic had the dome light connected to the radio for some reason, requiring a work-around of some sort to keep the light when going to an aftermarket radio. Also remember that the standard radio at that time sounded terrible and didn’t even have a CD player so it was absolutely going to be replaced by almost all buyers.
❤️
The Maybach 57 and 62 were not the bleeding-edge of tech when they were new. In the first place, they debuted during the W220 era of the S-Class, but were on an evolution of the prior (overbuilt) W140 S-Class structure that Daimler-Benz dubbed W240. But their electrical architecture was W220-based. And that meant a lot of their engineering dated back to the 90s. It also meant they were roundly outmoded by the W221 S-Class, just as soon as it debuted in calendar-year 2006. Not to mention the XF40 LS (CY2006), F01/02 7 Series (CY2008), D4 A8 (CY2009) and X351 XJ (CY2009).
In fact, this is generally an issue with exotic luxury or performance cars. They have such long production schedules that they end up looking pretty outdated compared to lesser, more-mass-produced models from within even their respective corporate structures. They are scarcely in-sync to the latest and greatest from whichever corporation to which they belong, other than when they debut.
The Phantom VII was the first Rolls-Royce model built after the brand’s rebirth under BMW, and debuted (along with the E65 7 Series) with the earliest “M-ASK” version of iDrive, known retroactively as iDrive 1. It kept on using that same version until its Series II update in CY2012, by which time the BMW models were entering iDrive 4.
It’s just about the same story for the Continental GT and Flying Spur, whose CY2002 era tech was shared with the Phaeton and persisted in the Phaeton until CY2009 and the Bentleys until CY2011.
The Aventador’s infotainment was based loosely on Audi’s MMI 2G system, which was from the late aughts, and lasted until that car’s discontinuation in CY2022.
The Aston Martin models would probably still be running some bastardization of the P2 Volvo electrical architecture—or else some hastily-developed, third-tier-supplier, Android-tablet-based goofiness—if Mercedes-AMG hadn’t be come involved and donated some fresher tech, and even then, they’re typically behind what Mercedes is doing.
Fortunately, these brands are able to rely on other aspects of their cars’ experience to make sales, and for good reasons. Inhale the sumptuous leather of a Rolls-Royce or bury your foot in the skinny pedal of a Lamborghini, and then tell me you care that the graphics are dated and the Bluetooth doesn’t hold a candle to that of a Corolla.
That said, apart from truly timeless vehicles like Bugattis or fashionably anachronistic ones like Morgans…automakers from Ford to Ferrari show no signs of relenting when it comes to in-dash tech; it represents too much opportunity for profit and information gathering for them to just cede the whole experience to Apple or Google. Still, careful design can mean that a car that’s certainly outdated doesn’t offensively look it. To me, the 2010 Maybach in your article isn’t terrible. It’s kind of of-its-era, and they didn’t do anything especially kitschy with the graphics or interface. Some of these cars age more gracefully than others. Things like flat UI and minimizing skeuomorphism really help to keep a car looking less offensive as it ages.
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I see a similar issue with the design of a car overall aging horribly, and the biggest offenders are (wait for it…) Hyundai and Kia. They introduce these drastic redesigns that look really expressive when they’re new, but they make the prior examples of their respective lines look instantly dated…and then they themselves become pretty passé within five to six years. Take a look at the 2011 Sonata, one of the first examples of breakout design from Hyundai. Back then, it seemed like a pleasant, democratized implementation of a four-door luxury coupe…a convincing lineup of “CLS-Classes for the Masses,” if you will. Today, it looks like a…knockoff of a twenty-year-old luxury car that itself hasn’t aged well. The current Santa Fe, Sportage, Palisade and Kona are going to look pretty stupid by about 2030.
High five for “sumptuous leather” jinx! I actually was probably editing passé out of my post right when you were typing it, too.
This place is tops.
Eggsalad said what I want. Just a retractable touchscreen for Carplay and steering wheel controls to manage infotainment. HVAC/wiper/lights/drivetrain controls should be ergonomically designed with size and location that don’t require me taking my eyes off the road.
I think the take is outdated. Look at a 10 year old desktop PC vs a new one. They run the same web browser, same-ish apps, but mostly the same web pages. Nobody cares anymore. You don’t upgrade PCs, you just replace them when they break. [The 0.01% of gamers excluded.]
Car computing will get to a plateau. As soon as the late MS-DOS 6.1 era of touchscreens pass us by, we’ll just note how the computer in the old car is a bit slower. Once they hit today – or 10 years ago – equivalent PC quality, they won’t feel old anymore. Outside of theming, special apps, etc. But those will be quaint instead of painful.
As for standards in upgrading computers, man, which one? Each car has what, a half dozen of them, easy? ECU, body controller, Infotainment(s), another for a digital dash, one for the in-vehicle network? What’s appropriate and actually useful here?
Wtf are you talking about? Tons of people upgrade their PCs. Also there are lots of programs that won’t work on old computers. Sorry but that is a bad take.
They really don’t, except gamers. I’m a computer engineer, and the computers I used the most in my personal life were getting on towards 10 years old when I replaced them last year. Dual-core i5s and entirely adequate for casual web and office app use. The only reason I bought a couple of newer laptops is that I wanted *official* Windows 11 compatibility rather than side-loaded “compatibility” that MS could turn off at any time they feel like it. That’s a big reason people are PISSED about Win11 – there are millions of entirely adequate machines that are arbitrarily being locked out of the upgrade. I get why MS is doing it, the security advantages of TPM, Secure Boot, and more modern CPUs are real, but I get the outrage too. Even my “gaming rig” (only game I play is MS Flight Simultor) that is going on three years old is what it is and I have no intention of replacing it or upgrading it anytime soon. But it was also an absolute unit when I built it. It will still be a fast computer five years from now.
Even at work, I get a new work laptop every 4-5 years and they are inevitably still perfectly fine – they just are no longer under support, so we replace them. If I have a drive or something fail while I am in the field, we want that four-hour replacement wherever I am. Hilariously, the highest end stuff I work with only requires running Putty from my laptop – I am consoling in to some honking nVidia GPU server. Most people are not developers building code or running CAD on their machines.
– Cars are generally orders of magnitude more expensive than PCs.
– Many people use mobile phones as their primary computing platform, which are much more frequently upgraded than cars. Source: compare the analytics data from any given website with the average age of cars. No matter how you slice it demographically – age, location, income – the phones will be newer than the cars at least 95% of the time.
– We haven’t hit that plateau. Look at that shit ass Maybach Zeppelin screen. Now it’s outclassed by a Mitsubishi Mirage or, worst case, a phone on a bracket.
– As to which computer, now you’re just being dense. It’s clear that Torch is not calling for anyone to tear out the CAN bus because it’s dating our cars, or that ECUs from 2014 are uselessly superannuated. He’s talking about the big, fuckugly, tech-obsessed infotainment screens that fixed what could be timeless, or at least standards-compliant and maintainable, as ghastly totems sunk irrevocably into a half-assed dash. Nothing says $500,000 car with sumptuous leather, real wood, gold inlays and who knows what other things like a piping hot 720×480 display showing you jangled station metadata from FM radios while not even supporting the audio profiles that finally let Bluetooth not sound like having your music shouted at you down a well.
The problem is every OEM is trying to do their own OS with their own features
Unfortunately the marketing folks are accurately telling management new tech is what buyers want, so the need to complete supercedes the sensibility of standardization. The cost savings could be massive, but it might cost some sales which is viewed as the greater priority.
Crapton. 🙂
The reality is that the vast majority of car buyers don’t think too much about the future. Many of them are focused on the new whiz-bang technology and don’t care about how well it will age partly because they’ll be into some other newer car in 5 years, and the dated tech in the outgoing car will not be their problem. Blame the buyers, blame the sellers. I stopped buying new cars a long time ago and I really dislike the technology woven into cars today.
Instead of connecting your phone to your car via Bluetooth, it should be the other way around. Your phone always has the latest tech, so let the car communicate with your phone all of the car’s functions that wind up on the ICE screen.
The problem is the tech in cars is already old and there is no way they are going to make it compatible with every new phone. When I install new access points sometimes old devices cannot use them. The same thing will happen with cars. All they need to do is make a standard so we can replace the head unit like old cars but that is never going to happen.
The screen still ages like milk though. Plus, Bluetooth gets updates both as a protocol and in the profiles it supports, so someone has to bite the bullet with respect to upgradability. But, broadly, I agree, and I think that’s why so many people get so up in arms about CarPlay and Android Auto: it’s as close as they’re going to get to their car getting out of the way.
Unrelated, but I every time I see you pop up I get a craving for egg salad. Maybe not while I’m sweating out the back half of a flu, though…
Most BT seems to be backward compatible, so even if your car is sending BT2.x, your phone with BT4 should receive it. Nothing is perfect, cars last longer than phones.
And enjoy your sandwich 🙂
Exactly! Give me a port and a holder, and I will bring my own infotainment system. Everything else can be regular buttons.