I then started looking at existing cars with dashboards, what they display and what they allow you to control:
Tesla have used their touchscreen to reimagine how controls that are traditionally physical buttons can be controlled by a screen instead. This is settings such as adjusting the cabin heating, air conditioning or turning on the headlights as well as media, navigation and entertainment systems.
Below is an image of a touchscreen inside to a Tesla model S. This was interesting to look at as you can see how the main screen of it is displayed and laid out with the map taking up over 2/3 of the screen and the other third being taken up by the media player such as music choices. Along the top is the status bar, this informs you of the time, allows you to look or unlock the doors or inform you when the car is connected to wifi or cellular. Along the bottom of the touchscreen is a navigation bar, this allows you to do things such as activate the drive mode strip that assists you when parking or reversing, accessing climate controls which can also be split so the passenger and driver can have different preferences, a display of recently used apps and access to the media player and volume control.
Mercedes have chosen to use a large 12.8 inch touchscreen placed in between the driver and passenger seat. This new touchscreen for Mercedes has eliminated the use of physical climate control buttons and instead have moved to the climate being altered through a running band along the bottom of the touchscreen. This model also has up to three screens in the back of the car which runs the exact same software as the screens at the front of the car which is different to other car manufacturers who have a partial system in the back seat allowing the backseat drivers to simply run the media and entertainment systems only. A feature I quite like is the fact that backseat passengers can enter information such as the destination address, their preferred radio station or music choice through the touchscreens in the back and send the information to the touchscreens in the front where it can be changed.
Another feature I think is really cool and could definitely be applied to my autonomous vehicle touchscreen design is the use of finger scanning. Mercedes are currently using it in their cars as a way of creating personalisation to their drivers, by pre-setting their preferences and scanning their finger as they get in, the car automatically changes to their preferences such as seat position, music taste etc. However this only applies to the drivers seat so it would be cool to implement this through the touchscreen in the autonomous vehicles for passengers.
Like the BMW brand, the BMW cars are known for the finest and most luxurious look and quality and the BMW i7 is no outlier of this. The touchscreens BMW used for this car are more focus on the passengers rather than the drivers controls as it is in the form of a 8K 31 inch cinema style theatre screen which spreads across the back seats. It allows the passengers total access to control things such as the climate, the sound and entertainment systems, seat warming etc. However this theatre screen may be useful for passengers wanting to host streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon prime but it is slightly impractical interaction wise as it is hung overhead and requires the use of door panel control screens to help control and interact with it. As well as that the screen is quite a funny size as it has to fold up into the roof, this means only specific videos are going to fit the whole screen and anything else is going to end up having black bordering round it.
Cadillac Celestiq
Porsche Taycan
Ford Mustang Mach-E
Lexus RX 350