My previous car had its infotainment system reboot several times while I was on the expressway. The idea of my instrument panel, or other more critical systems, crashing and rebooting while driving terrifies me.
The infotainment is not connected to the ECU and other car control electronics. At least not on my Tesla nor my F150 Lightning. You can reboot them to your hearts content while driving down the road.
Yes, but it is still rather unnerving when part of the car goes dark. It also makes me question the QA on this stuff. If that is crashing, will the other systems be crashing at some point as well? Is there redundancy? These are the questions that went through my mind while hoping the screen would come back on before I missed my exit. Even knowing the systems are completely separate, it spoke to overall quality.
I agree that it is unnerving, but I expect it to be normal in the future. They save a bunch of time by being able to push out a 90% product with low risk of catastrophe and just push updates later to fix it up. As a bonus, they can market the frequent updates as a benefit rather than cleaning up technical debt they would have had to iron out before shipping the first car.
I've had multiple vehicles have instrument cluster failures while operating them. None of those have been screens. "Analog" gauges have not actually been analog for a while. They're all digital controls being read by a computer.
Even a carbureted motorcycle I owned from the early 2000s had "analog" gauges with values given to it from a computer!
There are large implementation differences in touch screens. My wife's care needs several second: turn the radio on, wait for the splash screen, press the drives heat control, wait for it to appear (100s of ms - long enough to notice) then find the button in the miedle of the screen - finally I can change the heated seats. My car that button is always has the button at the bottom of the screen in the same place so is is ms to look and see.
Backup cameras are an enormous safety improvement.
You know that a backup camera can be added to practically any car right? My ~2002 Toyota has a Pioneer deck from around 2007 (I guess?) that supports reversing camera input. My wifes 2012 Toyota hybrid has a reversing camera using some POS cheap Chinese deck that's so shit it doesn't even support Bluetooth audio.
No part of reversing cameras are dependent on any of the "modern" trends in cars that are being discussed here.
I feel like you're deliberately missing the point.
You don't need them to have a reversing camera. Literally millions of cars over the past 2 decades have perfectly fine reversing cameras using the screen of a regular double-DIN deck (or fold out single-DIN deck).
I, too, felt you were being intentionally dense in this thread. We've just been talking past each other.
I don't see a meaningful distinction between a screen on a DIN unit and an integrated screen.
With Android Auto or the ios equivalent -- a hard requirement for most car buyers today -- a touchscreen is basically required.
Other "smart" features aren't required but I'm not surprised car companies want to try and extract value from in-car tech. It's got nothing to do with providing value to consumers.
> I don't see a meaningful distinction between a screen on a DIN unit and an integrated screen.
Someone questioned why a car needs two 12" touch screens.
To which you replied
> Backup cameras are an enormous safety improvement.
My entire point is, that there's zero relationship between having a backup camera, and needing a 12" touchscreen, or a touch screen of any kind.
If your backup camera needs a touch screen, you've already failed. The entire point is that it activates automatically and deactivates automatically.
They've been available for literally decades - Toyota had a production model with a reversing camera in the fucking 80s.
Nothing else you've said since is related to your claim "Backup cameras are an enormous safety improvement" and that claim is completely unrelated to OP's question about why a car needs not one but two 12" touch screens.
