Did you see our post a bit earlier about the colossal screen Mercedes-Benz is putting into the new C-Class? Mercedes-Benz’s new EV certainly seems to be leaning in, hard, to our bold new era of screenery, even though there’s already significant backlash against the over-screenification of our precious car interiors. I don’t quite get how or why Mercedes-Benz seems to be ignoring so many people’s desire for physical controls again, but if this new massive screen is any indication, they’ve definitely picked a side.
It’s a lot. Too much, one could maybe argue, but I suppose some people must have liked it, or at least the ones that show up to Mercedes-Benz focus groups, because they’re definitely going for it. It’s at a point where these press pictures are starting to look genuinely ridiculous, and it’s hard not to want to make fun of these technological monstrosities that may seem cool when you first sit in front of them, but will cultivate resentment and frustration the longer one tries to use these heavily screen-based systems.
It does look like the C-Class has vent controls you can just move with your human hands, so I’ll give them credit for that, at least.
But back to making fun of these ginormous screens: why fight it? Our own Pete already started the process with the fast food menu screen thing, so let’s keep it going!
Here’s one thing I was thinking; what if Mercedes-Benz offered a base-model C-Class? A C-Class DX with black rubber bumpers and cloth seats and, most importantly, no massive full-color LCD touchscreen. Just a big, black plastic blanking panel with a fake leathery pebbled texture and a tiny monochrome dot-matrix VFD screen that’s new old stock from their late ’90s cars. That’d be fine!
Maybe there could be another budget option that is the same physical size as the fancy, expensive full-color screen, but is actually a cheap, low-resolution VFD screen with big green pixels that just gives you the basics. Honestly, I kind of like this sort of ’80s aesthetic.
Speaking of 1980s, you know what would have really been better on a massively wide screen? The old Atari 2600 Empire Strikes Back video game, which Pete mocked up, knowing it’d appeal to me:
That would be great, but you know what else would really make use of all that lovely width? Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros:
It’s like it was made for that! What else would benefit from a crapload of East-West real estate? Oh! Spreadsheets!
I know there’s some weird Excel pervs out there getting all squirmy at the sight of that.
Also, when you’re not really using it, I feel like the classic bouncing DVD logo is pretty much a requirement for any self-respecting screen.
Don’t tell me hardcore Trek fetishists wouldn’t love some sexy LCARS action on there. Honestly, you might be able to make a more usable, actual interface for car controls using that system.
It’s such a big screen, it feels like a waste to just use it for climate controls and navigation or Sirius XM or whatever. You could read on that thing without your old-person glasses! maybe it could auto-scroll based on your speed for, you know, safety?
Also, I’m curious to see the CarPlay/Android Auto implementation. That up there is likely worst-case scenario and I’m sure that’s not what it actually looks like, but that is funnier. Especially if they rigged it up with accelerometers so it smacked into either side of the screen as the car moved and shifted.
A more dystopian – even if plausible dystopian – take would be something like this, where the screen just gets populated with pop-up ads for all the car subscription features you could be buying. I hope this doesn’t happen, but it’s not like we haven’t seen it on some carmaker’s products already.
I think we all know what the ideal use is for a screen this size, anyway. I’m not even sure why I brought up anything else.
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