cts | Volt a Day | Tell Me More September 19, 2010

Here is the screen directly in front of your steering wheel. That's where you glance all the time. It's great that with one glance you see the fill-state of the battery and the fuel tank. And a little longer look tells you what the range is for each and what the total is. I bet that could be better represented by a vertical bar on the left with color-coding for fuel (the majority of the bar) and the battery (top portion of the range bar, since it gets used first). Maybe some people would want to keep it zoomed on the battery portion most of the time.

The gear indicator should be bigger, especially if we are in Park, since that is when we are about to switch into Reverse or Drive, and we don't want to make a mistake between the two. The great thing about a screen is that it can animate a change, expanding information that you need to pay more attention to.

What is the symbol on the left? A battery that has a range of 263 miles? That seems like it might be a fuel cell. It's hard to tell. On the right we have some sort of graphic to show us whether we are getting energy back from the car decelerating. The ball probably turns red as we accelerate too heavily, right?

Here's something to think about with that simple, beautifully simple digit for the speedometer: gauges are easier to read than digital meters. The air force uses speed and altitude tapes in their Heads Up Displays. (The same standard is used in the glass cockpits of all of the modern airplanes, even little ones.) Even more interesting: the Chevy Volt will know where it is at all times. the speed limit information for almost all the roads in North America is available in the usual road databases used for navigation. Where it isn't, there are reasonable guesses. The information that the driver usually wants from that display is "how far above, or below, the speed limit am I?" That could be displayed with a disparity-bar next to the number, which would be color coded. Or a moving tape. In an airplane the speeds are color coded, so at a glance you know if you are below the speed the plane can fly (black), in the safe zone to deploy flaps (white), maneuvering speed (green), or a little too fast if there's turbulence (yellow), or close to the never-exceed speed for your plane (red, and the barber pole for speeds above that). In words, that seems complex, but you could see at a glance if you were less than ten miles over the speed limit (yellow), or more than that (red).

And a lot of these user-interface tweaks could be managed as settings and preferences from the touchscreen. If you just want the speed in mph and don't want to see the range, you should be able to select that.