Dash efficiency

@Rcnesneg & it's even better than a sign, that you miss, when there isn't another one until after you speed past a waiting cop.

Yes, best to make it easily customizable with different user presets.

With a whopping 250 mile range it's MUCH less important, or in many cases completely unnecessary, to know WHILE DRIVING, the current %, distance to destination, % at destination, etc. For example, if I was going to drive from here in L.A. to San Diego (about 200 miles round trip), I'd just plug in before I went to bed the day before. The end.

IF when STOPPING there I was below 50%, THEN I'd look on PlugShare.com for a handy public charger nearby or along the way back.

On MY normal routes, the current speed limit shows on my phone's Google map when in navigation mode.

I think a few default layouts for the driver display and the option to customize what is displayed, as long as it's intuitive and easily managed. Saving and loading presets would also be good for multiple drivers. If customizeable, it should be easily restored so there is little risk of messing up the interface and not knowing how to restore it.

My Zoe has a camera, captures speed limit signs and displays it in the dash.

That is a very handy feature in Europe as speed limits tend to change every few hundred yards even on high ways "Autobahn".

Kiteboarder, thank you for your comments. Nice topic that Neote started. The GUI is a complex subject and often very subjective. I personally would like the flexibility to be able to select what numerics and/or graphics and their formats that I would like to have displayed on various 'screens'. This is one area where no one person will be 100% happy 100% of the time.

On the subject of Range Remaining: having driven over 150,000 miles in Mitsubishi i-MiEVs (EPA range 62 miles) for the last nine years with a number of notably-long trips (e.g., SF Bay Area to Tahoe) and never once having seen 'Turtle', I have learned to implicitly rely on its Range Remaining displayed number because I understand its underlying simple algorithm and how it's affected by HVAC, air temp, altitude changes, speed, head/tail winds, lead/feather footing, rain, etc.

On any trips that might need hypermiling I also have the Distance to Destination (DTD) prominently displayed on a separate inexpensive GPS. Simplistically, as long as DTD<RR (with a percentage buffer) I'm ok. If it's close, I start driving accordingly. Furthermore, I understand that the i-MiEV RR algorithm has no way of knowing upcoming elevation changes and if I know I have a climb to a known altitude during the trip then I know how much of a buffer I should have in the RR number.

All that leads me to want the display to show, for everyday local driving, Speed and Speed Limit on the road I'm traveling (like the Mini-E HUD), and SoC. For longer trips where Nav is enabled, I'd like to see Distance to Destination, Range Remaining and SoC at Destination. Like I said before, please DO tell us what the RR algorithm components are so we can mentally compensate. To me the cat's meow is integrating the display with the Nav system and (like Tesla) having the sophisticated algorithm to display State of Charge at the Destination. Did you know that Tesla's algorithm doesn't take our individual driving characteristics into account, yet ends up with an incredibly accurate SoC at Destination prediction if we drive 'normally'?

Having driven a BEV with about 100 city miles of range as my only car for the last 5.5 years, I agree that the only number I really need on the display is speed.

The clock is nice, as is outside temp & HVAC temp, on the rare occasions I use it here in super-mild coastal southern California. Battery % & current motor power use are also nice IN such a low-range car, but both are MUCH less important on Aptera.

MY "miles remaining" is completely useless, since it varies wildly based ONLY on the last 10 miles I drove. eGolf is even worse.

Indicator lights that I like to have available at a glance include HVAC mode (A/C, vent, recirc) fog lights, seat heaters & rear defog (so I can tell they're off).

Agree that a lot of work needs to be done, by all manufacturers, regarding the human factors aspect of the vehicle's GUI. A lot can be learned from other auto makers as to what is good or what is bad, but that would fill a book.

I personally like to see SoC as a number and not a stupid bar, but hope the SoC algorithm is very mature.

I consider Tesla's Nav-integrated approach of showing SoC at destination superb (that algorithm is amazing!).

All EVs have a Range Remaining number (and some have a high-low numbers as well). They weren't called GOM (Guess-O-Meter) on the original Leaf without good reason. Tesla actually has seven such Range Remaining numbers scattered on its display, none of them accurate but each reflecting a particular condition. Unless we know what the Range Remaining prediction algorithm is, it will take many miles of driving to get a handle on what any displayed number means to us.

Regarding Neote's original suggestion on Dash Effeciency I couldn't agree with you more. Agree completely with speed and charge status prominently displayed on the center screen. Simplicity of the screen functions is awesome!!

I came to the same conclusion over a half century ago. We are not in the minority. If we lived in a completely free market economy, our wants, our values would have been exploited (for everyone's benefit) long ago. My father, an ICE mechanic, put a $50 deposit on a Tucker. It was the best designed car and he, a guy who could tear apart a Model T blindfolded and put it back together, knew it. But "The Big 3" found a way to avoid competing using political pull (bribery). The govt. shut down Tucker without cause. It had the power. It still does. But public sentiment, thanks to the 'net, is supporting efficiency too strongly for it to ignore. Aptera and Tesla will kill off the corrupt, incompetent fat cats.