The New Nautilus Has One Of The Wildest Dashboards In Any American SUV
Over the years, we’ve seen many advancements and experiments happen in the world of car interiors. More specifically, we’ve seen a lot of weird and wild things happen with how dashboards have been designed. Ever since digital dashboards first emerged in the 1980s, automakers have tried to think of new ways to incorporate the technology. Sometimes, that’s led to entirely new philosophies of designing a car interior. What we’re going to cover here is a strong example of that.
Screen-Heavy Dashboards Have Completely Taken Over In Today’s Cars
If you step into almost any new car today (and especially any new SUVs), you’ll notice that screens have replaced almost all the traditional buttons, rotary dials and switches. It’s now become common for them to have one big screen in the middle that handles almost all of the car’s functions, with a smaller screen in front of the steering wheel to show what a traditional instrument binnacle used to. Some, like the Tesla Model Y, use just one big screen that displays everything.
That’s a change that’s true of many cars, but with SUVs being some of the biggest-selling cars in the world, they’ve been setting the trends over the last few years of how production car interiors are developing.
Most Of Today’s SUVs Just Add More Screens, Or Make Them Larger
With screens becoming more and more of a big deal in today’s SUVs, automakers have approached integrating them into the interiors of their cars in different ways. Most of the time, it involves adding more of them, or making them larger. That does work functionally, but it can cause interior designs that look jumbled, or like they’re dominated by a massive tablet-style screen. This is clearly something Lincoln thought about when designing the interior for the current version of the Nautilus.
The 2027 Lincoln Nautilus Has A Digital Dashboard That’s Unlike Any Other You’ll See On The Market
The Nautilus has been Lincoln’s mid-sized SUV option for some time, and it’s quietly one of the best on the market. It’s a 5-seater model, with the option of either a pure ICE or a hybrid powertrain. Both powertrains use Ford’s 2-liter Ecoboost engine, which produces 250 horsepower and 280 lb-ft of torque. The hybrid version adds a 190 hp electric motor, leading to a combined output of 285 hp. The pure gasoline version has an 8-speed automatic transmission, while the hybrid gets a CVT.
The current version of the Nautilus also has a feature that you don’t see on any other SUV in its class. That’s the striking digital dashboard that you see when you step inside this luxurious crossover. Why is it so striking? Firstly, because of how it looks, and secondly, how much functionality it has. It all ties into what Lincoln calls the “Lincoln Digital Experience”, a totally different philosophy of designing how a screen-heavy dashboard should look and function.
The Entire Upper Dashboard Is One Continuous Display
The most eye-catching thing about the Lincoln Nautilus’s dashboard is how that entire upper area is one enormous screen.
This kind of design does make the dashboard very visually distinctive. But, it’s there for more than just looking fancy. Switching to this setup enabled Lincoln to have the Nautilus’s digital dashboard do more than just what a traditional dashboard does. In fact, it can even do some things that even other digital dashboards can’t do.
Because the screen is so wide, Lincoln can spread the information that occupants see across a huge area. This means that different areas can be broken up to handle different functions. The left side shows the most important information to the driver, such as speed, safety alerts and fuel status. The middle and right sections are adapted more to what people would generally want to see. That ranges from trip computers to displaying media and maps. All of this can be nearly infinitely customizable, and can be tailored to different drivers via the personalized profiles you can set up on the system. As well as all of that, the Nautilus’s infotainment system has 5G connectivity already built in. That lets you have the fastest level of mobile internet available in North America, as well as the ability to turn your car into a mobile hotspot for up to 10 devices.
As you’ll have gathered, this is a whole different approach to making a digital dashboard. Lincoln hasn’t approached it at all from the perspective of replacing a traditional instrument cluster. It’s made this super-wide screen a broader environment where all the car’s information can be displayed and customized to the driver’s preferences.
It’s Fully Integrated With All Of Google’s Latest Technology
As part of the massive amount of functionality that Nautilus’s digital dashboard has, it’s got all of Google’s latest technology. Like quite a few cars you can buy now, the Nautilus’s infotainment system runs on Android OS. This means it gets access to the full suite of Google functions you can get in a car. It comes with Google Assistant right out of the gate, allowing you to control elements of the system with your voice. Google Maps comes built-in, too, as does access to the Google Play Store to buy and download extra apps for your car. The Google functionality also ties in with the personalized profiles you can set up for different drivers. That can extend to different drivers having access to their own apps, or having certain apps prioritized over others on the digital displays. Again, all of this feeds into Lincoln’s philosophy of making a broader and nearly infinitely customizable environment for all the car’s information to be displayed.
There Are Still Options Out There For People Who Want A Brand-New Premium SUV With Less Screens
To the more purist among us, a car with such a screen-heavy dashboard layout might feel confusing at best and terrifying at worst. That’s especially when you take a look at almost all the Nautilus’s competitors and see that they’re almost or just as screen-heavy as the Nautilus is. There are still options out there though for those of us who don’t want so many screens in the interiors of our SUVs. The BMW X5 still avoids depending heavily on screens in its interior. The Lexus TX and Lexus LX have avoided their interiors becoming consumed with screens, too. While their interiors may seem positively low-tech compared to the fancy information displays of the Lincoln Nautilus, people who find screen-heavy modern displays too overwhelming will find those options much easier to live with.
Sources: Lincoln
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