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this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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I find I never actually look directly at an analogue speedometer, you kinda just know from the angle of the needle what speed you're doing
New to driving maybe?
That's probably why digital displays still have analog speedometer options. At a glance it's easier to tell what's happening with your speed, rev count, and other levels like fuel.
But much of that utility is useful for manuals and ICE-powered cars.
Unfortunately because of the digital spedometer, the analog one usually suffers.
My mid-2010s c-class has an analog spedometer which is absolutely useless as it does not have a full needle and the fonts, spacing and colors are made to blend in with the interior instead of being readable.
All this makes me use the digital one, which is very distracting and usually lagging behind, especially when quickly accelerating.
Reading very-fast-changing data is probably the only good argument I've seen for the superiority of analog guages in modern cars. A fast changing digital display is impossible to read. But practically speaking, when the data is changing that quickly, typically precision isn't important.
If car companies cared (which they clearly don't) they could make digital displays better, by having a low refresh rate when there is low acceleration (to avoid distracting the driver), increase the refresh rate under heavy acceleration to display more current data, and apply some kind of effect to the fast changing digits to convey a sense of how fast they're changing even if they're changing too fast to read. Think of the odometer style altitude readout on old airplanes, where even if you can't read the number you can tell wtf is up by how fast the numbers are spinning by.
This isn't to say that digital guages are better. They're just different. It's a personal preference thing.
But you're absolutely right that the analog guage has suffered from neglectful design in recent years.