Ah, good to hear it. They do (or did, and I assume still do) also have higher res displays.

Going back to an earlier bit in the conversation, where you were concerned about light sources in the car, I think that auto-dimming might also help (not just with VFDs, but the brightness of any in-car display). My car dash has the option to automatically set brightness based on ambient light levels (something that I wish my desktop computer monitor could do...part of "dark mode"'s benefit is a mitigation for devices that don't do this). I don't know if that was a thing back in the 1980s or so, when these display designs were popular.

I also kind of wonder if eye-tracking, which has come a long way, could be made reliable-enough and responsive-enough to toggle off displays if the car can detect that a user is looking somewhere away from them. Maybe be conservative, not with some critical displays, but stuff like the radio or clock or something. Eye tracking systems normally use the near-infrared, as I understand it, not visible light, so I'd think that you could theoretically do it in a darkened car without problems.