TOP 10 INTERIORS
Tesla Model 3 dash
The dash on the new Model 3 is actually really cool. In the Model S (the great
big luxury saloon one) and the Model X (the great big SUV one) Tesla insisted
on fitting a colossal touchscreen in a portrait orientation in the centre console,
which sounds like a great idea on paper and looks cool in design meetings, but is
actually a pain in the arse to use because you’re not looking where you’re going
if your fingers are jabbing at the lower bits of the screen down by your feet. But
the Model 3 flips the screen round to a horizontal position, which makes much
more sense, mounting it a bit higher up so you can see it properly. Which is
just as well, because get this: there is NOTHING ELSE to look at. Everything is
controlled by that touchscreen – not just the audio and the nav, but everything
from lights to wipers and even the gearbox. There are no dials above the steering
wheel, everything appears on that screen. It’s an amazing piece of design, very
user-friendly, although it does suffer from a fatal flaw: if one of your passengers
accidentally spills a can of Fanta into it and it stops working, you are totally f*cked.
The car is entirely reliant on that screen, and if it doesn’t work, nothing else will
either. Still, it looks good, doesn’t it?Honda E dash
Electric cars have to have funky dashboards, that’s Tesla’s fault. While there’s
a strong argument for making EVs as similar as possible to traditional cars
with engines in order to make people actually buy them, Tesla have shaken the
interiors game up a bit by fitting a screen that’s slightly too big: a massive iPad-
style interface that could happily double up as a dinner tray if you unbolted it. So
people expect electric cars to have interesting screens, and Honda have played
a bit of a blinder with their new city car, which is called simply ‘E’. A long screen
(but not an especially tall one) spans the entire width of the dash, so passengers
get to play too, and buttons are kept to a bare minimum to reduce clutter. The
really interesting bit is that they’ve counterpointed this hypermodern digital
arrangement with a great big slab of wood, like your grandad’s old 1970s Rover.
Why? Well, why not?