A lot of information needs to be processed while a person is driving. The driver needs to focus on the road while being aware of the surroundings and key components like tire pressure, speed etc. That is where the instrument cluster comes into play. The instrument cluster, traditionally, came in plastic housings that made it difficult for the driver to understand what they were seeing while driving. This made the inclusion of digital instrument clusters very necessary.
The older clusters contained housings made of plastic that had mechanical gauges and indicator lights. The displays were generally electrical meter movements or friction drag instruments. The clusters essentially provided limited amount of information like engine temperature and speed.
A digital instrument cluster is a digital panel that essentially give digital displays instead of the analog gauges. They are commonly known as digital speedometers.
The need for more efficient information and a sleek design led the car manufacturers to look for other options. This gave way to semi-digital instrument clusters. Mostly seen in low-end cars, this cluster mostly makes use of analog dials as well as digital readouts. The analog dials provide things like temperature while the digital readout provides information like speed.
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When the technology was introduced, luxury brands' cars were the first to incorporate this in their designs. But now, mainstream brands have also started investing in this technology and making it affordable for the people.
Some mainstream brands like Volkswagen allow users to use a digital instrument cluster system which can be used to access maps.
Big car giants like Tesla have chosen to replace this cluster entirely by using a touchscreen infotainment system instead of their models.
