Will iPads Replace Our Dashboards?!

You guys may remember earlier when I went on a wild rant about how ridiculous the idea of iPad docks built into the back seat of BMWs was but it seems that I have found another ridiculous use for tablets in cars. Unlike the rest of iPad integrations I which they are usually stuck on to the back of the front seats headrests so that the back seat passengers can have their iPad at eye level, Visteon, the company behind this idea, has decided to use the iPad as a replacement for all of the buttons and gizmos where the controls for the air conditioning and the stereo might be in a normal car. Not just the media components but everything from the climate controls to seat adjustments. What!? That sounds like the dumbest idea on the planet!

Sure, if it was just being used as a giant screen instead of the usually scrawny screens that are built into cars that would be okay but taking away all physical knobs and buttons is just plain stupid. I could even live with all the media and navigation stuff on the iPad as long as they left the climate controls as physical buttons. There is a reason why every car maker in the world leaves certain things such as the climate control out of their navigation/ multimedia screen thing. When you are driving it is extremely distracting to have to look the screen and touch the screen or use whatever form of input it uses just to do a simple task such as turning up the heat. Most of us know exactly where the knob to change the heat is and at most, just need a quick glance. The same arguments go for the seat adjustment buttons. There have been plenty of times when I have had to change my seat settings while I was moving because I had just switched drivers.

What happens if let’s say…on your walk out to your car in the middle of winter you slipped and fell on some ice and  dropped your iPad??? Hmmm I guess you will just have to drive home without any heating because your iPad controls your heating!! The possibilities in which you could break or loose or forget your iPad are endless and if any of those happens you will be, to phrase it lightly, screwed.

Rather than relying on the dock to communicate with the car, the iPad wireless connects to the car and uses the dock just to charge itself. This is one of the few features I find pretty cool about this device because people in the back seats can pick what songs they want and browse the web on it. Hopefully Visteon has made sure their wireless transmissions between the car and the iPad are secure because they are not as secure as you may think. Professor Srdjan Capkun of ETH Zurich has proven that it is extremely easy to copy the signals given off by keyless start keys and then use antennas to broadcast it and unlock and start the car. So a thief could easily drive off with your car which is extremely worrying because a thief would be able to hack into the iPad and access what websites you have been visiting, where your home is via the navigation system, etc.

Besides the fact that it could get hacked, there are other reasons why it being wireless could create problems. If your kids or an immature friend got his hands on it while you were driving it could turn out to be a very long uncomfortable ride. For example they could move your seat to an uncomfortable position or turn your seat-heater on in the middle of the summer. Personally I would never take the iPad out of its dock in fear of such instances.

In the Tesla S, rather than using an external tablet to replace all the controls, they have just placed a massive 17 inch touch screen in the car. I admit, it looks stunning, but I still hold my stance that at least for the climate controls there needs to be physical buttons.