Ford Fusion/Mecury Milan Hybrid Instrument Cluster

Ford has a special display at the LA show for its SmartGauge with EcoGuide instrument cluster featured on the Fusion/Milan hybrids. I have some made some poor attempts to photograph the cluster, but Ford really has a winner with the YouTube tutorial video. It would have been cool to have these be energy saving OLED displays, but LCD was undoubtedly cheaper. OLED technology has already been used on a few production cars (most recently the 2010 Lexus RX), and will undoubtedly increase in usage as we move forward. One of the "trick" features of the cluster are the efficiency leaves: as you drive in a more economical manner, the gauge grows more leaves, stomp on the throttle and they drop off. I view the leaves as a bit gimmicky and perhaps distracting.

Overall, I view reconfigurable gauges as the way to go. You can clean up the IP and selectively display information as conditions warrant. Think about this, as a manufacturer you could develop one standard display panel and then customize it for each car. With the excellent resolutions available today, you can convincingly recreate analog gauges or go high tech with fun and unique ways to display information. Model refresh time? Just change the programming. You could sell "instrument personalization" as an added accessory through dealerships. If you're installing the same physical hardware in each car, you are going to reap tremendous economies of scale and buyers will benefit from new and exciting ways to interact with their car.