Tangentially, the tie-breaker that got me to buy a 2020 Ford Escape Hybrid over the competition in that size-range (2020 Toyota RAV4, 2020 Honda CR-V) was on how much I liked its dash, and its smart choices of hard buttons vs touch-screen.
I particularly liked that the Escape had hard play/back/next (and a screen off!) buttons, and good use of screen-space. The CR-V wastes precious screen-space to always-present app shortcuts, as well as precious dashboard vertical space for just the volume/power button. The RAV4 has a bunch of function shortcut physical buttons around the screen which I think are also a waste of space: once you're in Android Auto/Apple Carplay, there's little reason to go back to the car's apps.
I think we're still in a pit of bad car dashboard design, after a precipitous fall into touchscreen madness. Tesla's the worst offender, but I'm pretty impressed by Ford's design.
I particularly liked that the Escape had hard play/back/next (and a screen off!) buttons, and good use of screen-space. The CR-V wastes precious screen-space to always-present app shortcuts, as well as precious dashboard vertical space for just the volume/power button. The RAV4 has a bunch of function shortcut physical buttons around the screen which I think are also a waste of space: once you're in Android Auto/Apple Carplay, there's little reason to go back to the car's apps.
I think we're still in a pit of bad car dashboard design, after a precipitous fall into touchscreen madness. Tesla's the worst offender, but I'm pretty impressed by Ford's design.
(for comparison of RAV4 vs CR-V, see dash photos in this article: https://www.garberhonda.com/blog/2020-vehicles/2020-honda-cr... )