Drivers of top of the line cars can customize just about everything. At the touch of a button or the turn of a dial they can change the brake settings, the traction control, the suspension and even how far the boot opens. Cadillac is taking this customization up another notch in its XTS luxury sedan by making it possible to alter the arrangement of the digital gauges to suit the driver’s tastes.
The display system for the XTS consists of a 12.3-inch LCD screen that sits on the dashboard where the analog dials used to be. The driver can choose between four different layouts via a multi-directional switch on the steering wheel. Each cluster shows the car’s speed and fuel level, but other than that, they are tailored to meet the needs of a particular type of driver with details of each cluster able to be modified by the owner.
The four interchangeable gauge clusters were developed by Cadillac after studying how car owners use various features and what they wanted out of them.
“We spent time with owners of all kinds of vehicles to learn how they used the radio, navigation, phone settings, and other user connectivity features,” said Scott Martin, Cadillac’s senior creative designer in charge of building the layouts. “Most drivers fall into one of four different categories in terms of the amount of information they want to see at any given time, so we built the XTS gauge cluster layouts to appeal to any one of those drivers.
“Drivers can also further customize each layout to their own personal liking. They can flip through all the information pages to permanently display their favorite preset radio stations, check tire pressure, navigation, fuel range, and temperature among other features.”
The first layout is the “Balanced” display, which is the default cluster design. This resembles a traditional dial layout with the usual speedometer, tachometer, and fuel and temperature gauges. However, these get a high-tech twist with displays inside the dials for tire pressure, navigation and radio information.
The second is the “Performance” layout, which is for enthusiast drivers. This is dominated by an enlarged speedometer and tachometer while other readouts are tucked away in the margins.
Third is the “Enhanced” layout for the “uber-connected” driver. Instead of a speedometer, there’s a digital speed readout and the driver can pull up vehicle information in pages that can be scrolled through using the steering wheel control.
The fourth layout is the “Simple” cluster and is designed with the minimalist in mind. There’s readouts of speed, fuel and the radio, though other information is available.
The digital gauge cluster feature is available on Cadillac XTS models with the Premium or Platinum trim level.
Source: General Motors
