Nice to see Jag does the manual sequential shift orientation properly for aggressive driving. I’m not a fan of the design of the temperature displays on the knobs, but they certainly are easy to read.
Here is an example of creative engineering where the powertrain team had to cram an engine in a space defined by the design team. The car has to look a certain way after all and that seems to mean some low hood line on the E-PACE. So just how does air get to that duct on the right going into the airbox?
Air goes through the front bumper opening and up into the hood through these two holes on the side of the hood latch. The air travels through the hood to the hole on the right which dumps into that duct to the air box. Is the underside of the hood thermally insulated? I somehow doubt it. If you want to go faster, get the white colored car and not the black one as the black hood will get super hot in the sun and heat up the air going into the intake.
On these luxury cars, having a quiet cabin is high on the list of customer demands. Modern high-pressure direct injection fuel injectors and pumps are not the quietest things on earth. The engine cover is three pieces! There’s a thick rubbery foam that is the first layer that goes on top of the engine. Then there’s a thin hard layer which I guess provides support to the final to the top layer. The top layer is the decorative plastic cover you see which itself has a foamy layer on the underside along with the shiny heat insulation as that part of the cover lives by the turbocharger.
This is the dash of the I-PACE which is more my style for a dash layout along with the HUD. No having to look off to the side for information. I really dislike the center display layout of the Prius too. And the Mini with its big center display thing too.
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There are a couple of problems with these new cars and their array of LCD panels. First, they are really hard to see in bright sunlight. I’m pretty sure it was the Audi E-Tron, that has rearview cameras instead of mirrors, with LCD panels for view screens and the glare from inside the window made it nearly impossible to see the panel clearly. I can imagine, it’s even worse if you have a sunroof.
Secondly, I hope you can disable some of these panels at night, because from some of the reviews I have seen, they are a total distraction for night driving. Personally, I can’t stand to have anything remotely bright in my peripheral vision. Not to mention, that they produce glare off the winshield if not properly shielded.
I was always a big fan of the SAAB ‘night driving mode’.
Yup, I always turn down the brightness on my dash in my cars to avoid messing up my eyes at night. I gave that feedback to my coworkers while doing a user evaluation at my last company. There needs to be a night mode on any big displays.
I’m not quite sure what Byton is thinking with their full dash display. And steering wheel display. Looking at the steering wheel while driving seems like a bad idea.