The evolving Cayenne Interior

[RDMcG]

For the last couple of days I have been driving a 2017 Cayenne while my much beaten up and well used 2008 Cayenne S was having its camshaft adjusters replaced. The current interior is a much nicer place to be, and will in turn be superseded by a variant of the new Panamera interior when the new generation Cayenne arrives in Q1 of 2018. I have been in the new Panamera and love the massive reduction in buttons and clean design of the dash..Pics below….(I have a Turbo S on the way in Spring of '18.)

My trusty old Cayenne today


The current Cayenne



New Panamera shows the dash design direction…thought Cayenne will be a bit more rugged looking

[RDMcG]

I think that the number of things in a modern car such as various suspension settings and engine mapping options, things like launch control ,internet services,multiple heating and cooling ,entertainment and so on demand a simpler approach with few or no buttons. I recall the famous IDrive wars at BMW. Sure, the early stuff was tricky. However it turned out that once you set the car up the way you wanted you rarely accessed the menus again. Now we are moving to much more voice control and it is getting very good.

Yes I know that there is a view that you should just drive the bloody thing in which case a Caterham is a great choice. The realistic future for the average car though is that all these services and options are here to stay. I have driven a Tesla which is surprisingly good and they are upgraded with new services overnight.

Getting back to my original musing I like the newest and simpler panamera approach and I suspect that most cars at any level are evolving to the same approach