Dashing.

Update 2013.02.12: Chris Ziegler, The Verge:

[...] in place of an aver­age car’s array of but­tons, knobs, and small dis­plays, the Model S has an enor­mous 17-inch capac­i­tive touch­screen mounted ver­ti­cally down the mid­dle of the dash­board, angled slightly toward the dri­ver for viewa­bil­ity and ease of reach. Perhaps more than the new­fan­gled elec­tric dri­ve­train, noth­ing wor­ried me more about the Model S — noth­ing brought out more of the cur­mud­geonly “get off my lawn” men­tal­ity — than this touch­screen. Nearly every com­po­nent in a mod­ern car is designed to enhance safety and keep dri­vers bet­ter focused on the task of dri­ving; tra­di­tional knobs and but­tons help dri­vers keep their eyes on the road because they instinc­tively come to know where things are. They can feel out a vol­ume con­trol here, a tem­per­a­ture con­trol there with­out hav­ing to look down.

Tesla chief designer Franz von Holzhausen traded safety for the con­ve­nience of 3G-based UI updates. I’m a big fan of good dis­plays, but Tesla made a big mis­take replac­ing knobs with the 17-inch LCD. I like knobs because it lets me keep my eyes on the road. With the LCD you have to take your eyes off the road to see what’s on the dis­play, tap on the but­tons or move the slid­ers, and con­firm that it did what you wanted it to do. That’s a safety haz­ard. A bet­ter option, with UI upgrad­abil­ity included, would have been to use a tra­di­tional land­scape ori­ented LCD for nav­i­ga­tion and replaced dumb knobs with smarter ones. I’m imag­in­ing Nest-like knobs. Cool and safe.