From Tiny Radio Readouts to Dashboard Megascreens: The Rise of Big Car Displays
Walk into any new car showroom in 2026 and the first thing your eyes land on isn’t the seats or the steering wheel. It’s the screen. Sometimes two screens. Sometimes a single panel of glass stretching from door to door like a flat-screen TV someone glued to the dashboard.
- The first touchscreen showed up in a 1986 Buick Riviera, then disappeared for decades.
- Tesla’s 17-inch Model S display in 2012 kicked off the modern arms race.
- Today’s Mercedes EQS Hyperscreen spans 56 inches across the dash.
A Slow Start in the 1980s
Car screens weren’t always the main event. For years, the dashboard equivalent of high tech was a glowing radio frequency readout. Then General Motors did something wild. Buick slotted a 9-inch “Graphic Control Center” into the Riviera in 1986, and commercials proclaimed the green-and-black cathode-ray tube unit took care of 91 functions that would otherwise have required buttons, switches and knobs on the dashboard.
Drivers weren’t impressed. Buick dropped the system in 1990 after owners found it clunky and distracting. The lesson stuck for a long time. Most automakers retreated to physical buttons and small auxiliary displays through the 1990s, and the few who experimented with screens kept them tucked into luxury flagships.
BMW, Lexus, and the Quiet Comeback
Things started warming up at the turn of the millennium. BMW’s iDrive, launched in 2001, was one of the first modern infotainment systems, rolling music, navigation, and phone calls into a single interface controlled by a wheel on the center console. Lexus pushed touchscreens forward around the same time, and gradually screens crept back into the cabin without much fanfare.
What really moved the needle was something happening outside the car. It wasn’t until the early 2010s that cars began widely featuring touchscreen displays again, a shift largely attributed to the fact consumers were now more comfortable with the technology. Smartphones trained an entire generation to swipe, tap, and pinch. Automakers noticed.
The Tesla Detonation
Then 2012 happened. Tesla dropped a bomb in the calm waters of infotainment with the Model S, whose centerpiece was a whopping 17-inch portrait display that controlled everything. Climate, navigation, charging, ride height, even how the headlights worked. All of it lived on that one panel.
Other brands scrambled to respond. Even Porsche, famous for sensible buttons, redesigned the Taycan’s interior around screens. The race was officially on, and bigger meant better.
Why Screens Kept Growing
Several forces pushed displays to absurd sizes at the same time. Backup cameras became one. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration mandated that all vehicles sold after May 2018 had to include the feature as standard equipment, which meant every car needed a display somewhere.
Cost was another big factor. In-car touchscreens are getting markedly cheaper to produce, with prices dropping as manufacturing costs have fallen over the past decade, and this cost saving holds true even as the size of vehicle screens has grown. A single curved LED display is often cheaper to install than designing, tooling, and wiring up rows of physical knobs and switches.
Software-as-a-service sealed the deal. Automakers realized screens opened the door to subscriptions. If a feature lives inside software, they can charge monthly for it. Heated seats, extra power, fancy lighting, doesn’t matter. A screen makes that possible.
Today’s Giants
Modern flagships are showing off. The Mercedes EQS Hyperscreen measures 56 inches, spanning the full width between the A-pillars, and contains three separate displays: a 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster, a 17.7-inch OLED center touchscreen, and a 12.3-inch passenger display.
BMW went a different direction with the i7. A 31.3-inch panoramic cinema display drops down from the i7’s ceiling, with full 8K resolution and a 5G wireless connection that can stream 4K UHD, music, games, or live TV. Meanwhile, the 2025 Tesla Cybertruck packs the industry’s largest standalone screen, a colossal 18.5-inch center display.
Are We Hitting Peak Screen?
Maybe. Drivers are starting to grumble, and some brands are listening. Hyundai added buttons back to the Ioniq 5, VW promised to backtrack, and Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, Genesis, and others are keeping physical controls alive. Safety researchers keep flagging the distraction risk of buried touch menus. Even BMW CEO Oliver Zipse has said that within 10 years, the huge screens will be reined back in.
For now, though, the megascreen era shows no real signs of slowing. The dashboard has become the most important piece of design real estate in the car, and automakers aren’t about to give up that canvas. Whether that ends up being a great thing for drivers or a phase we’ll laugh about in twenty years, we’re all along for the ride.
