The car interior of the future is here, and it's a little… bland.

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It's not quite the future we've been promised. Screens are making car interiors look the same on new cars. The surprising thing? They don't need to be. But how can a person explain how similar the 2024 Chevy Equinox and 2023 Lexus RX interiors look? Is it the same designer?

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When you look at the interiors of new cars like the Chevy Equinox and Lexus RX, it's hard to differentiate them—despite being from two different manufacturers. Even the knob in the top left corner of the screen is identical. Between Chevy and Lexus?? Look, I would get it if one of them came out way before the other and the cheaper version (Chevy) copied them. But no, these are both BRAND NEW DESIGNS!

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Why? It's because they both have screens on the top of their dashboards. How can car makers differentiate screens? By not sticking them on the top of the dashboard, that's how.

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The same goes for most cars in production today, which means that if you're looking for something unique, you might as well take up knitting. Here's the formula - wide screen on the same plane as the gauges, then a set of two horizontal air vents underneath, followed by some sort of minimalist hard controls.

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It's because manufacturers see no reason to innovate when it comes to interior design—it's cheaper just to stick with what they know works instead of trying new things out that might not work as well.

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When you look at the interior of a new car today, you're looking at a screen—whether it's mounted on top of your dashboard or embedded into your seat. And while these screens promise convenience and connectivity, they also make it impossible to differentiate between different models—and they're actually making things more difficult for drivers in some cases.

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Look at this:

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Are these the same car? Do you even care?

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But screens aren't just killing differentiation in terms of design; they're also affecting safety. Because when all cars have screens that do basically the same thing (and look pretty much identical), driving becomes about learning which buttons do what—which takes away from actual driving skills like remembering where your turn signal is or whether you've got cruise control engaged.

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The reason for this is simple: there's only so much room to play around with, and car manufacturers want to make sure they're keeping their costs down. But what if they didn't have to? What if screen placement was no longer an issue?

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You know that feeling you get when you're driving down the road and see a new car with a screen on the top of its dashboard? You might think, "Wow! That looks really cool." But then you realize that all the other cars in your neighborhood have screens on their dashboards too, and suddenly it's not so cool anymore. It's just normal—and it's boring as hell.

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But it doesn't have to be this way. We think that car makers should take advantage of their unique opportunity to make screens look different—not just by placing them in different places, but by designing them differently as well. They could use different colors, or even shapes! Imagine if you could tell the model year of a car just by looking at the screen on top of its dashboard!

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There's no reason why every screen has to be a flat rectangle on top of the dashboard; there are lots of other shapes that can work just as well! Especially with screen technology being adaptable in terms of not being just a simple square or rectangle.

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Hand gesture controls? Crisp graphics? Dials on a screen that mimic traditional dials? None, I repeat - none - move the needle in terms of how we interact with the car. Putting everything in a screen frees up dash space, lets us customize more thing and maybe lets your passengers watch a movie on the dashboard, but none is truly changing the user experience of the car.

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So next time I see this same interior appear (any day now on any upcoming debut), I'll yawn and go to a different website. Put some damn effort into it, people!