The Autopian says the Acadia’s Infotainment Screen Is So Good All Cars Should Copy It

Dieffenbach GM invites you to consider car or truck interiors from about a quarter century or before. You will see that almost everything is easy to figure out. Practically all cars had the same controls, which worked largely in the same way. Buttons may have been differently shaped and in different locations, and some had knobs while others had sliding levers. For the most part, you could get in any vehicle and figure out how to do everything in the first mile or two.

Of course, these vehicles also had limitations. Music came from the radio or a CD player. There may have been an auxiliary jack that would let you connect with the headphone jack on your phone or other devices, but then you would have to control everything through that device. Bluetooth was a funny term known only to electrical engineers, so if you took a call in your car, you were reducing your level of safety. Chances are the car didn’t have navigation either, and if it did, you were unlikely to get traffic or weather information on it. 

Touch screens to the Rescue

In order to have cars do all the things we want them to do and not have a dashboard with the complexity of an airliner, the touch screen established its place in the dash. The problem was that every automaker had their own idea of how the screen should work because they weren’t used to doing this type of thing. Many of them did it badly. JD Power’s vehicle rating dropped solely because of frustrations with these systems. Apple and Android stepped in to provide familiar interfaces for things like music, navigation, as well as text and phone use, but they don’t cover specific car systems. 

Automakers also quickly figured out that writing in code for a control is cheaper than designing and building a button for it. So manufacturers that try to dazzle you with their minimalist designs by doing everything by the screen are actually just saving some interior design dollars.

Acadia Does it Right

Automotive site Autopian sampled a 2024 GMC Acadia recently and devoted an entire article on how well they believe its infotainment system works. 

The Acadia has a 15-inch screen, which is pretty big, but Autopian points out that size doesn’t count as much as how you can use it. The system works partly because GMC left it to the experts. The screen is backed by Google Built-in which means you get Google Maps even if you left your phone at home. There is also Google Assistant, which is more intuitive and responsive than most vehicle’s on-board voice command system. The fact that it is a Google system doesn’t mean you can’t use Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, for that matter. You can, and you can do it wirelessly.

The system also reserves the lower part of the screen for permanent climate controls. At the very bottom of the screen is a bank of the most common climate functions, which can also be operated by the corresponding physical buttons below. In the middle of the climate controls is a big can’t-miss volume knob because, after all these years, that is still the best way to change the volume. Autopian praised another set of physical controls: “Next to the driver is another button bank allowing you to change drive mode and AWD settings on the fly. These are real, tactile switches, too, yet they don’t spoil the nice interior.”

They still had a few quibbles. There are a few additional functions that they would like to see physical controls for, but they sum up by saying: “I would love more automakers to follow GMC’s lead here.”

A vehicle’s controls significantly impact how you interact and ultimately enjoy the vehicle. See if you agree with Autopian’s opinion on the Acadia’s interior interface by visiting the Dieffenbach GM Superstore and taking an Acadia for a test drive.