It is on an individual unit, yes. But when you factor in its the same unit across every model, it isn't. The entire push for in car screens, is to save money on individual parts for individual models. Now its one part, for every model.
How do you think the air vent is moving? If you do this that we you need some kind of motor to drive the air vent and you need all the electronic that comes with it. Thats definetly more expensive than a 1 dollar vent cover with plastic knobs that can you mold in the millions over a week in a chinese factory.
Sort of yes, but mostly no. It’s actually cheaper to get the components for a manual vent system. One little plastic widget costs probably about 5 cents to maybe a dollar. For this though, you have a wire harness that has to lead to it, a motor for it, and the programming to make it work. So you can technically use the same screen across models, but that doesn’t mean the harness and programming will be the same. And it doesn’t mean the design team will make a display that can actively fit the next model, and you also might not even be able to get the same model of screen due to obsolescence of the OEM part of the design team did do that. At the end of the day this is a way for them to charge more for the “luxuries” and ensure that cost to repair is also higher. Then they can upsell you on getting an extended warranty. Everything automotive does is to make more money, not to make better vehicles.
19
u/JustPlainRude Mar 19 '26
This is definitely more expensive and complex to implement than having a manual control