Delivered late last week, I received a Toyota Prius Prime for testing purposes. I had one when the pre-production units were floating around the press fleet but I have to say, I didn't get a great feeling about that particular car I tested.
I wanted to get another taste.
So far it's been a pretty good ride. Coming home from New York City I earned 59 mpg and on a roadtrip out east on Long Island I netted about 53 mpg — these hybrids tend to get a little beat up on mpgs when you're at true highway speed.
But when driving around Saturday a.m., I noticed something rather frustrating. The large, screen sitting in the center stack wasn't exactly helpful. That's because it was largely washed out by a massive glare eating up most of the display.
At this point I've driven cars with large instrument panel displays as well as other various screens but nothing was quite as bad as this.
NOTE: The attached photo has not been edited, that's exactly how it appeared in real life.
Clearly, we're at a point where screens are going to get even larger to make the infotainment experience even more rich. That means, I've got to address the elephant in the room: IF infotainment screens are going to get bigger, do automakers NEED to do BETTER than this?