[JourneyMan]

Just the other day while driving, felt like checking the engine temperature and I couldn't see it readily on the mid. Had to fiddle around to eventually see it, so maybe a dedicated button for when you want to check the vitals on car, so that when required all the bells and whistles give way to what is important. It may include
1. Engine Temperature
2. Tyre Pressure
3. Fluid levels

Then the regular "useful" display
1. Speed
2. Distance to empty
3. Trip Meter(probably with an always on Odometer)

I find it interesting that many people have found the clock on mid useless, for me personally, it just has to be there(for longer drives I prefer not to wear a watch).

[RedTerrano]

After sifting through the replies, I am seeing lot of useful nice to have features, as well as mention of some ridiculous (IMO) features like G force.
One of the nice to have features which I absolutely agree, is the battery health indicator. I started to wonder if this can be managed through an app, I googled around and stumbled upon an encouraging info item.
OBD II specs already have a provision for battery voltage across Pin 16 and Pin 4.

Connect phone with OBD sensor and you should be able to read current voltage. Convert to % health (dead battery need not necessarily be 0 volts, even say 11 volts will be useless to crank the engine) and display in a nice UI.

Any takers?
Or better yet, perhaps @GTO and TBHP team can develop this commercially?

[rkv_2401]

Originally Posted by RedTerrano

One of the nice to have features which I absolutely agree, is the battery health indicator. I started to wonder if this can be managed through an app, I googled around and stumbled upon an encouraging info item.
OBD II specs already have a provision for battery voltage across Pin 16 and Pin 4.

Connect phone with OBD sensor and you should be able to read current voltage. Convert to % health (dead battery need not necessarily be 0 volts, even say 11 volts will be useless to crank the engine) and display in a nice UI.

I think that'll be hard to implement as car batteries are not 'smart' batteries(i.e. they don't have a mechanism to monitor SoC). The 'current voltage' idea won't come in too handy, and at worst may even be misleading, as quite often older batteries can show a surface level charge(i.e. good voltages) but be unable to provide the current required to crank the engine. In this situation, the voltage would read 13V or so when the car is switched off, and drop to 9-10ish volts when you try to crank it; in which case it's not useful as the car won't crank anyway and you'll know the battery is dead. I've experienced this with older batteries in the past.

[RedTerrano]

Originally Posted by rkv_2401

I think that'll be hard to implement as car batteries are not 'smart' batteries(i.e. they don't have a mechanism to monitor SoC). The 'current voltage' idea won't come in too handy, and at worst may even be misleading,

What you say might very well be true. I am a noob when it comes to battery technology.
1) By "current voltage" I meant the voltage as of this moment (current not to be confused with electrical current). Clarifying this in case it makes any difference.
2) My thought was inspired by this mod by @ghpk
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/diy-d...ml#post3715478 (D.I.Y. Weekend Project: Car Battery Voltage Monitor)

[COMMUTER]

The clock is a must for people like me who go on 500-800km solo trips, usually driving all night. Its usefulness is more pronounced in the base model users(as against 'fool' option).

The Instant FE readings must be topped under 30kmpl to avoid over optimistic average FE figures. In my Figo, the limit is at 100kmpl, hence whenever I am coasting, the FE reading is 100kmpl. Some cars have the limit set at 200kmpl. This makes them grossly inaccurate.

[WhiteKnight]

Great suggestions so far.

I would like to see a malfunction code and description on MID, if that unfortunate situation arises. Volvo buses have this feature, which helps in initial analysis and short term solutions. I was on a Volvo b11r that broke down, and the driver was in touch with Volvo support, passing codes and trying out various work around suggested. I did few from my side too, lookin up the code, however none worked.

This would be applicable for cars too, as the information could be used by support team to analyse the seriousness of the issue and propose workarounds, if any.

[viXit]

A warning that the high beam is on for too long or within city limits
.
PLEASE

The hooligans driving with their high beams on don’t even realise it with all the fancy lights and indications in the instrument cluster.

Please include warnings like this.

[Vysakh]

Not an MID guy either. I don't even look at it when I'm driving. Prefer the analog dials for everything - speedo, tacho, fuel and temperature. My ride has the trip meters and the DTE. Trip meters are useful. I don't have much use of DTE on mine, but I can see it being useful when I'm on a new/different or a rental car and I don't know the FE. A clock would be useful too. As would be TPMS. Other than that, I can't think of anything.

[padmrajravi]

The speedometer, odometer, rpm guage and temperature guage. I am not a fan of distance to empty meter as that tends to be wrong most of the times. Tyre pressure monitor is also of little use to me, since I can generally feel it in the steering wheel and suspension. I would love to have a battery health indicator though. Thats something you can never understand till the day car refuses to start.

[swarnava.ch]

I got delayed in my response here but here are some thoughts on the original question from my perspective:
I like clean and symmetrical layout for the MID.

1. So the very first point of request is please do make them symmetrical. I don’t like asymmetric MID. Case in point is I10 Nios, Hexa which are symmetrical MIDs rather than Altroz etc which have part manual and part digital which makes it asymmetric.
2. I like to have only very important and simple info on the MID. Rest of the fancy info can be on the ICE or some place else.
Keep it simple and clean, big and easily readable.
What I want to see:
a. Digital Speed readout (Big Font)
b. Trip Meter A, Trip Meter B, Total Kms
c. Fuel Gauge , Distance to Empty etc.
d. Outside Temp, Engine temperature gauge
e. (Optional) Would love to see the Steering alignment – this would be great for new drivers, who have trouble if the steering is straight or misaligned.
f. (Optional) Gear Indicator, specially for Automatics / AMTs and DCTs. It maybe helpful for drivers during tricky scenarios.
g. Clock on the ID, most of the time ICE is not easily readable for drivers.

[Baddychat]

Originally Posted by anandhsub

Most useful is distance to empty. Quite surprised how it has been fairly accurate on most drives, both on the highway and inside the city.

Useless are instantaneous fuel consumption and gear change indicator.

Have no idea how the former is calculated, and it anyway keeps changing randomly to be of any use.

The DTE tends to be accurate only when you tend to keep driving in the same pattern. Say you are 100 kms away from your destination and your DTE says 110 kms. That would be based on how you have been driving around that moment. Then there arises a scenario where you to have to rush and you would be doing average speeds of 80 km/h as opposed to 50 km/h that were doing earlier. The DTE would reduce drastically. I think it is related to the Instant FE reading and not an independent paramter.

Coming to the issue of DTE's I own a couple of Honda's and my 2011 3rd gen City has a habit of showing a range/DTE of 0 even when there is enough fuel in the tank. Every time I have run close to 0 before a refill, the max you can fill up is 32 litres. The fuel tank capacity of the city was 40/42 litres, I cant recall the exact figure. When I figured this out i used to leverage this and drive it a little more and not rush to the pump right away. Interestingly the newer cars are far less optimistic.

To answer the question for this thread, I think the following features are useful:
1. DTE/Range
2. Average Consumption (since reset)
3. TPMS warning
4. Digital Speedo
5. Battery Voltage
6. Not sure about dual trip meters but a single one suffices for me
7. ODO