I find I never actually look directly at an analogue speedometer, you kinda just know from the angle of the needle what speed you're doing

New to driving maybe?

An analogue gauge is useful because you can see the rate of change not just the current value.

My 2019 Jetta has a 100% digital instrument cluster. It's currently broken...just a black screen. It's neat how reliable analogue instruments are.

I think in this case analogue is actually easier to read. You don't need to actually read any of the numbers to know how fast you're driving, you just look at the angle of the needle.

The human brain is great at things like this, and less good at reading numbers, which is much more learnt.

Easier to read?

That would imply that an analog speedo is tough to read which is laughably wrong.

I personally hate the digital cluster, I would rather have analog one with display in middle. I don't find that analog cluster needs more time to read.

This must be related to people in their 20's not knowing how to read a traditional clock anymore.

The number of people on here who seem to think that an analog instrument cluster is connected directly to the things they're displaying, rather than connected to the ECU computer. Or that a PWM servo motor is more reliable than a screen. News flash: if you lose power to either, you aren't able to read it.

An well designed analog guage is easier to read out the corner of your eye, or at a quick glance. But that really only matters if you're racing, and even then it's dubious.

A poorly designed digital guage can be distracting at night, if they use a screen tech that has poor black levels, or have lots of bright elements on the screen at night. It basically shines a light at your face and interferes with your night vision. But most manufacturers are better than that, these days, it's not much different than the light that illuminates your analog gauges.

So really it's personal preference, and some people like to justify their preference with bullshit so that they can feel superior. YMMV.

About accuracy: Analog sensors are more accurate than digital ones and that is because they are analog. While an analog system has unlimited resolution and thus can continuously follow a signal curve, digital systems can only process quantized data and that is a clear disadvantage when it comes to precision. To visualize it, think of analog data as a smooth curve and of digital data as a stair shape that follows the curve. In the picture the red line is an analog signal while the blue line shows how that same signal would look after quantization in a digital system. As you can see the analog red line is an accurate depiction of the actual sensor data while the digital blue line is only an approximation to the original analog signal.

I remember in the late 90s or so a car came out with an all digital instrument cluster. It made the news when they would completely fail, leaving people to not know anything about their speed or anything else about their car.

A speedometer is more reliable and easy to read. Even so, several cars have them. Some even project your speed in the windshield as part of a heads up display.

Not true. When I glance down I am not looking for a numerical value, "57.8". I'm looking for the pointer around "60", ... yeah that's what it feels like, all's well.

We're not machines processing data. Cars are prosthetic devices, extensions of our bodies. You feel them down the road. You hit a big pothole and think, "ouch".

Digital odometer is necessary. Everything else is a visual ratio. Racers (used to) arrange their gauges so that every pointer is more or less straight up and down when "normal". You don't want to puzzle out meanings, you want a visual indication of what you're feeling in the car.

Digits give us precision, which is absolutely the last thing you need while driving. At best you need go/nogo, or trend. ("fuel lower than it was").

With instruments, the following are all completely independent: precision, resolution, accuracy. Even a digital speedo, how many digits you need? 2? 3? 6? lol 27.234 doesn't mean shit. "28" is better. "hair less than 30" is fine. And "27.234" is just dumb when the speedo has a 2% error rate, which is quite good, as tires size varies with load, air pressure, brand, wear.

What's REALLY nice is a separate display with DIGITS on an LCD and a DATA LOGGER! Then you get both! It's the best! I do this to my project cars; antiquated weird fun dials that are great for DRIVING, and a datalogger that writes to a microSD that 99% of the time you don't care about, but if it's running funny, or something fails, you can see it in the logs. It's GREAT!

Everything digital in a car is often handled by the "entertainment" system. Like a glorified radio. Manufacturers like to keep that as separate system from the car, so it's replaceable and upgradable and fail safe from the actual operation of the car.

Also, many car designs (of the cars on the road today) are 20 years old, when digital screens in cars had yet to prove reliability. Nobody wanted to risk having to replace screens just to show the speed. Some brands have had digital speedometers for ten years or so.

Anyway, digital speedometers also calculate the speed by magnets, so the GPS and speedometer might still show different speeds depending on the size of wheels just as badly as an analogue one. Again, it has to, because the operation of a car should not be dependent on a satellite system, f.i. in tunnels.

So in short: Digital speedometers are not more accurate and they're introducing points of potential failure.

The more your car is computerized, the less control you have over it as the end user. The best cars on the road are the ones with no touch screens and no gps tracking bull crap. Analog speedometers and tachometers are just as good as a digital one and can be repaired easily if they fail. Try repairing your newfangled vehicle when over half of its functionality shits the bed because theres an error with the console software.

I like analog gauges. I very much like knobs. I dislike anything digital in a car other than a touch screen. Cars need to be able to be operated at a glance and by feel.

I suspect speedometers are never completely accurate. So instead of an exact number, they'll use a needle and you can guess how fast you're approximately going

I much prefer analogue. Angle of the needle is a quick read + I don't like relying on a digital display for my essential information. Also aesthetics

Digital speedometer? Gross.

Wouldn't it be constantly fluctuating between speeds one or two numbers apart? Unless your foot is magic or you're in cruise control, lol. I feel like it could be distracting.

I prefer analog ones. I'm too OCD with digital ones trying to keep it at an even number

TBH I hate screens in my car and am trying to buy one without one (which seems impossible now)

Analog is less likely to fail, imo easier to read and is cheaper to service. There’s also the fact that the majority of drivers have had analog speedometers their entire life and getting rid of them will turn some drivers off of buying the car

What I wonder is why more cars don't have HUDs that are projected onto the windshield. That tech has been around and in cars for over 25 years. You don't have to take your eyes off the road at all.

Most stuff is digital these days. Speed is measured by counting number of impulses (wheel rotations) per unit of time, then displayed analogly on dash board using servos and similar. There are many reasons behind this. Some of them are legacy and people are simply use to them. Other is that analog you don't really have to look at them to read them. Just a mere positioning is enough to tell you approximate values. There are aesthetics involved as well. Readability in strong light. Etc.

I have both and prefer the digital one. I find it much easier to drive a precise speed with it.

I had a VW Tiguan that had both, but the digital one didn't poll very often so it was incredibly unreliable. My Audi Q7 has both too, but the analog one is on a digital display, which is kind of weird to think about. Like a computer using an analog clock.

My Lexus has a digital speedometer in the center, surrounded by an arc they can be used to show RPM or fuel efficiency.

My car has both digital and analog on the dash.

The position of the needle on the dial is easier to see with peripheral vision, versus numbers.

Some cars have a digital speedo HUD displayed on the windshield. I find it too distracting.

I see all these things about the digital gauges breaking on them and I find it pretty funny that out of every car I ever had/had access to, only one ever had the speedometer fail, and it was an analogue one. The needle itself on the display broke and would just swing back and forth wildly. I used my phone to get a speedometer app that used the gyro in the phone until I could get it fixed.

Cognitive load. Good operator experience, user interface, you want the operator of the vehicle to require the least amount of thinking to know about the vehicle. It's critical data they'll need an emergency is, and in emergencies, people's cognitive abilities go down quite a bit.

Just think about how you turn the radio down to find an address on the street, multiply that times a thousand. That's how people think in an emergency

Why not both?