2024 Porsche Cayenne Dashboard Shows Porsche’s Future: Passenger Screens, HVAC Buttons, No Analog Tach
Its design may come from the Taycan, but the new Porsche Cayenne uses buttons where the EV had a screen.
The 2024 Porsche Cayenne's dashboard was revealed on Wednesday, and it shows how much the Taycan has already defined the future of Porsche interior design—but also, how the role of screens may be diminishing, at least in one key area. The SUV's exterior will be revealed in China next month.
The Cayenne's interior is new and similar to the one found in the Taycan, with recessed screens in the dash and an element extending onto the center console with grab handles on either side. In place of a screen there, Porsche's gone back to its typical touch capacitive buttons but added in some hefty toggle switches to control the HVAC system.
Porsche's head of user experience design Ivo van Hulten said that for the Taycan, the team was so caught up in breaking ground on Porsche's first electric car that it might've gone just a bit too far with putting every control on a screen: "Maybe [the Taycan interior] was so digital that for this generation we learned that we want to add a little bit more analog flavor again."
Driving-related controls remain concentrated around the steering wheel, with the shifter relocated to the dashboard to the wheel's right, while the starter remains left—though it's now a button instead of a switch. The wheel itself is now a 911-derived design, with integrated controls for driving modes, the head-up display, and the instrument cluster, which is no longer anchored by an analog tachometer. Instead, it's one curved 12.6-inch digital display perched above the steering column with multitude of display settings.
A central 12.3-inch touchscreen controls the infotainment, with comfort- and driving-related functions plus multimedia and navigation. (Also, it has a physical volume knob.) The latter two are both native or available through the integral Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and can be controlled through an optional 10.9-inch passenger display. It also offers streaming from Screenhits TV, and features a special foil that makes its content invisible to the driver. To top it all off is a cooled smartphone storage chamber with wireless charging and four more USB-C ports split front and rear.
The new Porsche Cayenne will be fully revealed at Auto Shanghai on April 18. It's expected to be the last ICE Cayenne as Porsche embarks on a journey to be mostly electric by 2030. However, the Cayenne is rumored to lose its title of the largest Porsche to a three-row electric SUV expected in 2026 or so. That might free up the Cayenne to spearhead Porsche's off-road charge. Here's hoping that means another Cayenne Transsyberia.
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