918’s Controls Use iPhone’s Gorilla Glass and Google’s Software

We have written, posted and drooled extensively on this site about the 918 Spyder for some time now. Today, however, we will take up an aspect of the 918 that we have never before discussed: its control system.

You might have noticed that new cars these days are fascinated with large LCD touchscreens that provide technology: navigation, traffic, car stats, weather, music, social media, Bluetooth, emergency services, etc. As commendable as these advances are, they always feel a bit second-tier, i.e. carmakers are good at making cars, but are they better at making consumer electronics than the people who make our phones, tablets and computers?

The 918 is a miraculous car, and Porsche wanted its driver controls to be just as awe-inspiring. To do that, it turned to German company S1nn to produce this:

Photos: Automobile Mag

S1nn makes audio systems for Audi, Skoda, Bentley, Porsche, Seat, Volkswagen, and Tesla. Two things make the 918’s narrowly-ascending center screen unique: first, the surface is made entirely from Gorilla Glass (the same surface used in Apple’s iPhone), and second, its software is the open-source code related to Google’s Chrome web browser. Interfaces can thus be written in HTML5, a popular, easy to write programming language that many of the most popular websites use.

The impact of HTML5 in the 918 is that instead of using proprietary software that’s slow, unresponsive and siloed from the interfaces that regular people use, S1nn’s can be easily updated, styled, and modified. It will look better, run faster and be more familiar to consumers.

It doesn’t hurt that a giant, sleek pane of Gorilla Glass looks a lot cooler in a car than a regiment of plastic buttons. Because 70 percent of S1nn’s revenue comes from Volkswagen Group, it’s likely that we’ll see a pared-down version of the 918’s system trickle into Volkswagen’s brands in 2015 or ‘16.

You can read more S1nn’s work on the 918 Spyder here, and how their audio systems adjust sound equalization based on whether the car’s seats are cloth or leather.