Pontiac G5 Dashboard
So right now, I’m driving a rental car. It’s a Pontiac G5. Not really my kind of car, but whatever, it’s a rental. My biggest issue with it thus far is that there is no analog engine temperature gauge in the dash. I can tell how much gas I have, how fast I’m going and how whatever it is the tachometer tells me. But what I really want to know is how cold or warm my engine is. Upon investigating a little, I found a button on my steering wheel that allowed me to flip through a few different options on the single line digital read out. It told me stuff like the outdoor tempurature, my tire pressure, oil life and lo and behold, the engine temperature.
Here’s the problem. The readout only told me the engine temperature without giving me the context of the range. If it tells me 35 degrees, I don’t know if that’s too cold, acceptable or too hot for an engine. I’d be better off with just a range that looks similar to my gas guage without knowing what the exact number is.
Poor usability strikes again.
Tags: car, dash, dashboard, G5, gas, gauge, odometer, pontiac, tachometer, temperature
March 18th, 2009 at 3:34 am
I have a G5… Believe me the car tells you whenever somethings wrong… If the car tempature is too low then it will be the first to flash and ding and tell you. So dont worry. I live in Pa and it was in the negative temp for a while and my tire pressure gauges kept dinging at me cause they were too low from how cold it was… but now that its warmed up a bit they turned off and are fine and I never even put air in them!