That’s not really a fair comparison. Auto makers, , especially for cluster applications (and many infotainment platforms as often one in the same) will use auto qualified components .. AEC-Q100 grade 2 Typically. Sometimes they also have to build in safety (ISO26262)... That has a significant price and quality (low ppm failure rate) premium. Infotainment is now sometimes run from the same unit as the cluster .. component Costs can be 2-3x what you pay for a low cost consumer version. The other factor in the unit cost is longevity. Your average pc motherboard for example, isn’t built to last. Whereas a car unit has long life inbuilt into the design in something that’s moving and shaking about all the time .. Company I work for supplies semiconductors into the cluster and infotainment manufactures .. modern clusters / IVI aren’t simple, are incredibly powerful, with safety standards, with longevity, with quality. And the volume isn’t anywhere near as high as consumer stuff like on alibaba. Sure Audi makes some additional coin, but not as huge as you would think ...
screens come with additional complexity ...not simple. The backlighting, viewing angles , contrast ratios, wide dynamic lighting scenarios etc.. all much more complex compared to an old fashioned screen... implementation requirements are very different compared to a desktop pc screen....
I get that, but even with component costs that are 5x higher than consumer, there is still a huge markup. But I do understand that in the grand scheme of things, the auto industry runs on pretty tight profit margins, about 8% from what I can tell. I would guess most of that profit comes from options when selling cars, I would not be surprised to see very little profit on base model cars with no extras.
Though, the quality of the screens put into most cars is pretty poor. I am sure they do have to meet certain technical specifications and standards, but they are still generally very low quality. The screens in the B9 are better than many, but they are still relatively mediocre compared to many other displays. The reflectivity of the screen in my Seat Leon is higher than my phone, the contrast ratios are far lower, the resolution is far lower, the colour accuracy is terrible, the contrast ratio is terrible. It is slow, it is unresponsive, and it is buggy. I would be very interested to see what standards they are tested too. I don't doubt car infotainment systems are built to be more reliable than consumer grade equipment, but that should not excuse poor quality displays itself. There is very little in the display panel to actually go wrong, it is nearly always the driving IC's and power circuitry that fail. But these are independent of the display itself, and so again, do not excuse poor display quality. That said, when did you ever see a phone display fail through hardware fault rather than water ingress or physical damage ? I assist in the provisioning of smartphones across an enterprise, i've probably has several thousand phones go through my hands over the past 6 or so years, and I have never ever seen an actual failed display on a phone. I have had countless monitors at work fail, but it has always been the power circuitry and can usually be fixed by swapping out a dodgy capacitor. Display panels just seldom go wrong.
I would argue the largest challenges in reliability for auto infotainment and digital dashes are going to be software related. I do software development, and I sure as heck would not want to be responsible for developing the dashboard backend for the B9, or any other car with a digital dashboard. They must do a crazy amount of software testing, and I would bet it is built on pretty old (but thoroughly tested) frameworks and languages.
It still annoys me though, because the quality is so low, and there is no need for it despite all the ISO and reliability standards they have to meet. The newer Tesla's are case in point. The screens are not amazing, but they are still quite good. But more importantly they are fast and slick, they run at 60hz and are buttery smooth and have lots of features like you would expect from a modern iPhone or Android phone. Tesla have to abide to all the same regulations as other manufacturers, but they have pulled off a far slicker (if not perfect) infotainment system than other manufacturers. It is not entirely surprising, as they are in Silicon Valley, home to many of the best and brightest software minds. But it shows what can be done.
I suspect all of this will be forgotten about in 5 years or so though. Self driving cars are going to need so much compute power and development, that powering a slick infotainment system will be a relative breeze. Also, it is likely you will see 3rd parties like Apple and Google try and build the car software/display systems in their entirety themselves. I would not be surprised to see that you can choose whether you want an Android or iOS powered car soon. Both companies are rumoured to be working on it, and car manufacturers are more than happy to pass the buck over to those companies as their forte lies in building good cars, not building nice tech and software to go in them.