My parents bought a used Prius a few months ago, and I saw it when I visited America this summer. The dashboard display reminded me of a cheesy, unrealistic display you’d see in sci-fi movie from the 80s. Just look at this:

Everything about this looks fake to me. The weird, segmented gauge on the right, all the random little numbers and abbreviations… but the icing on the cake is the phrase “Hybrid System Indicator”. I mean, really? It just reeks of meaningless, high-tech-sounding nonsense.

Even funnier is the secondary “Energy Monitor” display. Check this out:

Doesn’t that look like something from Total Recall or something?

I suspect part of the reason for the Prius’ dashboard design is rooted in the whole “life imitates art” thing. They probably wanted something that looked high-tech, so what better way to evoke that than with a design that looks like it came from a sci-fi movie? I probably would have drawn inspiration from movies that came out after Reagan left office, but whatever, to each his own.

Either way, I hereby deem this little piece of reality to be unrealistic.