A dashboard system that felt advanced when a car was new often feels sluggish and dated within a few years. The cause is structural rather than a failure of any particular manufacturer.
Two industries with different clocks
A phone is designed to be replaced within a few years and its hardware is specified accordingly. A car is designed to last well over a decade and is specified for durability, temperature range and vibration.
When a screen and processor are embedded in the second, they inherit the first industry's rate of change without inheriting its replacement cycle.
The gap is widened further by development time, because the electronics in a new model were often selected years before the car reached a showroom.
Why the hardware is chosen conservatively
Automotive components must work at extremes of heat and cold, survive constant vibration, and remain available for years so that replacements exist for repairs.
Those requirements narrow the field to parts that are already proven, which usually means a generation or two behind what consumer devices are shipping.
The chip is also expected to run without cooling fans and without being reset by the user, so headroom is traded away for reliability.
How software makes it worse
Interfaces gain features over a model's life, and each addition consumes memory and processing that were sized for the original design.
Maps, voice systems and connected services grow in the same direction, and services that depend on external servers can degrade when those servers are changed or retired.
A system that felt responsive at launch is then asked to do considerably more with exactly the same silicon.
Why phone projection became the answer
Projecting a phone's interface onto the car's screen moves the computing to a device that is replaced every few years, while leaving the display and controls in place.
It solves the ageing problem for navigation and media because the software follows the owner rather than the vehicle.
It does not extend to anything that must control the car, so climate, drive settings and vehicle information remain on the embedded system.
What manufacturers are changing
The clearer response has been to consolidate the electronics into fewer, more powerful computers with deliberate spare capacity, so later software has room to grow.
Some designs also make the display module replaceable, treating it as a serviceable part rather than a fixed element of the dashboard.
Retaining physical controls for frequent functions is the other half of it, since a knob for temperature does not become slower when the software behind the screen does.