Video: 2024 Lincoln Nautilus Review: How Useful Are Its Tech Features?

But how useful is all this tech? We spent some time in a Nautilus Hybrid Reserve that's right around $70,000 and we have some answers. (bright electronic dance music) The Nautilus is the first Lincoln to get the brand's new curved dashboard display, and it consists of two screens that are positioned side-by-side and they measure a combined 48 inches across. You can choose what appears on the right side screen using the 11.1-inch touchscreen. And if it's just too much information for you up there, you can also use the calm mode and that limits what's shown to really pretty much just information in front of you on the driver's side. The screen in the Nautilus is very different than what you're gonna find in a lot of other vehicles, and when I first drove it, it was kind of distracting, but after spending more time in the vehicle, I've gotten more comfortable with it, though what I would like to see is more flexibility with what you can show on the rightmost side. Right now it's fairly limited to things like a clock, the weather, tire pressure information. It'd be nice to be able to show other things on that side too. The Nautilus has a squircle-style steering wheel. That's like a squared circle that we're seeing vehicles increasingly use as automakers give their cars these big displays. They use it so they can keep the steering wheel out of your line of vision so you can see what's on the screen still. I like to drive with a steering wheel pretty low, so the steering wheel wasn't blocking my view of the screen at all, but a taller editor on staff who also drove this noted that even with this design, some of the screen was still blocked for him. The steering wheel also has touch-sensitive controls on the right and left side for controlling audio and cruise control settings. So when you press this touch-sensitive pad, you get a visual representation on the screen in front of you of what that point on the pad can do. We've seen this design before in a prior generation of the Toyota Prius that had kind of similar style controls. It works okay here in the Nautilus, but it's still not as easy to use as just a hard traditional button that many steering wheels have had. The Nautilus also has the new Lincoln Digital Experience multimedia system that's controlled by the 11.1-inch touchscreen. It's based on Google built-in technology, so it has built-in Google Maps, the Google Play Store for apps, and the Google Assistant for voice commands. But unlike other automakers who use Google built-in technology that don't let you use Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, you can use those smartphone connectivity features in the Nautilus if that's your preference. The other thing you use the touchscreen for is controlling the position of the front air vents, which is very similar to a Tesla. It's the kind of thing that I could see impressing your passengers who maybe haven't seen this before, but it still strikes us as making something more complex that used to be very simple, and that was adjusting the vents by just using the little tab on the vent. I dunno, call me crazy. Most aspects of the Nautilus driving experience are in keeping with its premium pricing. The richly finished interior is quiet overall, the gas-electric hybrid drivetrain offers good performance and not a lot of excess engine drone, the brake pedal, though a bit soft, is also linear and predictable, which is nice, and that hybrid drivetrain gets pretty decent fuel economy, with a 30 mile-per-gallon combined rating. The Nautilus's biggest shortcoming is its ride quality. Our test car had the available adaptive suspension with 21-inch wheels, and it's a firm riding vehicle when you hit bumps in the road, but the biggest surprise, really, is the bounciness of this car. If I was in an older vehicle, I might think it was gonna be time to replace the shocks soon because the up-and-down body motions over even minor pavement undulations are really unexpected in a brand new vehicle. Another tech feature the Nautilus offers is BlueCruise hands-free driving, and it's pretty simple to use overall. When you're on a stretch of highway that supports BlueCruise, you get a message on that dashboard display that says it's available and then you just press the cruise control button on the steering wheel to engage it. It has a pretty natural feel overall and it's pretty confident using it in hands-free mode, but the busy urban interstates I drove it on just aren't as an ideal location to use it as the more wide open interstates you might find when crossing the country. The Nautilus's massive dashboard screen is one way for Lincoln's mid-size luxury SUV to stand out from the competition, and it's a potentially savvy move to bring in younger, more tech conscious buyers. Lincoln would do well to build on the current functionality of the screen to make it even more useful and maybe take a second look at the SUV's suspension tuning. If you'd like to learn more about the 2024 Lincoln Nautilus, be sure to check out our full coverage at cars.com/news. (bright electronic dance music)