Most Unused and Unwanted New Car Features?

How do you get people to buy a new vehicle? The main way, historically, has been to tempt them with features and amenities that their old vehicle lacked. In other words – and put plainly – to sell them something better than what they’ve got.

The problem has become that new is no longer better – and in some important ways, such as long-term durability and reliability – worse. That may be why so many new vehicles have features and amenities that are at best useless and – at worst – annoying.

For instance, gesture control –

The ideas is to make it easier to operate controls that have become less easy to use, because they have been integrated into tap/swipe “menus” on the now-ubiquitous LCD touchscreens that all new vehicles come with now by not having to to tap/swipe the screen that replaced the buttons and knobs that were easy to use. Instead, you’re supposed to twirl your finger – to the right or the left – to increase or decrease the volume of the stereo. Or wave your hand like Luke Skywalker using his Jedi powers to select some item on the screen.

It might be neat – if it worked. If it worked well, I mean.

The problem is that most of the time it only sort of works. You twirl your finger and the volume does increase – or decrease – just too much (or too little) and then you have to try twirling again, to dial it back some (or up some). It also sometimes takes awhile for the system to register your twirling, which leaves you sitting there making strange gestures in the car – during which time you could have just turned a knob to the left or the right and adjusted the stereo’s volume exactly right.

How about those fake dual exhaust tips/cutouts? –

Dual exhaust tips once indicated the vehicle had a dual exhaust system. There is an important distinction there. Generally speaking, the only vehicles equipped with dual exhaust are performance vehicles and trucks that have V8 engines, both because it enhances the performance of the engine and because it makes sense in terms of the packaging. The V8 has four cylinders on one side of the “v” and four on the other. It has two separate exhaust manifolds (or headers) bolted to each side of the engine; each manifold/header dumps the exhaust into a separate exhaust pipe that takes the exhaust downstream to a muffler and from there, to the outside world via an exhaust tip on either side of the rear end of the vehicle.

When you were behind such a vehicle and saw those twin tips, you knew you were behind a performance vehicle equipped with a V8.

Now just about every vehicle – including crossovers with tiny four cylinder engines – has a pair of huge dual exhaust cutouts molded into the lower rear bumper, to make it look as if the vehicle had duals when in fact these are just dummies. They are kind of like the sock David Lee Roth reportedly stuffed into his spandex pants to make it look like he had more than he did.

Then there’s the in-car AI voice assistant –

Arnold famously said “talk to the hand” in one of the Terminator sequels. Many new vehicles have something similar. You’re supposed to talk to the AI – which is supposed to serve you as what they style a virtual assistant. By which is meant an assistant who isn’t human and not really there. What is there is a microphone that’s supposed to hear your commands – as for example to call someone in your contacts list (many people foolishly give their vehicles access to their phones, which means they are giving the vehicle manufacturer access to the data on their phones, which will be sold to marketers in order to try to sell them things they aren’t interested in) and a computer that is programmed to respond to them.

The trouble is the system has a hard time understanding commands as well as discerning normal conversations you may be in the middle of with voice commands. You’ll be saying something to someone you’ve already called who is on speaker and the AI assistant will butt in with something like, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t understand” – and you’ll then have to deal with getting it to stop butting in while you’re trying to talk with the actual human you were talking to.

Those “racy” paddle shifters –

Like the Start/Stop ignition button that has replaced the ignition key you used to insert and turn to start/stop the engine, paddle shifters are a gimmick inspired by race car systems applied to minivans and crossovers.

In a race car, a key is superfluous because no one parks race cars on the street; in an open wheel race car, electronic shifting is used in part because it lets the driver keep his hands on the extremely tiny race yoke as opposed to using one to shift gears. Things happen extremely fast in open wheel/F1 racing.

Anyhow, someone in marketing thought it would be a sell to put paddle shifters in minivans and crossovers – never mind that the supposed “manual” control of up and down shifting is mostly illusory, since the computer only permits up/down shift control within certain programmed parameters and besides, just leaving it in Drive will result in the quickest 0-60 times and lap times, because the transmission is already programmed to shift faster and better than you can.

Worst of all, arguably, is that paddle shifters are marketed as “better” than shifting for yourself; i.e., they are a consolation prize for the general disappearance of manual transmissions, even in sporty cars.

They are perhaps amusing for a few days/weeks. But the razzle-dazzle wears off quickly precisely because you quickly figure out that you might as well just leave it in Drive.

Finally, the whole host of “assistance” technologies –

Among the most egregious being the so-called  drowsy driver monitors that harass you if you don’t “sit up straight” and “keep your eyes on the road” – The sit up straight part sounds like a scolding kindergarten teacher and the “keep your eyes on the road” means you’ll be hassled if you maintain awareness of what’s to your left and right as opposed to tunnel-visioning straight ahead. You are being watched by infrared cameras built into the dashboard.

The worst part?

Almost no one actually wants all this stuff – yet it’s become standard in most new vehicles. It is like buying a cheeseburger and discovering someone thought it would be “good for you” to sub out the hamburger patty with a soy patty.

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