It’s that time of the year again when the J.D. Power Initial Quality Survey results roll out, a compilation of things new car buyers don’t notice on test drives. From steep software learning curves to plug-in hybrid problems, this occasionally mocked and frequently misunderstood study contains many of the usual suspects. However, among the litany of tech-related grievances sits an unusual trend: a rise in complaints around cupholders.
Hang on, haven’t the god-awful cupholders of old disappeared? For the most part, yes. Flimsy affairs that slide out of the dashboard and vague recesses prone to launching empty fast food cups like they’re Scud missiles have gone the way of smoking sections on airplanes. But even though most manufacturers have solved for existing problems, consumers are busy cooking up new ones. It turns out that oversized reusable cups are to blame for the bulk of new cupholder complaints, as Automotive News reports.
“A lot of people are becoming more eco-conscious with this type of stuff, so we’re all using the Stanley cups and the Yetis and bringing those into the car,” [J.D. Power senior director of auto benchmarking Frank] Hanley told Automotive News. “So OEMs are having to figure out, ‘How do I accommodate those giant cups?’ It’s really a customer-driven change that has to take effect because of those different cups.”
If customers are bringing their own cartoonishly large mugs, maybe the answer is to just make big-ass cupholders, right? Not so fast. Simply enlarging cupholders in every direction without accounting for diameter adjustment and depth would be an overcorrection. Sure, it would keep giant travel mug owners happy, but those who stick to smaller cups could be upset if their beverages flop around or are tricky to retrieve.
Admittedly, part of me wants to be elitist here and scoff at the prospect of someone toting around a tumbler multiple times the size of their bladder, but before you call me a dehydrated bitch, I’m not saying leave any sort of beverage container at home. Unless you’re going on a long hike or a camping trip, using a smaller bottle but refilling it more often is less cumbersome, doesn’t make the user look like an overgrown Cub Scout, and won’t block nearly as much of your vision should you choose to take a sip while driving. However, these comically large mugs are quite popular, and door storage isn’t always a practical option, like it is in the Ford Maverick pictured above.
My take on what makes a cupholder good is simple: It has to securely accommodate a takeaway ice cream sundae, an eight-ounce small coffee, a slim 8.3-ounce Red Bull can, and a 40-oz vacuum-insulated tumbler without blocking any controls, and let you easily grasp these items for retrieval. No crushing your sundae and spilling it, no ripping the lid off a small coffee trying to pick it up, no having your energy drink come loose, and still enough room for all but the biggest of vacuum mugs. Ideally, these cup holders would be positioned either ahead of a console-mounted shifter if one’s installed or on the dashboard like in an E90 3 Series, feature a spring-loaded door or prongs to maintain tension against the beverage, be shallow enough to allow for easy retrieval of small cups, and be easy to clean.
So far, cupholders following that design brief are few and far between, likely because spacers at the bottom add cost and shipping logistic complexity, but some manufacturers are definitely better at cupholders than others. The Nissan Z has a cupholder that puts your beverage in the way of your arm when shifting into reverse, the newest Kia cupholders with the rotating rings look cool but don’t hug onto smaller cups, and BMW’s decision to put USB ports on horizontal surfaces right next to cupholders seems perilous. Still, the industry can improve, and cupholders are one of the few relatively cheap things that can really change a customer’s life for the better.
Top graphic image: Thomas Hundal
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1st this is an excellent post Thomas bc it is highly relatable and therfore encouraging people to comment.
Personally our daily drivers have regular sized cup holders and fit pop cans or regular bottles just fine.
If we’re going on a long trip with the kids, we’ll pack up the car and each of us will have a water bottle (16 – 24 oz) fits the cup holders fine + I’ll bring 2 larger (I think they are 40 oz) water bottles in a backpack so we can refill the smaller water bottles w/o having to stop.
If we’re going hiking or to a kids sports game, same set up, seems to work really well.
For short around town trips our regular water bottles seem to work perfectly well and while we could stop to fill up at any time, it seems to be a pretty rare occasion that is needed.
I went from a 2001 Jetta that had a cup holder that could barely hold a cup to a 2017 Accord that can hold almost anything, but not quietly. It’s why I just sit and drink in situ. The same with fast food. I don’t end up with food on my shirt, pants and upholstery. My kid is 31. All that stuff is on him now.
Thomas “dehydrated bitch” Hundal has a ring to it
The irony is that the pop culture nature of these things actually makes them signficantly less eco-friendly. When you have to replace your tumbler every three months so you can have the latest special edition color it’s a horrible waste of resources.
Somebody, just tell me why, THESE have existed for 50+ years and no truck manufacturer ever thought, “Hey, a bunch of our drivers load one of these up for the work day. We should make a spot to safety and securely hold these!”
I remember sitting as a kid in my dad’s 1974 F-150 in the middle of the bench seat. I had two jobs: Keep my legs out of the way of the shifter, and hold dad’s Coffee Thermos.
This is all because of stupid social-media “influencer” trends led by the types of young (ish) women who put their feet on passenger dashboards. A pox on all of them.
One of the many things I loved in my 2017 GTI is that my 1.5L Camelback bottle fit perfectly in the door, as if it was made for my bottle.
It’s a manual and a fountain drink with a straw in the holder closest to the shifter is an annoyance that I have to work around, 2nd holder is fine.
There’s nothing funnier than tourists walking around with Stanley mugs.
Removable cup holder inserts, my car came with them. Insert in holds a 12oz can, insert out holds a full stainless steel water bottle.
The insert probably costs like 50¢ for them to make. No issues yet.
I cannot fathom why, especially in European cars that tend to have higher take rate of manuals, anyone would put cup holders behind the shifter so you risk knocking into it every time you shift.
At the same time, I can’t stand when the designers try to tuck the cupholder away in front of the shifter (looking at you, Audi) so that you effectively can’t get even a standard 20oz cup/bottle in there without having to do a complex wrist maneuver.
That was the incentive NOT to eat or drink while driving in Europe. Compared to the United States, driving is more stressful and requires lot of concentration. That is exactly why the Germans didn’t understand the American insistence of having cup holders until they drove in the United States.
Also, northern Europe especially doesn’t (or didn’t use to at least) get hot enough to require someone to be constantly drinking water. So there’s less need to always be toting a massive bottle.
Unfortunately, we have an incredible heat wave this week in Germany with temperature hitting 35° and higher in most areas for three and more days.
I observed lot of passenger vehicles, commercial vans, public buses, on the road with windows closed during the heat waves: those have air conditioning systems. Same with many supermarkets, stores, and newer trains. If you tell the Germans in 1990s and early 2000s that air conditioning system would be very common in 2020s and beyond, they would call out, “Spinnst du?” (are you bonkers?).
I like that you don’t want them in front of or behind the shifter.
Correct! So long as dashboards protrude so far into the cabin, in front isn’t ideal. Just put them to the passenger side of the shifter and everyone wins.
Okay I will solve one last problem for free for the site but then I want a parade, money, or a JT original drawing. If people want eco conscious then offer the water bottle that fits in the cupholders. Then you know it fits and you can get $100 for it. And I am sure if you approach the Ikea folks you could create a telescoping cup holder that would fit everything from an ice cream cone to a big gulp.
This is a great idea. An Audi (or whatever) branded Yeti that fits. A partnership where everyone wins!
Sorry, too logical.
Laughs in farm kid growing up with half gallon igloo jugs. Them things were nasty. Heaven forbid you got one from the backwashing mouthbreather who shall go unnamed.
For the best that none of them had an inner straw anymore. You just tilt your head back and let gravity do the work. Got less slobber that way.
Car compaies, make cupholders for those, I dare you.
I found the soda stream bottles (soda stream itself is absolutely not worth it financially imo) are pretty nice to use for reusable bottles. The tall one fits 1L of water and fits in a normal sized cupholder without all the unnecessary bulk of the mega mugs. But yeah maybe that obnoxious mug fad should stop being a thing and the problem largely goes away 🙂
Just buy a cupholder adapter. I’ve got one and it works great for my nalgene bottle. It’s removable and doesn’t take away from other storage like a built in one from the factory would
https://a.co/d/4fT31Eo
This got me wondering why cup holder to container adapters aren’t more common. I know they exist, but they seem like the kind of thing every gas station would have in a display next to the register. When I’ve seen them, they seem to be an even lower display priority than black licorice.
They probably cost ten cents to extrude in plastic and they can be sold for a giant markup.
A company like Starbucks could even do something sneaky like sell specialty drinks in a cup that doesn’t fit in standard size cupholders and then try to upsell every drive through customer on an adapter for a couple of bucks more.
An adapter would only work if the original interior was large enough to fit the largest container. You can’t adapt a 12 oz cupholder to fit a 32 oz big gulp but you can adapt a 32 oz cupholder to fit a 12 oz soda. But these VE cupholders are 12coz
The adapters stick up. So they stick into the standard diameter cupholder, and allow for a larger diameter bottle to sit above. Works for most center console cupholders.
Exactly. They can be a small diameter base that goes in the cupholder with a larger diameter ring attached to the top that holds the cup.
Difficult to believe we have gone from “you put your thermos in the basket, then you put the basket in the car,” to people fretting about this sort of thing.
Especially as most of the insulated bottles I have seen are made in China with foam insulation which is made out of some of the most poisonous chemicals ever made, which should never be incinerated when starting to look shabby, and which when buried in landfill gradually leaks dangerous fluorocarbons into the atmosphere as the foam degrades….
Just wait till a minor car fire turns into death for all in the car from burning foam…. That might move the numbers.
Every thing is poison nowadays
To be fair, everything in the past was also poison.
My current daily and weekend cars are both old enough that they don’t have cupholders, so when possible, I usually wind up just wedging a plastic water bottle between the parking brake handle and seat bolster. Since those 16.9 ounce water bottles (or whatever size they are: the ‘regular’ ones) are usually made of very thin plastic, it works fine, mostly. When wedging isn’t an option, I just have to keep the bottle between my thighs or in the passenger seat, semi-supported by whatever spare shirt, daypack, or grubby dog toy that’s handy. Neither solution is ideal, but works well enough for bottles with caps/short trips. I’d not risk either strategy with any sort of hot or cold take-away beverage though… those lids always come off under lateral compression.
I keep meaning to add an aftermarket cupholder to each car (a Volvo 240 wagon and an NA Miata) but the prospect of doing all the time-consuming online research necessary to find ‘the best’ possible one has kept me from doing it at all, in hopes that I might expire before actually getting around to that unpleasant chore.
I hear you. Analysis paralysis meets procrastination administration.
Yes, exactly. 🙂
As a fellow ‘dehydrated bitch,’ I think car companies should ignore these types of consumer complaints.
I saw a fidget spinner in a Five Below last night. I’d totally forgotten about those, in the same way people will stop using their Mugus Giganticus and move onto yet another ‘look at how environmentally conscious I am!’ product.
I dunno. My wife, and therefore my entire family, has large vacume insolated water bottles. We’ve been operating like this for years now.
I’m not against the general concept of them, but the strangely over-large ones (does someone really need to carry a half gallon of water in their car on a daily basis?) confound me.
I have a well-worn 18oz Reduce mug that is big enough for my cup of coffee on my commute, and that’s fine for me.
The “eight 8 oz. glasses of water a day” myth is deeply embedded in popular culture,
Given that my urologist and oncologist recommend this amount I’m not convinced it’s a myth.
The scientist who published that first “Drink more water” publication admitted that they just pocked a number for that paper, and went too high.
Yes, in the initial medical reference, it is less than 64 oz, and also also, it is referring to the total amount of water intake including in all foods eaten, constitute the bulk of it. And yes, it was an arbitrary number, not resulting from a proper scientific study.
There’s an NYT article from a few years back where the author researched the origin of the 8 x 8 z spec, in medical and popular literature. That is what they found.
8x 8 oz. glasses is is simply memorable and repeatable. A perfect example of the original definition of a meme, which is a thought or piece of information (true or untrue) which is self-reproducing and thus persistent.
It is like the way “a stitch in time saves nine” persists from colonial days, since it both is good advice and it rhymes, while “a stitch in time saves eight” would have died an immediate death, as would “a small bit of repair in the present obviates the need for a larger repair in the future.”
To the other commenter, your urologist is repeating unfounded semi-BS, in an honest effort to get you to drink more — which may be a positive thing for you, despite the incorrect quantity.
My 24oz with a twist close drinking spout is fine. It fits in all the cupholders and tucks into a backpack just fine. My wife has one of those absurd Stanley cups that looks like a mug with a straw. It’s too big for most drink holders and is a pain to carry around. I have no idea why she likes it.
I am guilty of using a comically large vacuum flask, it’s a literal gallon. But I work outdoors in the desert and can go through 1.5 gallons in a shift easily.
Listen, after I saw woman get out of her car with a glass rocks tumbler full of some sort of liquid with large ice cubes at the service department I worked at, I question nothing anymore. Cupholders will grow until they can hold a Methuselah of wine
Methuselah? Lightweight.
Melchizedek or gtfo
Just learned there are bigger sizes than a Nebuchadnezzar, thanks!
I just like saying the word “flagon”.
“Firkin” is also a fine word.
25+ years in the winemaking biz, so I’ve picked up a few good bits of trivia!
If it can’t hold a hogshead, I am not interested.
I’m not what I used to be, my Irish and German ancestors would be disappointed
I believe they’re known as big dumb cups.
Get in there Josh!
I believe the logic next step are individual built-in insulated dishwasher safe hydration units which you can also strap to your back – and are accessed for hydration via flexible stainless steel straws.
Just fill with water, add your preferred flavoring powder (Coffee, Tea, Cola, Citrus, Berry or Dr Pepper – whatever that is), shake, and insert between the seats in what was formerly a console (since there’s no drive shaft, gear selector or exhaust pipe taking up that space anymore) for effortless on-the-road hydration!
Hmm, but that doesn’t make the vessel front and center. The appeal of the Stanley mugs is that everyone has no choice but to see that you have one! Just like iPhone cases let people see the Apple logo, can’t let others not know what brand you base your personality on!
Funny. I must not be the cultural norm. Every iphone case I’ve gotten but one was intentionally selected partially because it covered up the apple logo, or back in the day I had “skins” on two of them. And my vehicle is debadged.
lol, I firmly believe that everyone on this website is not the cultural norm but that’s why we hang around.
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Just convinced my 11yo to downsize. Life is SO much better now that the weapon she was using is no longer used. Hits the car, doesn’t fit anything, ridiculous to see a kid holding, doesn’t fit backpacks, and way more. Thank God my 9yo is also looking to change too!
I have slowly come to realize that people have no idea what’s acceptable ergonomics. Having a tankard in your car is a nightmare to deal with, because often you have to shove the handle off to the side, which makes it a bitch to pick up, so you pick it up by grabbing the lid except the lid comes off because Rubbermaid build quality, and so next time you try to grab it around the circumference except the the thing’s so big you can’t wrap your hand halfway around it and it’s too smooth to friction grip like a basketball, and so you’re fumbling trying to hold the damn thing against the passenger seat backrest so you don’t tip it over, except the fucking lid comes off again and OH LOOK THERE’S A CORNER.
All containers should have a base that conforms to the dimensions of a twelve ounce can, and if they don’t I hope the plastic eating bacteria gets them.
Had a 1997 Del Sol with cup holders attached to the armrest lid. You opened the lid, flipped down the holders. If you kept anything in the box there wasn’t enough depth for a bottle. Current Mazda3 manual cup holders are inches behind the shifter so any size bottle jabs your arm when shifting.