I Just Spoke To Nissan’s Cupholder Guy And Got All The Hot Dirt That Beverage-Receptacle Insiders Aren’t Telling Us

You know what’s been a defining trait of modern cars? Cupholders. The drinking of liquids has definitively overtaken inhaling a small paper tube of burning weeds as the habit/vice so common that related equipment gets built into cars. Where once cigarette lighters and ashtrays dominated, now cupholders, those small cylindrical voids of space, rule. But what goes into cupholder design? That’s a question a child might ask, but not a childish question. Happily, a product communications person from Nissan reached out to me and offered me the opportunity to talk to a real cupholder designer! And they used the phrase “Drinkware of Tomorrow!”

The Nissan rep said they reached out to me because of a pean I wrote to the under-appreciated driver’s side cupholder, which exists in cars like the Nissan Cube, which I think is how I ended up on his radar. He offered to put me in touch with Chris Fischer, Senior Manager of Vehicle Performance Development, which Chris described to me as being a sort of “voice of the customer.” Part of Chris’ responsibilities include cupholder development, which, of course, is what I talked to him about.

I learned a lot of fascinating things about the current state of cupholderdom from my conversation with Chris; for example, at this moment, for four-door cars, do you know what the minimum number of cupholders is, at least based on Nissan’s standards? I can tell you it’s more than two, which Chris called the “cost of entry,” meaning that pretty much every car that exists today must have at least two cupholders in the center console between the seats.

But let’s get back to Nissan’s minimum: do you want to take a moment to guess? Two? Four? Six? An odd number? Nope. It’s eight.

Yes, eight! Eight cupholders is the absolute least number of cupholders Nissan puts into their four-door cars. That means two cupholders in front, usually in the center console between the two seats, two in the rear, usually on the back of the fold-down armrest, and then one in each door pocket, usually designed for a water bottle. So, two plus two plus four gives our eight cupholders.

That means each person in the car has access to two cupholders, generally, though some of Nissan’s cars can sit three abreast on the back seat, meaning each person gets 1.6 cupholders. Oh wait, in that use case, though, the rear two armrest cupholders would be inaccessible! Then we’re down to 1.2 cupholders per person with five people in the car, though accessibility for that middle-back-seat person will be tricky, at best.

Even more fascinating is what Chris told me about Nissan’s market research into exactly what people put into their cupholders, um, drinkware-wise. Personally, I would have thought that standard soda-type cans would be pretty common, but boy was I wrong. The most common cupholder denizen seems to be refillable water bottles! Those big plastic ones!

After big refillable water bottles, the next most common vessel that ends up in American cupholders seems to be paper coffee cups, like Starbucks cups or whatever, in all of their variety of confusingly- named sizes. Then were disposable water bottles and then, much further down the list than I’d have expected, were your standard aluminum soda cans.

As you may have noticed as you pictured each of these pieces of “drinkware” in your mind, the scale of them varies pretty dramatically. Chris noted that, as with other sorts of interior fittings, like car seats, you won’t ever be able to please absolutely everyone. As he told me,

“You can make the best seat in the world and still somebody is going to complain about it,”

…because such is the nature of humanity, I think. Cupholders are similar; no matter how flexible you try to make them, at some point someone will try to cram something in there that doesn’t fit, so all a cupholder designer can really do is try to make ones that fit the majority of items.

To do this, Chris’ team relies on what he called “fingers” – spring-loaded little tab-like things that allow a larger-diameter cupholder to still hold smaller vessels securely. You’ve seen these before in cupholders, I’m sure. Most Nissans have three per cupholder, though larger SUVs and Trucks like the Titan or Armada will have four. The physical inner diameter of a cupholder must be made to the largest size of their largest targeted vessel – a Yeti mug, for example, tends to have a diameter at its base of around three inches. On average, cupholders in most cars range from three to four inches in inside diameter.

I also asked Chris about the benefits of positioning cupholders where HVAC vents could add to either the cooling or heating of the beverage, and while he acknowledged that there could be some benefits, they were fairly minimal, and many modern vessels are so well insulated that such passive thermal management is pretty unnecessary, and the cooling power of the HVAC system is likely better left to cooling or heating the people in the car.

I also asked about those driver’s side cupholders that I find so appealing, and while Chris acknowledged they were “cool when executed well,” he noted they’re pretty limited in the sizes of vessels you can put in them, because of their location. As a result, I got the impression they would remain a niche segment of the cupholder universe.

When I asked what people seem to want from cupholders, cost or feasibility be damned, the results surprised me a bit:

“People love adjustability, and they love as many cupholders as possible. If space were no issue, we’d add another couple in center console.  One challenge is we need to make them look nice but they need to meet certain requirements — how to make it look cool and work well is always the challenge. Lately, lighting is now a big thing, changing light colors—customers love lights in their cars, love ambient light systems.”

I also brought up my ideas for integrated trash-management systems in cars – I’ve written about these ideas before – and the concept of a cupholder that allows for empty cups and cans to be just shoved down, through a spring-loaded bottom of the cupholder, into some kind of trash receptacle that can then be emptied out. Sorta like what I’ve mocked up before:

I think he liked the idea, but I don’t get the impression Nissan is going to incorporate it into their next-gen Sentra.

One last thing that sort of surprised me is that cupholder importance seems to still be largely an American phenomenon. Chris told me that his Japanese colleagues at Nissan don’t hold the cupholders in quite the same level of importance as we do in America, and it seems that buyers outside of the US don’t focus as much on number of size of cupholders.

That’s okay! It’s another thing we can be proud of, as Americans. The country that cares the most about drinking things while driving! USA! USA! USA!