My wife recently fulfilled her long-time dream of owning a “gold Lexus.” What model did she want? She couldn’t tell you, nor did it matter. Any gold-ish, crossover-shaped Lexus would do, and in her case, twas a 2023 NX250 that fulfilled her dream. The little 250 is hardly the most feature-laden Lexus model, but as she was coming from a 2015 RAV4, it was absolutely loaded by comparison, and she loooves it. Mostly.
There are two features she does not like, and I mean really does not like: the lane departure system, and the stop-start system. Frankly, I don’t like them either. Make no mistake, I’m not against these features, but as executed in the NX 250, I (and my wife) would much rather do without them. In the case of the stop-start system, we do do without it; it’s now a muscle-memory thing to press the on/off button for the feature right after engaging Drive. I’d leave it on if the system stopped and restarted the engine more subtly, but I can feel the restart to a sufficient degree that it’s annoying, and it takes a beat longer than I’d like to restart.
As for the lane departure system, I keep that one on, as it is useful and a nice bit of added safety just in case, though it’s never engaged for me in the way it’s intended, as I’m a good enough driver to stay in my lane. Where it does engage, frustratingly, is whenever I intentionally move right to enter the turning lane at the 4-way intersection that I navigate on virtually every drive. Every time, the NX fights me and tugs the wheel left. I’m like, “I know what I’m doing, let me steer!” I suppose I could avoid this by swerving into the lane like a maniac, but that seems worse.
So I could happily do without those two new-car features. What’s on your list?
Top graphic image: Lexus
Ford’s door chime. I don’t have a Ford and will never likely have one again before I die, but sitting in my buddy’s with the door ajar makes me want to reenact the car smashing stage from Street Fighter II.
There is not one single improvement in cars in the last 30+ years that I need nor want.
I don’t want smart or adaptive anything. I don’t want the car to think or drive itself, even if it’s something as simple as lane departure that just keeps the car between the lines.
Heck, I don’t even need power windows. I mean how hard is it to rotate a handle a couple times?
The more computerized luxury crap, the more stuff to break, and the more expensive it becomes to repair and maintain it.
I would gladly do without everything since TPMS became standard equipment.
Turbocharger.
Most of them.
Cylinder deactivation. The savings are questionable for the consumer. The cost if a lifter fails are huge.
Wow, let’s see . . . touchscreen for anything but ACP, lane departure, auto braking, electronic door handles, stability control, radar cruise, regular cruise, heated anything except air that comes out of the vents, giant center consoles, rubber band tires, CAN bus architecture that requires normal replacement parts to be programmed with proprietary software unavailable to the consumer or only available with an expensive subscription, transmissions with more than 6 speeds, variable displacement, thick pillars on cars with low cgs, variable compression, lighting units that cost a fortune to replace when the integrated “lifetime” LEDs don’t last a lifetime, stiff suspensions in regular cars, seat bottoms made of granite, seat bottom bolsters sized for small 12 year olds, shitty leather interior “upgrades”, lack of color options for both interior and exterior, and useless notifications (“ignition on 2 hours” or the like). I know I’m missing some.
Oh, yeah, OTA connection.
Have you determined if using a turn signal to enter the right-turning lane eliminates the lane departure aid?
I’m not against the stop/start feature in principal but I also turn it off every time I start my car. I don’t have a car with them but screen based HVAC controls seem like a nightmare.
I just had a Mazda cx30 as a rental over the weekend and for the first day of driving it I could not figure why it chimed at me everytime I started the vehicle. It was a seatbelt chime, but it didn’t wait till I shifted out of drive, it started the second I turned the vehicle on. It would also flash some warning about the back seats so I thought that was what triggered the chime but I didn’t have anything in the back seats.
Anyway I found it obnoxious, I wear my seatbelt when I am driving but I don’t put it on until after I start the car.
I find the automatic “This car has a back seat! Make sure you didn’t have any kids and forget them back there since the last time you turned the car off!” Warnings to be the absolute stupidest shit imaginable.
Y’know what? Physical size. I know that material and energy is cheap and labor and engineering is expensive. I know they can charge more for bigger and make more profit. I don’t care. The bigger something gets, the more cramped I feel on roads and parking lots not built or striped for cars this size. And vision and lane warning and blind spot systems just remind me how cramped we all really are. Vehicles are too big. I can do without that.
Most things that are not present in my 2011 BMWs.
But above all else TOUCHSCREENS. Screens instead of proper instrument displays in general. Special hatred for screens that just display pictures of proper instruments. Absolutely the Devil’s work. A modest-sized display screen for infotainment and car setup purposes is fine. 7-8″ max, and let me turn the damned thing OFF. Control it with an knob controller that I can operate with my arm properly supported by the armrest. Both BMW and Mercedes got this right, then ruined it by adding idiotic touch and “gesture control”.
Gesture control. It’s a solution looking for a problem….even worse than those blank capacitive touch controls.
Gesture control might be useful in Italian cars, but I’d rather just have knobs and buttons. If you’re going to take your hand off the wheel to adjust hvac or volume, might as well just use muscle memory and a tactile surface. I don’t need to perform an interpretive dance every time I want to change tracks.
Or, here’s an alternate Torch-level idea. Replace gesture controls and the entire radio with a Theremin. Simplify…why have crazy interfaces, controls, bluetooth integrations, CANBUS systems and all that for your music when you can simply BE the music?
????????????
Edit: Sadly, my hand gesture Emojis do not compute here.
honestly any system with more than 4 speakers. I could probably tell a difference if it was 6 or 8, but I can’t imagine in an A/B test it would be enough improvement for me to care. And for some reason we’re in this stupid “arms race” where they’re boasting of their 38-speaker setups. Seriously, what are we doing people? You do not need more speakers in your car than you have in your home.
I would argue it’s absolutely desirable to have a fantastic system in your car, because you’re not limited in volume in the same way you are at any home that isn’t isolated from other people (or, hell, a home with roommates or family doing other things at the same time).
Still, yeah, number of speakers is an objective metric they can compare, so they splurge on installing a ton even if four really good speakers and a subwoofer or two would get the job done.
Luckily this problem does not seem to have spread to full-size vans.
Nah I spend enough time in my car to where having high quality sound is a HUGE benefit and luxury. My MB has a harmon kardon system in it, and (while there are detractors who simply wish they had 2 15s in the back) the quality is incredbile with a good signal going to it. 2 hour drive home from the airport after a long flight…air suspension, massage seats and nice, crisp music wipes it all away.
That wasn’t quite my point. I question the claim that there’s any improvement once you get into double digits in terms of speakers. It’s a quantity does not = quality issue. I agree there are different qualities of systems and I’d take a higher one over a lower as well.
I’d argue 6 is minimum…Sub, midrange, tweeter for each side. You’ll notice s difference if Tweeters are not firing at you (the high freqs get absorbed and reflected before reaching your ears), etc. So placement and frequency matter. That denotes the number of speakers. There’s definitely excess in some cars, I’ll give you that…but overall with proper crossovers and soundstaging and stuff, it ends up being a lot of separate speakers in a lot of cases.
I understand the theory. In my dream world I could compare the standard vs premium setup in the same car to experience the difference. I suspect I could pass a blind test without too much trouble and I also suspect I’d decide the differences are too minor for me to care.
Much like wine, certainly some people can appreciate a fine bottle and there’s nothing wrong with that. I just know I can’t. Just like most people have no business spending $100+ on a bottle, same is true for ultra high end sound systems. That’s my theory at least.
1. Lane Keep Assist
2. Road Departure Mitigation
3. Massage seats
4. Scented HVAC
5. Puddle lights
6. Voice controls
7. Gesture controls
8. Capacitive buttons
9. Kick sensor tailgates
10. Excessive number of drive modes
11. Air suspension
12. Panoramic roofs
13. Soft-close doors
14. Wireless chargers
15. AUTO START/STOP
Oh my gosh, I hate gaudy logo puddle lights with all of my heart and soul. Lighted emblems, too: just stop! It is time to stop. I do not need to broadcast what kind of car I have over and over again.
Moonroofs
Auto brake hold
“Auto brake hold”
I felt a great disturbance in the force, as though millions of Pittsburghers cried out at once and rolled back into the car behind them.
I can see where its useful, but I just got out of a rental Kia K5 that had it on an automatic and literally it would hold the brake, on flat ground, for no reason. I’d start the car in the morning and wouldn’t get that roll out you normally feel in reverse with no foot on the throttle. I hated it.
I despise lane departure systems with all my soul! The goal when driving is to be as safe and smooth as possible. On secondary roads, giving other cars and drivers good clearance, and following the best and smoothest lines on curves, often involves crossing over the edges of road lines or center lines. If you don’t, you can find yourself unnecessarily close to the traffic in the other lane, parked cars, driveways, etc. It can mean the difference between avoiding an accident and getting in an accident – and I don’t want my steering fighting with me or second guessing my choices.
Its a little less of a problem on highways… until your car decides the faded lines from some older construction work are real and tries to swerve you out of your lane.
I consider it a hazard, something that should be banned. It only exists so already bad drivers can use it to justify paying even less attention while driving.
Or giving room to joggers or whoever. It’s like driving Christine to feel the wheel tug toward the person because you so much as got near the center line.
Yes! Or dog walkers.
I live in an area with no sidewalks and lots of pet owners.
Driving Christine is a great description!
Start-stop and electronic door handles can go straight to hell. The latter of which is actively dangerous when emergency crews or passengers can’t figure them out when they don’t still work with a harder yank, and it’s an unnecessary complication anyway. Porsche in particular needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror and get right with itself after throwing unnecessary door-boners on the 992.
I’m also one of the few people who can do without cruise control or automated driving features. I finally got to try out Super Cruise yesterday and holy crap, that’s an incredible system that will even make lane changes on its own, but its “hey, take over, stupid” notifications didn’t seem as urgent and loud as it ideally should’ve been when it caught traffic slowing down ahead. Like, it seemed to give me a pretty brief window between noping out and disengaging entirely. (But I digress.) Mostly, I usually just can’t stay awake and engaged even with regular cruise control on for too long. I don’t know how people do it. I usually just see if these things work because that’s part of my job, ooh and aah at how they do (or AAAAUGHHH at the don’ts), and then take back over.
I can’t wait for the “too much stuff on a touchscreen” trend to be flushed down the toilet of history, too. Again, this is a “feature” that’s really just a cost-cutting measure by manufacturers that ultimately makes us less safe. I’m here to drive a vehicle, not do sci-fi cosplay and eat a guardrail. If it has to do with driving or routine vehicle operation—looking at you, glovebox buttons, power rear-view mirror settings, all things HVAC, heated seats and steering wheels, defrosters, exterior lights, cruise-control gap settings, basic radio tuning and volume, turn signals, window operation, blinkers, and I’m sure I’m still forgetting something that’s been enragingly moved to or buried within a menu or put in an unintuitive location!!—put it on a physical button, switch or knob, and one in a traditional location that should be obvious to anyone who hopes in the car, you absolute knobs.
Slick-panels are an unacceptable stand-in as well due to the lack of separation between faux-buttons and the take-your-eyes-off-the-road precision needed to make sure you’re actually turning down the butt-burners instead of throwing on the defrosters at full blast. Capacitive-touch switchgear in general has no place in a car. Again, we need controls that aren’t just more intuitive, easier and safer to use, but ones that are easier to swap out if there’s an issue. Manufacturers need to pay more attention to long-term ownership and repairability, especially since new cars are increasingly more expensive, folks are holding onto them longer, and owners are getting rightfully angry about our right to repair being infringed by proprietary or hard-to-work-on tech.
tl;dr—you’ll have to pry my non-touchscreen 2010 reasonably priced cars from my cold, dead hands, I guess.
(Wow, that’s a rant. Guess the Sudafed is kicking in. Hi, my name is Stef, I also test cars for work, and I’m tired of almost running off the road because my rump is getting too roasted and the seat-heater control is on some microscopic chunk of screen that’s impossible to press at a brief glance out of my peripheral vision.)
AND ONE MORE THING SINCE NO ONE WAS AROUND TO HEAR MY FESTIVUS RANTS: DO NOT MAKE YOUR CARS TOO RELIANT ON SUBSCRIPTIONS AND ONLINE ACCOUNTS. If I paid for the damn car already, I don’t want to be nagged to resubscribe for updated maps or whatever every time it starts up. I don’t want to be prompted to resubscribe to satellite radio. Shove these pop-ups where the sun don’t shine and just let me continue to use the car as purchased.
Also, did the automaker install the tech for heated seats or some other hard-wired feature? Let me use that as part of my PAID-FOR VEHICLE without needing stupid subscriptions. Again, cars are expensive enough right now without automakers trying to suck even more money on a recurring basis from consumers. We all have subscription fatigue. One of the biggest purchases we make should not become an irritating recurring example of “you don’t actually own this thing that you purchased.”
I shouldn’t be locked out of routine features if I don’t want to put my own privacy at risk by signing up for a connected services account. LET ME REMAIN DISCONNECTED! Untracked! With all my personal data kept out of the cloud! There are real, pressing privacy concerns in an era of increased surveillance, especially with automakers whose systems aren’t as secure as they need to be and whose data-sharing policies ask for WAY too much information from their users. I do not want an account and I will not purchase a vehicle that won’t run correctly without one or won’t stop nagging me to sign up. “Become ungovernable, drive an old car” isn’t the answer, either, even if I joke about it. As more newer cars fill the roads, it becomes easier for bad actors to recognize older cars and track them—be it an abusive ex, police abusing systems like Flock to try to enforce rules you disagree with outside their jurisdiction, or other examples of The Man wanting to punish you for being too brown or for merely disagreeing too much with what they’re doing. We need to start treating technology that can overshare data outside our vehicles as the violation of our basic human right to privacy that it is. Like distracting touchscreen controls, just because something is legal right now doesn’t make it right.
AND ONE MORE THING: Centerlock wheels.
Redundancy is nice to have, folks. I’m not racing my street car. Save these for dedicated race cars and spare me the need to have an admittedly cool torque wrench that’s half as tall as I am. I don’t need to worry every time I take a car to a shop as to whether they torqued the dingus down well enough for my wheel not to fall off. I like having four or five dinguses making sure I get where I need to go safely.
I’m a five-dingus-minimum kinda guy, but I’m a bit old school.
*hops in the car
(don’t mind me, I’m in cold meds mode)
These are great! It’s nice to see someone else post the longest rant in a comment section!
I must now channel this energy into the work I owe my actual job (and didn’t get done while zonked out on cold meds today).
My work had these great cold meds in terms of runny nose and headache, but they’re tough to find outside, but I was able to get the components separately: diphenhydramine and loratadine for the congestion and . . . shit, either acetaminophen or ibuprofen for aches, just take whatever works. The diphenhydramine is the only thing that works for my allergies since they banned a bunch of stuff in the early ’90s due to meth makers or something. I don’t usually bother with the loratadine unless the other doesn’t work. For me it takes longer to kick in, though it lasts longer. Of course, everyone’s different—diphenhydramine can cause drowsiness, but it doesn’t for me. Either way, good luck with the cold!
I can breathe again! There’s something going around the office and hopefully just resting in the warm house and taking it easy got it out of my system.
The bright side of such things is a renewed appreciation for something so basic as being able to breathe!
Every recent rental I’ve gotten in Italy has had a chime when you exceed the speed limit, or at least what the car thinks is the speed limit. It can be disabled but on every power cycle. Not to mention, vision-based systems make quite a few minor mistakes, such as thinking the speed limit is still 70kph from the entrance ramp, when it’s actually 130.
Also, very few Italians drive the speed limit. It’s either someone in an old Panda doing 90kph, or a German car in the left lane doing 180+.
Oh my gosh, kill that distracting chime with FIRE. “Features” like this that don’t remember the driver’s preference—especially when they’re jarring or distracting to some of us—aren’t features at all.
It’s a law from last year (Intelligent Speed Assistance); I haven’t looked into the specifics of the law, but I have to assume part of the requirements are that it comes on with every power cycle. I know a limit is a limit, but since that’s not how people actually drive, if you go even 1kph over it beeps. And beeps. And beeps.
Oh yeah, and it’s a bad law! These systems can and do misread signs.
That is odd, I could deactivate it for good. Maybe a brand issue
Honestly I forget the first car I had with it, but the next two were Renaults. You could disable the chime in Personal mode or whatever, but it never stayed in Personal mode. I’m curious what brand you have; I just looked up EU Regulation 2019/2144 and it had this to say about ISA in Article 6, 2(b), emphasis mine:
It’s annoying but there is one positive use case for non enthusiasts, when the driver wants to get a reminder when going over the speed limit on the highway and wanting to avoid a ticket
A turbocharged 1.X liter engine
BIGAZZZZZZ Center Screen can go to hell. Totally unnecessary, and makes it really hard to brace your hand without touching the screen somewhere unintended when trying for the 5th time to turn the goddamned seat warmer off while flying down the bumpy freeway.
The “convenience package” of a Temu air compressor and a can of Slime in lieu of a spare tire in my Leaf. Bad enough getting by on just a donut spare in my other cars.
Electric door handles.
There is no reason for them to exist. Door handles were a solved problem, they don’t take less effort – normal doors take no effort – they come with safety concerns.
Vaguely fancy, completely unnecessary.
I enjoy a lot of amenities. I like Bluetooth, backup and dash cameras, auto climate control, power windows/seats/steering/brakes.
Honestly, I could live without them (and I’ve had plenty of vehicles without all of those), but they make my drive so much nicer.
But I drive cars that are >10 years old.
When driving a newer car, I turn off the lane change assist, never use the adaptive cruise control, and generally prefer knobs and buttons to work the climate control and interior features… when they’re incorporated into a touchscreen menu that is 3-4 layers deep, it’s annoying.
I drive a second gen tacoma 5 lug single cab. I do just fine without everything. No power locks, no reclining seat, no power windows, no anything. I added cruise control because it was already wired in and just required any toyota cruise stalk but I had the truck 6 years before I added that.