It turns out that more technology in cars isn’t necessarily something customers want, and it’s not really improving their driving experience. We know my thoughts on the matter, but I’ll do my best to stay impartial on this latest survey from JD Power that shows most customers don’t appreciate technology in cars unless they can see a clear benefit to them.
JD Power’s 2024 U.S. Tech Experience Index Study evaluated over 81,000 drivers’ experience with “advanced vehicle technologies” in 2024 model year vehicles after 90 days of ownership, It turned out to be a pretty mixed bag when it came to what people liked using. There are a number of tech features that customers like using because they feels that it answers their needs, but at the same time there is a whole lot that don’t get used very often or are continually annoying, according to the survey.
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Data privacy is a concern of mine.
Car makers see technology as a data mining opportunity to force us to use their shitty infotainment systems to track our every move and interest, and then milk us with subscriptions.
My parents just got a new car with one of those tablets built into the console. They were showing it off to me and turned it on, only for the radio to be blaring and my dad had to go through like 5 menus to get to stop it from playing.
I recently had to drive my parents’ new Volva XC40 and that thing is one of the most overengineered vehicles I’ve ever ridden in.
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The lane assist is kinda great while driving because if you drift a little it helps keep you in your lane. But I found myself literal fighting against the wheel whenever I was genuinely changing lanes, on a lane-ending merge, but more importantly trying to not get sideswiped when a semi drifts into my lane.
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Instead of traditional shifter, or even shift buttons like my '14 MKZ, this thing has a 3-position shifter knob to go between R-N-D, a separate long-press button to simply put it into park (and by long press, I genuinely have to verify on the dash it’s is park because I almost jump a parking block more than once since I didn’t press long/hard enough) and a separate little knob in the center console whose sole purpose is to turn the car on and off.
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The electric child-lock is a nice little button mixed in with the window controls on the driver door arm rest…which both myself and my parents have accidentally engaged on a number of occasions by resting our arms on the arm rest.
Aside from that, even in my car I outright HATE the auto environmental controls where you have to set an internal temperature and when the temp reaches that it changes the air to maintain. So if it’s a blazing GA summer, and i set the thermo at 69 (nice) once the internal temp reaches 69 it starts blasting not-cold air.
While the lane assist and adaptive cruise control can help a little on those long trips, I genuinely dislike them because I believe it actively encourages the driver to not pay attention to driving.
The lane assist is kinda great while driving because if you drift a little it helps keep you in your lane. But I found myself literal fighting against the wheel whenever I was genuinely changing lanes, on a lane-ending merge, but more importantly trying to not get sideswiped when a semi drifts into my lane.
Hmm. Do they have a thumb button or something you can hold down to quickly and easily override it?
… What kind of car is this? 😂 (Look at the first sentence)
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I love the adaptive cruise control of my ID3. It will not only keep the distance to other vehicles but speed up and slow down automatically based on speed limits and road features like roundabouts or turns not only by what it can see but also knows based on data from HERE.
It’s not always correct unfortunately and not usable in urban areas (should not even be allowed there in my opinion) but on highways it’s great.
But I hate the touch buttons in this car.
I think following speed limits automatically is a now mandatory feature imposed by the European Union.
Yes that rule came a year after my car was released but it does not require cars to automatically adjust the speed, it must only warn the driver.
I recently drove a Jeep Avenger (2023) and it had ACC and speed limit sign detection but it did not adjust the speed based on that.
It will get worse.
All 4runners still reigning supreme with chonky ass thicc boi buttons and dials. Give me Android auto capabilities on a small screen, backup camera, and rear parking sensors. That’s it.
My wife drives a 2023 loaded Kia Sportage. The thing is basically a smartphone on wheels. Giant dash screen with all the car controls buried in it, touch screen climate controls that double as touch screen audio/volume controls. If I want to change the AC temp I have to take my eyes off the road for a few seconds. Also a subscription service if you want to use any of the actual useful functions like remote start, remote climate control, remote door lock/unlock, sentry mode, etc. I hate where cars are at today.
Visited my parents while they were in Florida recently. Drove their rental car to the store, it was a newer model with “Lane Assist Technology.” It was terrible. Tried to swerve around a pothole, and the steering wheel vibrated and steered me back into it. Same thing happened as I angled the car to enter a roundabout, the damn thing just steered against me! It felt like at any time the car might just “decide” to swerve me into oncoming traffic! I’ll never buy a car with that trash masquerading as tech. Absolute garbage feature.
I have to back into a parking spot in a shitty, shared driveway. If I don’t throw my (automatic transmission) car into neutral and coast into place, my car will decide I’m too close to the curb and just slam the fuck out of the brakes while still several feet away from where I intend to be. It sounds awful and it scared the absolute shit out of me several times before I internalized the workaround.
Good thing I’m not a fan of the backup camera in general, or this problem would be even more irritating, since the camera turns off when I go from reverse to neutral.
Conversely, I’m a big fan of backup cameras. They’re a mandated safety feature on new cars for a reason.
A fisheye lens on the very back of the car gives much better situational awareness while backing out of a parking spot while flanked by two huge pickups/SUVs/vans.
Should have a setting to disable that.
My parents’ cars (which I drive often) both have backup cameras but my own car doesn’t. I often find myself backing up in my own car while staring down at my screen-less dashboard instead of looking behind me or in the rearview mirror.
Sounds like you used it on poorly marked surface roads.
Most lane systems do pretty well on well marked highways. Very useful for doing long drives.
Yeah. I wished Lemmy was different then Reddit but nope, bitchin gets the upvotes.
It was actually a well marked/maintained road, the pothole I refer to was more like a sewer manhole with a deep depression. Didn’t drive it on the highway, but my mother did, and said she was equally alarmed by how often the steering would “right itself” when she was trying to merge or change lanes.
Merge lanes are definitely not the best. I disable then.
As for changing lanes, your mother doesn’t use her blinker. That temporarily disables lane keep.
I got a loaner last time I had my car worked on at the dealership and had the same experience. Also the option to turn it off was buried in the touch screen menu and didn’t stay turned off next time you drove. When I brought it back the dude was like “So, thinking about trading up?” Fuck no, I hate this thing. I’m keeping my old Civic until the wheels fall off.
First thing I turned off in my new car when I got it. I hate the feeling that the car is no longer responding to my inputs.
I drive an EV for work, any my biggest gripe is the touchscreen. What is wrong with buttons. Why must everything be hidden behind a menu I have to navigate on a touchscreen. It feels less safe, frankly. In my own car I have muscle memory for each button and can do things like skip songs or adjust the AC without looking away from the road… But in the EV I can’t.
Why? Because it’s a looot cheaper to product.
Mhmm. Fewer moving pieces, fewer under warranty repairs. Also simplifies production, just need to screw in a screen.
Also there’s no need to design a new user experience for each model of car - things like designing buttons and a button layout that fits in with the overall interior design of the car. Just use a touchscreen and reskin the same UI.
And you only need to produce one screen and just re-skin the UI for your other product lines
I wish they’d do exactly what they’re doing now, but add a series of generic physical buttons along the bottom that can be remapped as quick buttons that either the OEM or end user can map to specific features.
E.g. A/C controls, skipping songs, opening apps or whatever.
My car does it pretty well. It’s got a touch screen, but it also has a knob and two buttons that I can use instead of the touch screen.
And charge people for over the air software unlocking of features that are already part of the car but they “didn’t pay for” when they bought it.
What does being an EV have to do with anything? ICE cars are exactly the same.
I totally agree with you though. Tech and UI in modern cars is pretty awful.
I would say eve typically do have more controls on touchscreens vs buttons. Now this issue is mainly observed in Teslas more than any other car, but Teslas are the most popular ev so ya it’s definitely more of a problem on evs.
Ok the article mentioned ai climate control. Bitch that’s not ai we have that in cars for decades
This article strokes my confirmation bias!
I love my 2010 Toyota with 140k miles, and I hope it runs forever. I could afford a new car if I wanted one, but all of the options have been getting worse for years! It’s just a car, but it’s a car from the perfect era of technology to be stuck with forever, and it drives beautifully.
I wish it got better gas mileage by 2024’s standards, for both financial and environmental impacts, but I believe it’s net better on both fronts for me to keep driving it than to replace it early. Fortunately it doesn’t snow where I live, so road salt won’t inevitably rust out the undercarriage.
There’s an aux in for the factory stereo, and I have a $25 BLE audio adapter with a ground loop isolator so there’s no alternator whine despite it being powered by the car. It’s not the most quiet for speakerphone calls, but it’s perfectly functional, and I’ve easily replaced it multiple times. It’s so much better than having a bad native Bluetooth audio system from that era.
I have a really solid dashboard mount for my magnetic phone mount, comprised of pieces from three different companies for maximal awesomeness. Then there’s my USB C PD supply that meets the charging standards of the present day relatively inexpensively and upgradably to any brand, powered by the “cigarette lighter” power socket. The existence of this simple medium wattage automotive DC power port is the greatest legacy left to us by the tobacco smokers of yesteryear. Is it gone yet in the latest cars?
A really slick trick I learned somewhere (maybe on reddit during the good years) is to use tiny zip ties on a cable that must run across your dashboard, such as the one to my mag charger. Put them at very strategic locations on the cable and facing the right way, and snip off the zip tie ends while still leaving a tail maybe about 1/4”, then jam that tail in between two pieces of dashboard trim. Do that repeatedly and the cable will go neatly and orderly around all your buttons and knobs without ever getting in the way.
An aftermarket dashcam is one thing that felt very worthwhile but was actually a decent amount of work to install, since I pulled a bunch of trim and ran wires through the headliner for that clean look with a rear facing camera mounted on the outside of the back. But I think those aren’t quite yet standard other than in Teslas.
2010 was the pinnacle of car technology, change my mind!
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https://jalopnik.com/drivers-hate-the-tech-in-cars-1851631523
give me buttons and dials, not touch screens and ai. I want to drive, not check social media. I’ll be keeping my 2009 until the engine locks up.
It’s not perfect, but the new (2019+) mazda system is very nice. It’s all controlled by buttons and dials, zero requirement to ever touch a screen. It all feels quite thoughtfully done, especially when you compare it to fords or teslas with a big dumb laggy iPad stuck to the dash.
Yep. I’m hoping my current car holds out until this 'smartphone on wheels" trend reverses.
‘smartphone on wheels’*
*Apple CarPlay and Android Auto not supported.
Honestly that’s all I want out of the center screen.
I like my 2018 Outbacks layout. Physical controls for AC, knob for volume, and a reasonable touch screen. The gauge cluster has a small screen in the center that shows me some basic info I’d like to see like tire pressure, MPG, etc.
I’m in this scenario, too.
When I needed a new car in 2019 I somehow found a six speed manual Crosstrek that has all physical buttons for climate and radio/volume that also has a backup cam and a touchscreen for CarPlay/Android Auto.
It’s perfect.
Yup.
I refuse to buy any vehicle made after 2015, and even that’s quite a bit newer than I’d like.
I wouldn’t mind having tech in my car, but I have a zero-tolerance policy for proprietary spyware-infested shit. Therefore, I can’t buy any vehicle made after 2015.
I’d like to have a double-DIN car computer with a Raspberry Pi, RTL-SDR (for the radio) and OBD2 connection, but haven’t gotten around to making one yet.
I’m ok with a decent amount of tech in a car. Like I’m fine being able to connect my phone to the car and have android auto take over the infotainment system.
But the HVAC stuff needs to be buttons I can access/control without looking or very minimal looking.
I don’t want/need my car to have a SIM card, or connect to wifi, and report what I’m doing. If they want to do that, then they can give me the car for free and I’ll drive it around letting them collect my driving habits.
Edit: Oh, and I’m sure as hell not paying some subscription fee on top of the price of the car.
If they want to do that, then they can give me the car for free and I’ll drive it around letting them collect my driving habits.
I mean, that’s kind of what they’re doing in that having another revenue stream will reduce the car price relative to what would have been the case if they couldn’t do so.
If some people want to make that trade, I think that they should have the option to do so.
I don’t personally want to make that trade myself, though.
I disagree, most of these subscriptions options are all built in and “enabled” if bought. There ain’t no car manufacturers looking to reduce their car prices for us. It’s profit above everything
Good news, lawmakers in the US finally started looking at this issue.
Bad news: probably will take years for change
Spoiler from the future: it’s legal, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
There are numerous headlines like:
118th Congress on track to become one of the least productive in US history
So good luck with that.
There’s activity at the state level too in multiple states. I heard something about California, then not a lot. Bunch of articles about Texas.
The company I work at is tangentially related to car company data collection. And this week, all employees received an email that we were legally required to save all records newer than 2005 related to a specific car company’s onboard data collection service.
So it does seem like the investigation has already got a subpoena or smth.
General Motors
Is the car company involved, yes.
As of 2022, Toyota still put physical buttons on their HVAC system and audio system.
I know because, against my advice, my wife bought a Toyota Rav4 Hybrid in 2022. I can’t tell her how to spend her money, but at least the car she got didn’t have some of this other bullshit.
I have a 2008 tundra a coworker just bought a new one so I asked for a ride. It was nice to see under the enormous center display, the HVAC controls!
Out of curiosity, why didn’t you want her to buy that specific vehicle?
I didn’t think she should have bought any car. Her old car worked. It wasn’t in the best shape in the world, but it was fine. And 2022 was a terrible year for buying a car.
That’s how you do it. Drove my 99 Crown Vic until the wheel literally fell off. Had it put back on and did another 80k on it. Traded it in at the dealer 4 years later, in working order, simply because it cost 80 dollars a week in gas, and that was back in 2018.
Yep. I had a 2002 Civic that I was planning to drive into the ground, but an idiot mechanic accidentally left the oil cap off when he was fixing it and it eventually destroyed the engine. The amazing thing is it took a very long time to destroy it. We successfully drove my car back from Baltimore to where we live in Indiana and several two hour plus round trips after that before it conked out on me coming home one day back in 2019. So I bought a used 2016 Prius and I plan to drive that into the ground. I just don’t need a fancy new car. I’d like to get an EV only because I hate getting gas, especially in the winter, and if I never had to do it again, I’d be really happy. But I don’t want one enough to get rid of the car I have now.
I drove the Vic with essentially a liter of burnt Hershey chocolate syrup for 3 hours on the highway, and then daily’d it for another 5 days.
Teens are rough on cars, but it survived.
Oh, the COVID-19 shortages? Yeah, that’s a good point.
Hey, at least she picked one of the most reliable cars on the market.
It’s a good car. I just wish she hadn’t decided to buy one in 2022. It’s bad enough to buy a new car now, it was worse then.
I love my subaru outback. It’s a great car. It does all the car things exceptionally well. It holds a lot of stuff. Snow, mud, fuck you it’s all pavement to me baybeee.
I fucking hate my Outback’s climate control, entertainment, map, and information screen. I understand newer models have improved slightly. It’s still awful. The only good thing about that fucking screen is that I can turn everything on from my phone. Literally every other function is awful to try to access and use while you’re driving.
I just bought a forester a few months ago, and my 2 stipulations on the cars I was looking at were all-wheel drive because I live in snow country, and a car no newer than 2018 (IIRC) because that was the year car companies largely switched from manual controls to a 16-inch screen with everything, including climate control, accessed from an app.
When I was talking to the guy at the dealership I bought it from and mentioned how much I disliked the new screens, he outright said, “Yeah, a lot of people don’t like them.”
2018 Impreza Base here. Manual ac controls (where, how fast, how hot), but the touchscreen infotainment is still AIDS. Several seconds from press to recognition. I need the screen to actually do stuff when I press it, not leave me guessing if I hit it right. If they can’t put a faster cpu, they need to have programmers that can optimise these units so they run responsively. There’s no excuse for that legendary input lag.
Good car though, other than that.
Got a '24 outback late last year. For the most part I love it-it’s comfortable, holds my giant dogs and it’s way better to drive in bad weather than my previous car.
I’d read reports on subaru forums that infotainment was bad, so my expectations were low. But even basic stuff isn’t functional. It has gotten less responsive over the months (reminder: we’ve had it just barely a year). The screen has several seconds of lag with every touch, and sometimes controls just don’t work at all. I don’t like that we have to use it for temperature control, and android auto integration is clunky (though that may not be Subaru’s fault).
Add that to the horrifying data collection practices and it makes me question ever getting a Subaru again.
Is it possible to get some kind of firmware update that you may not have received?
kagis
This Reddit thread makes it sound like you need to manually do it or the dealer will do it as part of the regular maintenance. Not sure if this is specific to that model year.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Subaru_Outback/comments/18cjt00/software_update_december_2023/
Reminds me I need to update mine!! Did you have to take this in to the dealer to get it updated or did you do it yourself?
Dealer did that
What does the dealer charge?
I am not sure. It was part of my regular maintenance.
And
Does this help the PAINFULLY slow response in the screen?
Yes, it does! The lags are very short now, if there are any at all.
The people there are also complaining about the touchscreen instead of physical controls.
Hey good catch! I’ll try to ring my dealership to see if I can get that checked out during my next oil change visit.
Thanks
Similar complaint here. We were ready to replace our 2011 outback and decided it would make sense to get something at least a bit more modern. Loved our outback, and honestly would have bought another if it weren’t for that damn screen.
After getting a gander at that thing, we seemingly confused (or probably just disappointed) our salesman by insisting we wanted the most simple, stripped-down style console they had to offer. Apparently we’re not the most common customers, but i know I’m kinda weird so fair enough. After he went back inside to find out which models they had on the lot that might fit that description, the only one that had a “simple” console was the base model Forester. It was just not enough to transition over from our comfy 6-cyl beast that just had a 6-cd changer with a 1-inch-tall screen and an aux jack, but everything was operated by buttons. Even the rear view mirror had a clever backup camera integrated into it. Makes more sense that way, imo. It was everything we needed and only a smidge more.
I really wish we could have just bought a newer model of the exact same car feature-wise… That outback was a great car 🙂
I’m ok with a decent amount of tech in a car. Like I’m fine being able to connect my phone to the car and have android auto take over the infotainment system.
This reminds me of my 2016 Honda Civic. It had just the right amount of tech.
When carplay works, it’s great. But mine constantly has issues connecting to phones. Both my wife’s iPhone, and my Android. Both are flagships that are a couple years old, so still very current and sufficient specs.
Meanwhile, my old aftermarket Bluetooth radio connects every time with no issue.
I do like the convenience of GPS and audio on the car tablet when it works. But honestly, it’s a distraction when it’s being fussy.
Exactly my experience.
Phone dash mount all the way!
I stopped using Android Auto on my infotainment system. I thought it was just me but when I’m using navigation (Google maps or wyze), the second I lose service for any reason, it completely exits out and cancels my navigation. I found that if I use it in my phone, it doesn’t have that issue.
2020 Subaru Forester, but friends with other cars (VW, Honda) mentioned the same issue. Not sure if this has been fixes in recent Android Auto updates or in newer cars, but I’m not going to chance it anymore.
I have a 2023 Mazda CX-5 and it has the perfect amount of tech for me. The headunit isn’t touch screen, but you get used to the control knob after about a day and eventually it just feels second-nature. Also, all of the hvac controls are physical knobs and buttons, which is amazing.
But the HVAC stuff needs to be buttons I can access/control without looking or very minimal looking.
100% this. I shouldn’t have to click through 2 menus on a touchscreen to change a basic environmental control. Give me a damn knob, so if I want to change something I can reach my hand over and turn 2 clicks without taking my eyes off the road.
