Do you have a useless car feature?
I have a lot of buttons my car I don't use.

One of them is the power trunk.
My wife uses it but I never do.

So, not completely useless, just useless to me. Lol

This thread was inspired by:

https://x.com/financedystop/status/1965234452923052387?t=I-t99MzEXSIb6AONkjKVzQ&s=19

 

Just shows you how people see things differently. We find power trunks / frunks to be extremely useful and use ours all the time.

 

editing to add a more useless feature: in-car wifi thru the vehicle itself. This is nothing more than a SIM card paired to an antenna, that operates worse than the phone in your hand would if you used it as a hotspot for some other device. As more and more wireless plans become unlimited, what is the point of car-based wifi?

auto high beam is utterly useless to me. With how bright our modern LED/HID lights are in this country and how they get aimed, there is almost no need for high beams at all, let alone automated ones. If you can't see well enough, just hit the stalk so you can. It's not hard to remember to turn it off when you see another car approaching, because at that point you don't need the high beam anymore as you can be reasonably certain where the road goes until you reach that oncoming vehicle.

Why are we automating a function that barely requires any use at all? I'm just glad it's a setting that remembers that I turned it off, and doesn't require me to press it every time like auto stop/start or brake hold.

 

Wireless phone charger in the ES... absolutely useless.

Outside mirrors that turn UP when you put it in reverse? Glad I could turn that off so I can actually see out of them!

 

The use case for in car hotspots is questionable in urban areas but for more rural driving it opens up the ability to leverage one or both of a different network provider that might have reception where your phone carrier may not and also the opportunity to leverage hardware more capable of receiving signal in low signal areas. As an aside, a lot of these hotspots are codable and can be turned on without paying a fee. We have a house at a lake near Paso Robles and for part of the drive you are largely out of cell coverage but when we had trial access to a vehicle hotspot it could get reception when our phones could not.

 

In most of our cars the mirror tilt angle when you reverse is adjustable. Maybe yours was incorrectly set up and saved when it was in the wrong position.

The one vehicle we have that doesn't auto tilt we fix by using presets. Preset 1 has the mirrors in normal position. Preset two has them tilted for reverse. You just select preset 2 when you reverse and go back to preset 1 when you are done. 360 cameras make the tilt feature a little moot, but we like to have both.

 

360 camera can't get my rear wheel inches from the curb like I can with the tilt down mirror, so I think they both have their use case. If you are just pulling alongside something, the 360 cam works well enough. If you are trying to get as close to the curb as possible while backing up, you need the tilt down mirror to be able to dial it in.

 

In car hotspots
In car apps
In car nav
Touch screens (doubly so if I have to lean forward and free float my hand to select anything, triple if it dares to lock out functions when the vehicle is moving)
In car storage that doesn't allow standard formats or requires an app to interface
Tilt mirrors that can't be set to off, even more so if the car has a 360* cam and sonar
Forced sunroofs with no shades
Forced folding mirrors or power handles
Undersized or weak cup holders
Auto road noise volume compensation (never works right on normal tier cars)
Auto high beams (sometimes, if I can do a better of predicting when a car will crest a hill I just do it myself. So far I always do it myself unless the car has matrix lights)

I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff that bothers me but those are the ones that instantly come to mind. Basically it comes down to anything a phone can do better has no place in a car IMO. The other thing I hate is touch interfaces due to how slow they are to use and how they can't be used blind, if I can't use it via pure feel at 100+ in a sweeper it's not a good control system.

 

The 39 inch touchscreen that is on the new GLC. That's way way way overdoing it, IMO.

 

Destination Charges.

 

Next to the Destination Charge, for me at least, I'd also rank sunroofs, cupholders, and the Android/Apple-Car-Play/Bluetooth/GPS functions on the info-screens.....I never, or almost never, use them.

I also agree with the guy in the video. The Stop/Start feature for the engine is most annoying, unless you want maximum MPG in stop-and-go conditions. I turn it off most of the time....but even that puts needless wear on the Start/Stop-Deactivate switch itself, because you have to do it every time you start the vehicle up. What manufactetrers should do is let drivers turn it ON when they want it on, and have the switch leave it OFF unless otherwise desired, like they do with other switches .....(Sport Mode, Traction Control, Lane-Alert, etc...)

 

Totally disagree on the in car hotspots. Our kids play their tablets in the car, and having the hotspot makes them syncing up easy. The hotspots also get better signal that our phones because of the car's higher powered antennas.

Also disagree about the high beams. In the country where you don't have street lights high beams are absolutely necessary, and having them be automatic is a nice feature. Even better are dynamic intelligent LEDs like I have that allow you to use the highs all the time while they carve out cars to not blind them.

I also still want tilt down mirrors, the 360 cameras aren't as precise.

 

Yes, for the kids, infotainment-screens ARE a great feature....I can see why they should be standard in minivans. Probably not needed in most other vehicles, though.

Have you seen the 360 features in GM cars? Their cameras have what is (arguably) the best camera-resolution on the market. Many reviewers have commented on that.

I absolutely love the 360 in my Buick Encore GX. I think it's absurd that Chevy doesn't offer the 360 option in the Trailblazer or Trax....or Buick itself, in the Envista.


I can't think of ANYTHING more worthless, though, than the Destination charge LOL.

 

Fancy keys and key fobs, shouldn't exist. Same for stupidly complex shifters.

 

Fancy fobs are essential IMO, not some cheap *** universal fob or common denominator phone garbage. Phones as keys are the stupidest and most cost cutting thing that they sold people on in a long time, you should still have hard keys that are the masters even if phone connection is allowed