Why Do Cars Do This?? The Little Things That Irritate CR Experts

0:00 For 90 years, Consumer Reports has been testing and reviewing and advocating for you. We are independent and nonprofit memberships don't cover everything we do. So please consider donating today to help us go further. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Talking Cars. I'm Mike Monticello. This week we're going to do something a little different.

0:28 Now you all know that we drive a lot of cars, but there's also a lot of people on our staff that you don't see that regularly on the podcast. So we're going to mix it up this week. And we went around and we talked to all the staff to find out what are the things that really grinds your gears. What are the things that really bother you when you get into a new car?

0:47 Things that really shouldn't be, affecting you in a negative way. And they might even seem small, but they bother you enough that they irritate the heck out of you. And, today we're going to let our staff just really rant about these things. And our guess is some of these you're also bothered by. So let's take a look, see what the staff had to say about the things that really bother them about new cars.

1:10 What frustrates me to no end is not being able to use armrests. I have a long torso with short arms, and I didn't even know that people here were driving with their elbows resting comfortably on the armrests. I just I'm always up here. And so they're not even designed for people like me. I need armrests that are adjustable that can that I can actually use.

1:31 Has anyone noticed that all new Nissans smell like mice? And it's not because there's mice in them. There's some kind of off gassing happening inside the car and they just smell like mice. Nissans and Infiniti's have a smell. Four years ago when I started, you remember I tore the Infiniti Qx60 apart.

1:47 Didn't find anything. It was just how it smelled. The Kicks smells that way. The Armada smells that way. The Sentra smells that way. They smell like like mice. Poor quality. That's what I don't like in cars. When you get in a car and the fit and finish is just terrible, you close the door and it sounds like a tin can.

2:04 That's what I don't like. I don't like when the car doesn't feel like it's structurally put together very well. Don't tell me that there is a center seat if a person can't actually fit there. This is the third row, and I've marked with tape where the buckle is and or where the lower belt anchor is for the third row center seat.

2:25 As you can see, Batman fits there, but I don't know any other humans that are going to fit there. So then don't give me a rear center seat. Just tell me there's two seating positions back there. This is not real. One of the things driving me crazy about the auto industry is the push to autonomous or self-driving.

2:43 If you take a look at the image here, many of the orange out icons are part of the assisted driving systems, such as blind spot warning, forward collision warning, rear cross-traffic warning. They're all obscured because I parked outside last night and this is a Subaru Outback, and they're all covered by frost or condensation.

3:01 So for five minutes driving to work, I couldn't use any of those systems because of frost. So you're telling me that while these self-driving and autonomous vehicles can work in Austin, Texas, Arizona, even San Francisco with a moderate climate up here in New England, down in Florida, where it rains, maybe in Chicago, where it snows a lot and has frost, we're not going to be able to do it.

3:24 If the systems can't handle simple frost and condensation, there's certainly not going to be able to handle snow and ice or heavy rain storms, or when construction crews mill roads and take away all the lane markers. So it's stop the constant rush to get more money by having self-driving vehicles that will basically strand people at the beginning of any inclement weather.

3:45 And let's just work on making these systems for safety only work really, really well. Any amount of rear legroom in the backseat of a car has become an ultra luxury item. I don't know who they expect you to put in the back of these cars other than Lieutenant Dan. This car got six inches longer. Leg room is decent, but is not awesome for a car that grew six inches in length in the US.

4:06 Was pretty good to begin with. I don't know what they're doing with new cars. There's like no backseat legroom. So here at CR we drive about 50 different cars a year, and I've been surprised at just how many different ways there are to engineer a door handle. You have handles like this. Or this? Of course, this.

4:33 And this. But can we all just agree that there's nothing wrong with this? All right, so I really hate when I get into a car with my pocketbook and my bag and my drink, my phone, and there's nowhere to put any of that. And your pocket bucks laying on the seat next to you. Don't drive and it goes flying.

4:57 Things need to be secure and in good spots. Don't reinvent the wheel. We figured this out in 10,000 BC. Manufacturers are constantly reinventing the shape of the wheel. Instead of making it round, we've gone to what we call circles or rounded, squares. Some have octagons, so it just makes it very hard to do things like low speed maneuvers and then on top of that, we have complicated controls or controls that just don't make sense on a steering wheel like touch capacitive, buttons.

5:30 All right. So now when you're trying to make a left turn, you accidentally, blast the radio to full volume. The Jeep Cherokee Laredo. It is an octagon. We kind of forces your hands into a two and ten position instead of a more comfortable and ergonomic three and nine position. Along with that, it's a rather thick wheel, so it also obscures controls behind the wheel.

5:53 And there are many. It's not just the shape, the size of the wheel, in fact, the gears controls behind it, but we also have a mess of controls and buttons on top of the steering wheel. So now when you're trying to use anything like cruise control or changing volume or, you know, skipping tracks, it just kind of forces your hands to move up and down the wheel.

6:12 Instead of just keeping it. Work naturally should be, which is three and nine. Something that really bothers me with modern cars, and it's not one car specific. It's more of a trend is just what I'm going to summarize as the overstimulation of all of the stuff that's being added inside of a car these days.

6:29 I'm talking about all of the beeps, all the screens, all the ambient lighting, just all of these call them features and things that do effectively nothing for the task of driving in, the act of driving that are pulling my attention away from the road, bringing in inside the car in ways that are really not helpful.

6:49 And look, that's not to say that as cars get better and progress, that some of these things aren't useful. I understand the desire for comfort and convenience and appeal. But I'm talking about things like in the car that I'm sitting in right now. So, for example, I'm sitting inside a Lincoln Nautilus and as you can see, it has this two different displays going across the dashboard all the way from A-pillar to A-pillar.

7:15 And you notice that right there, they're showing me the weather. And I mean I can see the weather through the windshield. I don't need to know that it's, you know, partly cloudy when I can look at it myself. And it's just right up there on the dashboard. And again, has no practical use for driving. And I was driving another car recently, for example, where and I was driving at night simultaneously, the car is beeping at me with the driver monitoring camera to pay attention while all of the ambient lights in the car are flashing and changing color and being super distracting.

7:51 So again, not helpful. Don't need it. Has nothing to do with driving, and it just makes me think that at least with a lot of cars, not all cars, we've kind of just lost this overall sense of only designing for what we need, and keeping some of this excess out. Right. And again, don't get me wrong, there are plenty of cars in some in our fleet, even where they really do just focus on the bare minimum.

8:17 And really, a lot of that modernize is coming into being safer and more fuel efficient, things like that, and less about just throwing extra features at you for no reason. The cost of cars in general, most of them are not worth the price. Average price of a new car is about $50,000. So if you think about and this is for anybody, how long do you have to work?

8:35 How many hours, how many days, how many weeks do you have to work to earn that amount of money to pay for that car? If you have the money sitting on the table in front of you, or that time sitting on a table in front of you, do you want to trade all that money or all that time for just this thing? This is depreciating asset.

8:49 You lose 20% of its value the moment you sign on the line. It's crazy. I mean, everything has gotten more expensive, but I believe cars have sort of outpaced, the rest of the economy. They've gotten really expensive. Well, take a look at pickup trucks, right? Pickup trucks used to be a tool. Now they're a fashion accessory.

9:05 Trucks used to have a bed, manual transmission. You know, a luxury truck had an automatic four wheel drive. That was push button air conditioning. That was about as fancy as a god. But now they put all this stuff in pickup trucks. They're so nice. They're so expensive. You don't actually want to use them as a truck.

9:22 So people buy them. And that's why I call them a fashion accessory. I don't need a $75,000 1500 series pickup truck, or you can spend 100 grand on a 2500 pickup truck. That's crazy. Yeah, but you always looked for the single cab, four wheel drive, eight foot bed, with no options. You know, AC, if you wanted it.

9:41 But you were fine with everything else, and then it turned into, you know, these big luxury cars that you can't afford, you know? So you used to either look for the cheapest truck and then, there was the two wheel drive pickup truck, two wheel drive, five speed manual transmission with no options. And and you could get those dirt cheap.

10:02 And that's the color. You couldn't find one on a lot if you wanted to right now. But yeah, I mean the the best buys around used to be back in the, you know, 90s and 2000s was a two wheel drive Tacoma four cylinder, five speed manual, everything. And those vehicles had buttons. It's all a bunch of screens.

10:19 And it's like a big game of word search to figure out where everything is in there. The other day I was in the gravity and the screen was too bright and I couldn't turn it down. I had no idea how to take the dimness down. Used to just be a little thumb wheel on the left of the dashboard. Now I drove for almost 30 minutes and never found a thing.

10:37 So basically I drove blinded for half an hour. The car's awesome. If you don't touch anything, just drive it. But as soon as you break away from just just driving and you have to do something, all bets off You have lots of questions. In an era of AI generated answers, it's important to know who you can trust ACR and tap into thousands of product ratings, safety investigations, and expert advice.

11:01 or my hot takes for, gripes I have in the car. The first one is the auto hold function. Now, before I get in my gripe about it, I love it. I love using auto hold. It's usually usually says that it's a little button, but I hate when cars don't have it. I love pulling up to a stoplight or a long red light, or you're in a traffic jam or whatever, and you're stopped.

11:22 And I love just putting my foot that extra little, like couple inches on the brake and having the car just kind of hang in that position. I can kind of relax. I don't need to hold my foot there for the whole time. As crazy as that sounds. I know people have driven like that for years, but it's something that I didn't realize I loved and used almost every time until I got in a car that didn't have it.

11:41 So it's kind of like a love hate that I have. Like I love using it, but I hate when it's just either not there or it's super rough getting going because like to jump out into the traffic. Or you could even potentially if you're really close to someone that you've stopped behind, even bump into them. If you're not, you know, really gentle with that throttle.

11:57 My other one is every car should have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. They are literally like, those are like the only two operating systems on smartphones that, like, exist and cars that don't have it. It's it's a pain. Like, yes, you can put your Bluetooth on, you can listen to your music, you can get your phone calls.

12:14 But people are so attached to their phones, they bring them everywhere. So much so that we've made this great software that's native on a phone that talks to a car that puts your the thing that you're used to, into the infotainment screen now, like, I think, why not have that on every car? I remember when Apple CarPlay first came out and, you know, choosing cars to drive home with the test track, that was something I would consider, like, does this have Apple CarPlay or does it not?

12:42 And is I could affect how I like my enjoyment of just driving the car at ease of use, like navigation, text messages, phone calls, your Spotify or Apple Music or whatever you're using. It's all there. And that's awesome. And you don't have to fiddle with all these crazy menus that come out. Why not just use the thing that everyone uses and that they're familiar with?

13:01 And to that end, like, I think this is more like a GM problem and a lot of EVs, like they use their own OS, in the infotainment system, and it's just clunky. It's sure like someone designed it and spent a lot of time on it, or it's just a Google native thing only, and then you have to sign into all your different accounts that you have, whether it's, again, your Spotify or, you know, your text messages don't really come through or you don't want to send all that Google info through your car.

13:28 Now, arguably, I guess you could be doing that too. By you know, there is a disclaimer when you use Apple CarPlay or Android that says, yes, I want to use this. It's going to communicate with the vehicle, but it's just a better experience bar none getting in any of our GM EVs. They're great. They have long range.

13:44 They're they're mostly, you know, great to use all around. But you got to use their clunky infotainment, Bluetooth pairing and you have to like, relearn it every time. Now, I know there's the argument. You'll get used to it, right? You'll get used to using this type of thing because you'd own the car and we have a unique perspective on that because we jump in a lot of cars and it's just like, why?

14:09 Why can't we just put this in every car? It doesn't even have to be. I'll even concede it doesn't even have to be a wireless CarPlay connection, quite frankly. Like even if it was tethered, at least you know your phone's always charging and it's always going to be connected and you're not going to run into, Bluetooth issues or or getting in a car.

14:26 And it doesn't sync up to your phone again, even when it's a primary, device on the car. So, yeah, I just wish every, every car had some kind of CarPlay Android Auto capability standard and, Yeah, auto. Let's, let's get that in everything. I'm not a big fan of electronic door handles, even though these pop out and still function fine, just the fact you have to wait for them to be deployed or wondering if they're gonna pop out when you're loaded up with ice.

14:58 But even that there's other vehicles with electronic door handles like this Lexus here. I'm not that big of a fan of not much room to even grab your hand, but even then you gotta grab a little switch to open the door. And even worse is the Volvo right here, which has electronic handles that pop out with a mechanical component to it that is not great to grab and open.

15:27 So yeah, I like traditional door handles. I do not like electronic door handles. Seltos is the worst. Yeah. No, the Seltos, if I had it in front of me, is the worst door handle setup or the worst door handle design because they come out a little bit and they're not always deployed depending. So if they're not, you have to push in and then pull out.

15:50 And if you're trying to do that with one hand, that's real difficult. And they also also pop out at a weird, you know, when they're popping out from the back. It's an awkward just handle to grab on to and pull on. They're very thin. They're not nice to grab all this stuff sucks because it used to be easy to open a door, and now I have to create a process around doing that.

16:13 So I hate phones and cars. Phones that connect to cars are possibly the worst thing. That's ever happened to cars and all of humanity. It's awful. Can't stand it. Don't want it. Not going to use it. Yeah, I mean, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are the best solution over any kind of native infotainment system, but I still don't want it.

16:32 I don't want any subscription services that relate to my car navigation. Anything. Right? I got enough of those in my life. I don't need another one. I already paid for the car. I wanted to work. I really dislike the fact that cars have gone from transportation, entertainment. You sit in these new cars.

16:48 It's like sitting on a casino floor in front of a slot machine. You have massive screens, all kinds of lights and stuff coming on. Can't see at night because everything's so bright. You know, I think I'm most bothered by cars that either have a super abrupt throttle delivery off the line, or conversely, ones that have a big delay like you give it throttle and there's just, you know, it doesn't feel like it goes anywhere.

17:15 Quite often you see that with dual clutch transmission. So. So I need something in between. Just a nice smooth throttle take off the line, honestly, the way most EVs work. But there's no reason why gasoline cars can't work almost as well. It makes me have to work harder. Not that I'm lazy, but you shouldn't have to work hard at just leaving the line.

17:32 Like if you. Especially with the cars that have abrupt throttle deliveries, you you know, you have to like be extra careful with the throttle or like, jumps off the line and there's no reason to do that to you or your or your passengers who might think, oh, this guy is really kind of a terrible driver.

17:47 There's just no need for that. And the reason why the abrupt throttle delivery is usually there is because it's a car with less power, and the engineers actually kind of tuned that in so that it makes the owners feel like the car has more power than it really does. So, but there's just no need for it.

18:02 I coined the phrase trademark. It's called the Subie Surge. A lot of Subarus. Again, they don't have a lot of power, but they have this really abrupt throttle takeoff. To their credit, they've gotten a little better with the last couple models in the last couple of years, but it's still there. And remember Subie surge.

18:19 You heard it here first. Want to stay up to speed on what's happening at Consumer Reports. Sign up for our What's New newsletter and get the very latest product news, safety updates and improvement advice from our experts. I'm going to jump on that bandwagon of controls and displays. I think I'm not a big fan of the way things are going in terms of large sensor screens and removing all the physical buttons.

18:40 Sometimes I get in the car to go home. I'm tired after being beat up in the office all day, and I just don't have the energy to figure out how to turn the climate on or off or anything. So I will literally just control my temperature with the windows. I will suffer all the way home just because I haven't got any energy left to deal with that.

18:57 I think my ideal control system would be more buttons and switches. But if you think of like Ineos Grenadiers, I think that's a bit too far for me. Stuff on the roof, is pushing it. I'd like, I quite like for an for a modern interpretation of controls. I don't dislike the Rivian. I think the, the approach they've put behind it is kind of interesting, although again lacking in physical controls I would like yeah, I'm old school.

19:23 As old school as it gets. If I had a hand winder I would use that leather seats without ventilation. Who wants to be sweaty. Come on. Nobody wants to be sweaty. Put a little fan in that seat. Everybody will be happier. And Mercedes lets you run heat and ventilation. She could be warm, but you're not sweaty.

19:41 And sometimes you've got, like, jackets and multiple layers ons you get to crank and way up to seal them. Anyway. In about time you get to where you're going. You get out of the car, you realize that you're all sweaty, so nobody wants that. But the fan in there. What really grinds my years is a driver monitoring system is designed to help you keep your eyes on the road.

19:57 But if you have a poorly designed system for the touch screen or buttons and everything to adjust your climate or your media, you're just trying to do simple things that you should be able to do without the system yelling at you. But the system is sensitive. It's accurate, but it takes so long to just adjust your temperature that it's yelling at you, which is causing you stress.

20:18 And even some systems. I'm literally looking at the road, but it's still yelling at me to keep my eyes on the road. And so I don't know where to look. Do I look at the symbol in the driver screen, or do I look at the roadway and it's still not recognizing my eyes, and then it just shuts everything off.

20:33 So I think they just and they need to be more accurate and they need to design systems that support the driver rather than take their eyes off the road in order to use them. One of my small little gripes that I keep finding is cars that have a lazy interior design, where for all the talk of the high tech features, all the designers have done is essentially take an Amazon Kindle and duct tape it to the dash.

20:59 It used to be instrument panels would be, reset into a nice little binnacle that would give it some shade, make it easy to see. It would be very designer. Lines would flow everywhere. Now, interiors are so often as plain as can be with just these screens sticking up. No design embellishment there. My concern is really with the esthetics that the car interiors are aiming to be plain these days, as opposed to being nicely engineered or nicely designed.

21:31 Now it used to be you could talk about the flowing lines, and now you're just talking about the features and not enjoying the packaging. At today's prices, I would like to enjoy the packaging. Another pet peeve new cars these days often just simply aren't nicer than the ones they replace. Used to be that you could almost bank on the next generation of whatever would be improved.

21:54 It would be nicer, quieter, more features, more power, better fuel economy. Now, when you look at new cars, often it's what are the trade offs or concessions that you're making? I really hate those huge touchscreens. Please get them out of cars. You know, all these cars have a lot of plastics in them, right?

22:13 Man-Made materials petroleum based products. So they off gas. All these new cars get a scum on the inside of the windshield. Good luck driving into a sunrise or sunset. Can't see. It's hard to clean. That's when all that junk on the inside of our windshields are the off gassing, all the plastics and the leathers and the manmade materials, the fuming inside the car.

22:33 So when I get in all these cars, especially on a hot day, all the windows go down until I'm through the gate, let that thing air out, because that deposit is all over the inside of the car. The glass. Right? And that's where you get that haze on the glass. You try to clean it off glass cleaner and then streaks that you can't see at night when the headlights hit your windshield.

22:49 That's all off gassing. I really hate tap out door handles. Every time I see them, I know that I'm probably going to have a rough experience with the car, because I've never actually seen out door handles that I think work well or just don't make me agitated. It's like work like door handles. They should be easy.

23:08 And you just taking me a little bit longer to actually get into the car while it's done. They should stop doing out the door handles. So when I get into any of the cars that I've driven here, the first thing I'll usually notice is if there's, pattern or design on the, the dashboard that reflects off of the windshield so that when I'm driving and then what I notice is, I end up staring at the, usually like a grid pattern that they'll put on, like the front dashboard car, and then it reflects upward.

23:42 So then I see that more than I see in the road sometimes, and I just think it's a pretty unnecessary distraction. And if it was just like a smooth, textured, no design surface, I think that would be a lot more practical. And easier to see the road, which is kind of the point. All right. The biggest thing I really hate about cars is the lack of involvement anymore, right?

24:09 I mean, the cars have just become too easy to drive. Look, I miss stick shifts. That's really what it is. I want more cars with stick just because you know what, you're involved. And now the cars. It's big screen across dash and it's like so many things to look at. I kind of miss the days. What? You just really kind of concert and driving and shifting gears and being at one with the car.

24:32 I feel like those days are kind of fleeting. There's so many different things that are just becoming harder and harder to do. Like, why do we have to change the way everything operates? Now look, it's great to change something, to operate, to make it better, but it seems like there's new ways of adjusting the radio or adjusting the climate control or or opening the door that just keeps on changing things.

24:54 I mean, why can't we even have just a round steering wheel anymore? Cars are getting square steering wheels or yokes. They don't work any better, but they're just different for the sake of being different. I love materials, I love different textures, different. But what I hate in modern cars is when they try to make it look like metal.

25:15 But it's not metal, it's plastic. That really upsets me. Like if I were paid 90,000, what is this $90,000? Was the book. How much is this car? $81,000. Still 81, $81,000. It looks nice. Dashboard is really nice. Weatherstripping. Huge fan of Weatherstripping. Just the way it feels. Running my fingers on it.

25:43 I love it, but look, there's probably plastic made to look like Baltic Birch or something like that. But then you got the strip that is plastic. What is this? Just look, they just I hate it. I don't think any any car these days has, like, real metal. Ten years ago, there were cars that had real metal.

26:09 I think the Tesla model S had like Chrome. It was real metal. The thing is, it was real. It wasn't just made to look like something. I really miss Oldsmobile. I wish they'd bring it back. That's it. I just hate the those more wheels gone. Even those terrible. Those will be in like oh three. I kind of miss them.

26:25 But like automobiles from like the 60s and 70s, awesome cars even into the mid 80s. I got an 8485 Oldsmobile Cutlass. Nice. Bring back Oldsmobile, please. So that's going to do it for this week. You know, if you have some gripes of your own, leave some comments, let us know. Maybe we missed some that really bother you.

26:45 Or let us know. Maybe you really agree with some of them or you disagree with what we, were found fault with some of these cars. So don't forget Consumer Reports. If you didn't know, it's a nonprofit organization. We basically, we rely on memberships, as well as donations. And there's a donate page on our, on our YouTube.

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27:27 Our podcast is produced, as always, by Dave Abrams and is edited by Andrew and Anatoly Shinseki. Thanks so much for watching. And we'll see you all next week.