The air bag: Will car-technology survey change makers’ plans

A new survey says that a fifth of car owners have never actually used 16 out of 33 new technology features in their vehicles. So what's the point of all that tech?

Tech such as Apple CarPlay isn’t proving popular. Courtesy Newspress

As a self-confessed dinosaur, I’m vocal about my lack of understanding of the sheer amount of technology being thrown at new cars by their makers. I don’t need active cruise control, automatic parking, head-up displays or internet connectivity to enjoy driving; all I need is an open road.

Yet carmakers are continuing to fall over each other in the pursuit of more and more unnecessary electronic junk to overcomplicate and weigh down our cars. I feel somewhat exonerated in my dismissal of this approach now that the consumer champion J D Power (the organisation that ranks manufacturers in order of reliability and customer satisfaction) says that a fifth of car owners have never actually used 16 out of 33 new technology features in their vehicles. So what was the point? All that research, development, tooling, engineering and, let’s not forget, expense, has been a complete waste.

Common features that go untouched, according to the survey, include in-vehicle concierge ­services, mobile routers, automatic parking, head-up displays and built-in apps. Concierge services were the least popular, with 43 per cent of respondents saying they’ve never used them. If you’re wondering what a concierge service is, let me explain: owners of certain luxury car brands have access to what basically amounts to a personal assistant who can find you a restaurant, book you seats at the theatre or arrange for your car to be collected for servicing. All of that comes at significant cost, which is loaded and hidden in the price owners are paying for their new cars. Money down the drain, then.

J D Power’s report also shows that, in many cases, it’s not only that motorists are letting the features go unused, it’s that they’re “specifically unwanted”. Twenty per cent of respondents said there are 14 tech features they don’t want in their next vehicles. Some of those rejected features may come as a surprise. The list includes Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, the current “next big things” manufacturers are forcing on us. And it isn’t just curmudgeons like me rejecting these things – it’s actually Generation Y buyers, who were born between 1977 and 1994, that are most dismissive. They have pinpointed 23 tech applications they don’t want in their new cars.

Safety does feature highly in the priorities of younger drivers, however, and some of the driver-assistance and collision-­avoidance systems that drive me to distraction are proving popular, while the whole connectivity aspect is deemed to be a waste of time and money. Why, they appear to be reasoning, would they want their cars to connect to the internet when their smartphones do a (probably) better job and are much easier and less expensive to update?

According to Kristin Kolodge, J D Power’s executive director of driver interaction and human machine interface research, younger buyers are “not seeing the value equation from a built-in perspective”. This is causing manufacturers concern, because J D Power’s findings are extremely influential in the industry.

Findings show that if a piece of technology isn’t used by an owner within 90 days of buying a new car, it probably never will be. “That’s why designing features for first-time ease of use is so important,” said Kolodge.

My personal experience backs this up. Some features are so mind-bogglingly complicated to use that I simply don’t bother.

Are manufacturers out of touch with their customers? Many of them seem to be, but hopefully they’ll now pay more attention to what we actually want, rather than what they want us to want.

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