Technological advancements have greatly transformed the automotive industry. They improved manufacturing processes, vehicle safety, and driving experiences. However, in some cases, automakers have arguably gone too far, fitting worthless features that add costs for buyers.
Here are 19 examples of these luxury car features that are completely pointless.
Heads-Up Display
Heads-up displays, also known as HUDs, project graphics onto your windshield, allowing you to keep an eye on the essentials without taking your eyes off the road. Yes, you can sometimes feel like you’re piloting a fighter jet, but the system can become a distraction.
Let’s face it: modern cars feature various displays and lights, and a HUD can overload you with information and distract you from the view ahead. For heaven’s sake, all the displays on the instrument cluster are not a primary focus when driving a car. You can just glance at the instrument cluster every once in a while as a way of monitoring them.
Automatic Headlights
An automatic headlight system ensures your vehicle’s headlights are always turned on when required. Unfortunately, the headlights don’t always work as expected because sensors detecting the ambient light levels may detect adequate light in daytime fog and heavy rain.
Another issue is that the lights don’t activate immediately if you drive into a tunnel. This is enough to make you wish we could return to the manually operated headlights. But once these features have been invented, there’s no going back.
Electronic Parking Brakes
Many Americans are used to the manual parking brake, which performs a similar function as the electronic parking brake: locking the car’s wheels when parked.
While the electronic parking brake system offers additional benefits, like less effort to activate, its complexity can cause issues. Manual handbrake systems rarely fail, so they require minimal maintenance. However, electronic parking brakes require much more maintenance.
An electronic parking brake will drive you crazy, especially when you mistakenly touch the button and it engages. An even worse scenario is if you try to disengage it and it won’t cooperate because of electronic failure or a low battery.
Ambient Lighting Color Choices
Changing the color of your interior lighting is purely cosmetic and adds nothing to the driving experience. While it might impress passengers once, it can lead to more risks. Driving with interior lights on significantly reduces your ability to see outside the vehicle, which may lead to collisions.
Keyless Entry
Keyless entry has been around for years. But like the usual key, it has downsides. The fob’s misplacement is major. Without needing to physically insert the device to start the engine, it is easy to lose the key fob.
Additionally, keyless entry adds to the vehicle cost but hasn’t yet solved the risks of car theft. Ordinarily, the keyless fob would be far enough away from the car to prevent access or starting. However, criminals can use signal-extending relay devices to boost a relatively weak signal from your location to the vehicle.
Motorized Seat Belt Presenter
The motorized seat belt presenter is designed to simplify buckling up, but it remains an unnecessary feature. The idea of the motorized seat belt presenter innovations was that once an occupant sits down and the door closes, an extendable arm offers the seat belt. In reality, this can be more time-consuming than reaching for the belt by hand. Some drivers have even complained that the presenter doesn’t come out when the seat is too high.
Rain-Sensing Windshield Wipers
Windshield wipers are essential for keeping your view clear, especially during rainy or snowy seasons. The rain-sensing wipers are designed to turn on automatically, but the driver can activate them manually within a second.
Yes, some drivers may love them as they minimize the workload. However, the system can take too long to react when light rain starts or if the rain gets heavy. Reacting slowly or not at all to sudden splashes can be a nuisance. But the worst scenario is when they don’t activate or keep working when the rain has stopped.
Paddle Shifters
Automatic transmissions have been around for decades, and they solved the issue of sluggish gear changes experienced with their manual equivalents. Ferrari is arguably the brand that brought the paddle shifter features that several automakers in the U.S. have widely embraced.
A fast-shifting auto with a manual option made much sense in a supercar. But today, paddle shifters have made their way into nearly every car model. These features don’t make sense with slow, economy sedans or family SUVs.
Rear Seat Entertainment
When cars with rear-seat entertainment screens entered the market, they seemed like the coolest thing ever. You would drive a long journey with children or keep your backseat passengers entertained and quiet. However, technology has advanced. A tablet is now preferred as it offers more options than just watching video music, movies, or TV programs.
Backward-Hinged Doors
Cars with rear-hinged doors were mass-produced in the ‘70s, but some modern cars still have them. Backward-hinged doors make ingress and egress easier, but sometimes are very impractical, especially when found on “regular” vehicles like the Mazda MX-30.
When opened wide in a congested parking lot, backward-hinged doors can make exiting the vehicle very challenging. These doors are also very hazardous to pedestrians and cyclists, who may get knocked over or trapped in between.
Touchpad Controllers
The touchpad controller might seem like one of the best car features. It makes things seem easier as you put your right hand on the center console to control the display on the dashboard. However, it’s not the best controller option out there.
Moving your hand from the steering wheel to the center console is too much work, considering you should concentrate and have both hands on the wheel at high speeds. Even the latest controllers are difficult to use effectively while driving, which frustrates most drivers who are concerned about their safety.
Voice and Gesture Control
Many car brands, including BMW, Jaguar, and Mercedes, offer a version of voice and gesture control. While this technology appears highly futuristic, it isn’t necessary since straightforward settings like volume and call answering simply require some arm and hand movements.
Besides, many of these systems misinterpret the voices and signs and continue to perform quite different actions from what the driver intended anyway. Most drivers often use the manual way of imputing cabin commands while voice and gesture controls remain off.
Motorized Cup Holders
Several drivers have reported that cup holders in some models are too small for their cup size. Manufacturers made it even worse by including a motorized mechanism to hide or reveal cup holders.
Motorized cup holders are more of a gimmick than a helpful feature since they are prone to breaking and failure. Regular cup holders are just as functional and good for car owners.
Glass Gear Knob
In recent years, automakers like Volvo and BMW have been manufacturing their cars with glass or crystal gear knobs. These features add aesthetics to the cabin but are not worth it at all. During use, jewelry and other metallic objects will scratch the glass, ruining its appearance and making the feature worthless.
Social Media Integration
Accidents caused by distracted driving are pretty common in the U.S. According to statistics for 2021, 804,928 total accidents were the result of distracted driving, and 64,901 were due to cell phone usage.
Social media integration in the infotainment system can lead to many distractions on the road, posing risks of potential crashes. When safely parked, drivers can use their smartphones or tablets to log in to social media rather than when they are meant to concentrate on the road.
Soft-Close Doors
Soft-close doors were used on cabinets and housing long before they were applied to vehicles. This innovation’s primary purpose is to prevent doors from being slammed and reduce the risk of damaging the door itself and other car surfaces.
The problem with the soft close is that the vacuum system used may break down, and repairing it is fairly expensive. It’s easier to instruct your passengers not to slam the car doors rather than pay for a costly option that needs expensive maintenance.
Remote Park Assist
It sounds futuristic because you can pull into and out of selected parking spaces. But many won’t tell you that remote parking features often require perfect conditions to work properly, making them more trouble than they’re worth.
Accidents can happen while drivers are circling for a parking space, and to add, these systems are expensive.
Power Closing Trunk Lids
The automatic trunk lid is an excellent feature to show off to a friend. However, it’s a useless innovation that you don’t want to have when you’re in a rush to get inside the car and take off. Power-operated trunks take significantly longer to close or open than their manual counterparts, so they remain a useless addition.
Illuminated Badges
Light-up logos or emblems on luxury vehicles are compatible with radar and camera integrations for styling purposes and are purely for show. They serve no functional purpose other than drawing attention to your luxury car on the street.
These luxury features are also a new solution for branding communication, allowing customization options and car animation that can increase maintenance costs.
Some of the Luxury Car Features Are Still Worth the Money!
The above luxury features are worthless, but there are also some modern features truly worth your money. Features like lane departure assist with warning, assisted braking, and cruise control, among others, are beneficial because they add safety and comfort to improve the driving experience.
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Peterson is an automotive content writer, blogger, and copywriter who is passionate about turning automotive experiences into compelling words. He developed an interest in cars at a young age and, upon reaching adulthood, mastered the ability to simplify complex automotive topics and present them engagingly.
