Modern cars have more features than ever before — so many, in fact, that the vast majority of car owners almost certainly aren’t using all of them. I mean, basically every new car has adaptive cruise control, and auto parking, and hill-hold assist, and a 360-degree camera, and massaging seats, and ambient lighting, and 1,000,000 safety beepers, and LED headlights that dance for you, and the infotainment system is supposed to be your friend, and I could go on and on. Surely, you’re not using all of that stuff, and that idea is what brings us to today’s question.
I’d like to know what feature in your car you never use. What feature did the dealer make a huge spiel about when you were buying the car, only for the button it occupies to go completely unpressed during your ownership? If you drive even a semi-modern car, I know there’s some feature your vehicle has that you, without a doubt, never use. Maybe it’s an actual vehicle function, or maybe it’s some sort of weird thing your infotainment system can do, like act as a calendar or calculator. Seriously, who has ever used their car’s calendar? Sickos, that’s who.
My choice
This topic of discussion originally came up in the Jalopnik Slack channel because we were talking about auto hold features in cars. Some of us use it all the time, while others prefer to waste our time and energy holding down the brake pedal at stoplights. I’m in the former group, as I am a huge fan of doing as little as possible to accomplish something, but it did get me thinking about features in my own cars I never used.
This is a bit tough for me personally for a couple of reasons. The chief among them is the fact I don’t have a car right now. As some of you know, I just sold my 2007 BMW Z4 on Cars & Bids to a very nice man who says he’s going to daily it. I’m thrilled about that. The second issue is that, since the car was from 2007, it didn’t exactly have that many features to speak of. However, upon further consideration, I realized that during my five years of ownership, I never once used the navigation system. Hell, I don’t even know if I ever even displayed the map. I mean, why would I? At best, the system was over a decade out of date, and my phone provides far better turn-by-turn navigation right out of the box. Plus, it was devastatingly old and pixilated, as most early 2000s infotainment systems were.
That’s enough out of me, though. Drop down below and sound off on the feature in your car you never use.
