Biggest Scam? These Car Features Do Nothing » MotorOctane

Manufacturers keep adding features to modern cars. The competition forces car manufacturers to overload cars with features, and often the owner is oblivious to the purpose of some of them. Usually, these features enhance passengers’ luxury, but sometimes they serve little to no purpose, and some even worsen the overall feel. Today, we will look at some of these useless features that most likely exist on your car.

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Voice Recognition

The concept of voice recognition has been around for quite some time now and has been quite successful. Mobile phones have implemented this idea perfectly, but cars haven’t. With the increased amount of technology in modern vehicles, you would expect a feature like voice recognition to work smoothly, but that’s not the case. More often than not, the Voice recognition completely misunderstands your commands. Until car manufacturers actually improve on the voice recognition system, it serves little to no purpose. In fact, the incompetence of such a system can actually be pretty annoying.

Gesture Control

Premium brands have offered gesture control on their luxury cars throughout the 2010s. During this time, people appreciated it as a gimmick but rarely used it. The Mercedes S-Class and BMW 7 Series had among the best gesture-control systems on the market. The hands-free tailgate feature can be handy when you want to open the boot but are carrying groceries in both hands.

However, the gesture control for cheaper cars is atrocious. You have to flap your hands aimlessly to get the volume to play the next track. Moreover, it is not difficult to use the physical dial buttons or the steering wheel buttons to complete a task (like turning the volume up). You actually waste more time trying to use gesture control than if you choose to use the physical buttons like a normal being.

Even the hands-free taolgate feature has its flaws. It works flawlessly on more premium cars, but on the inexpensive vehicles, you have to kick around 4-5 times to make the feature work. Even MG decided this feature wasn’t worth including in the facelifted version.

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Sunroof

It may seem like a shock that this feature is included in the list. The sunroof seems to have become the basic need of car buyers nowadays, but it is nothing more than a fad. The cons of a sunroof outweigh its pros. The only advantage of a sunroof is the extra sunlight it lets into your cabin.

The disadvantages are as follows. The sunroof requires a complex mechanism to operate, which means there are more mechanical and electrical components that could fail. If the sunroof mechanism goes wrong, it leads to a hefty service bill. A common issue with a sunroof is water leakage, especially during the monsoon season. If not maintained well, water seeps through tiny gaps and enters the cabin, ruining leather seats. Many Tata Harrier, Mahindra Scorpio N and Mahindra XUV700 owners have reported this issue. Furthermore, on the off-chance that you forget to close the sunroof, the chances of your cabin being blessed with bird droppings are pretty high.

Moreover, the sunroofs weren’t designed for the Indian conditions. Sunroofs were not meant to endure the heavy heat, monsoons and dust of India.

On the other hand, moonroofs have all the advantages of a sunroof and none of the disadvantages. You get a lot of sunlight inside the cabin. And since moonroofs do not open, you don’t need to worry about the mechanism going wrong or rainwater seeping inside.

Fake Hood Scoops and Exhaust Tips

This fakery is not limited to cheap cars but also extends to premium brands like BMW, Audi, and Mercedes. These brands like to confuse people into thinking that the vehicle has a sporty exhaust. When, in fact, the actual tiny exhaust is hidden behind these fake tips. Even the mighty Lamborghini Miura featured faux exhaust tips, underscoring that this issue has long been prevalent. The first-gen Tata Harrier and Safari had these issues, but they realised that these exhausts did not fool anyone and decided to ditch the idea with the facelift.

Many people love adding fake exhaust tips to their cars to make them look sportier. But this gimmick seems ridiculous when applied to an EV (which doesn’t have an exhaust). A handful of Nexon EV owners have tried it.

Fake hood scoops are even more egregious. Hood scoops serve an essential purpose in maximising air intake for bigger engines. Sports cars and SUVs often feature hood scoops to improve aerodynamic performance. However, some vehicles use fake hood scoops to create a phoney illusion that the cars are powerful. The old Mahindra Scorpio was infamous for having a phoney hood scoop. =

Climate Control Integrated with Touchscreen

Larger touchscreens create a clean, sophisticated cabin. Nothing makes a cabin look more premium than a massive touchscreen and no physical buttons. But when you own one such car, you will realise the downside of it immediately. Screens that integrate climate control with the infotainment screens make for an intuitive cabin. Every time you want to change the fan speed while driving, you are forced to look at the screen and find the icon. This can be annoying and dangerous at the same time.

User-friendly infotainment screens usually make this task easier, but many cars have complex routes to complete a simple task, like turning on ventilated seats. Kia has cleverly integrated the climate controls into the screen by adding an entire screen dedicated to them.

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