- J.D. Power surveyed more than 80,000 new-car buyers about what tech features they like and dislike.
- It shows that carmakers are still figuring out what kinds of advanced tech people like—and what bugs them.
- Consumers don't see value in passenger screens or fingerprint readers, but they like blind-spot monitoring and smart climate control.
Car companies are packing vehicles with more snazzy tech features than ever before as they look to operate more like tech companies and compete with the likes of Tesla. But they aren’t exactly batting 1,000, according to a new study from J.D. Power.
Anecdotally, it’s been clear this is true for a while. People I know are annoyed by the dings and dongs emitted by their lane-keeping systems. They’re frustrated by clunky infotainment screens. And the list goes on.
J.D. Power gathered some hard evidence by surveying roughly 82,000 drivers of 2024-model-year vehicles about what tech features they like and dislike.
The results show that the car industry is still very much learning what sorts of tech people can’t live without and what’s more likely to tick them off.
“A strong advanced tech strategy is crucial for all vehicle manufacturers, and many innovative technologies are answering customer needs,” Kathleen Rizk, senior director of user experience benchmarking and technology at J.D. Power, said in a press release. “At the same time, this year’s study makes it clear that owners find some technologies of little use and/or are continually annoying.”
Some of the firm's conclusions here make a lot of sense. Passenger screens, for example, aren’t something drivers see value in. J.D. Power notes that only 10% of vehicles carry a person in the front seat on a daily basis, which makes putting a screen there not all that exciting. That’s something you can find in vehicles like the Porsche Taycan, Lincoln Nautilus and Jeep Grand Cherokee, among others.
Gesture controls that allow a driver to adjust things by swiping or twirling their finger in the air don’t resonate either, with customers reporting that they’re problematic and lack functionality. Or, as J.D. Power puts it, gesture controls, fingerprint readers and facial-recognition systems “unsuccessfully try to solve a problem that owners didn’t know they had.” Ouch.
One of the more surprising findings—both to us and the J.D. Power team—is that people don’t love hands-off highway-driving systems like General Motors’ Super Cruise or Ford’s BlueCruise. Consumers don’t find them much more useful than hands-on versions of those features. Personally, I love the ability to take my hands off the wheel and let a car eat up monotonous highway miles mostly on its own (under driver supervision, of course).
Rizk reckons that, since a hands-off driver-assistance system doesn’t solve a clear and present problem, it’s a harder sell. On the other hand, people embrace driver aids like reverse automatic emergency braking and blind-spot cameras.
“We tend to see a larger acceptance of those technologies,” she told InsideEVs. “They may be problematic, they may give warnings, or put on the brakes too much, but [consumers] know they’re helping them overcome a known issue.”
Still, as drivers get more comfortable with and trusting of hands-off systems over time, acceptance will likely grow, Rizk said.
So, what other new features do people really like? One is smart climate control, which does things like automatically turning the A/C on when the sun shines brightly into the cabin. Rizk expects those kinds of artificial intelligence-based features to proliferate over time.
If you want the very best in tech, it may be best to go with a Tesla, Rivian or Genesis—J.D. Power’s top three brands when it comes to tech innovation. You can find the rest of the ranking here. Just note that Tesla, Rivian and Polestar—though they earned some of the highest scores—aren’t officially ranked because they don’t volunteer all the registration data J.D. Power needs.
Got thoughts about the tech you can and can't live without? Sound off in the comments.
Contact the author: tim.levin@insideevs.com
