Every so often I check out a car review on YT. Not buying anything, just trying to keep up with trends and development in the car world. Here are a couple of features that are hailed as either luxurious or necessary. I just don’t understand why.
Alcantara
This is fake suede made from 68 % polyester and 32 % polyurethane. I remember when it showed up in the 80’s as a fabric for couches but it was generally shunned as not being enough like suede and being synthetic. Yet, in car reviews they are saying things like “The interior is very nice, leather and Alcantara, no cheap plastic.” I get that the tactile feel is a bit nicer than vinyl, but luxury?
Climate controls and climate zones.
There is quite a lot of griping about climate controls being integrated in the infotainment screen, as opposed to real, easy to reach physical buttons. I set the temperature I want and hit auto. If the car has been sitting outside in the sun all day, I just lower the temp to blast out the heat and then return it to my preferred setting.
Adjacent to this is dual climate zones. The interior of a car, even the largest SUVs, is not a very big space. The idea that the passenger and driver can sit in different climate zones seems bizarre. Of course, one may want a blast of air in the face and the other not. Vents open and close.
Mood light
Why? Yeah it looks cool. But when I’m driving at night I want as little light as possible inside the car, so not to ruin my night vision.
Three row seats
Yeah yeah, soccer moms driving their and the neighbor’s kids to practise. But…
The third row is in most cases only suitable for small children and using the third row also means (apart from the biggest SUVs) almost no luggage space. If one transports six people I imagine that there are very few places one can go without the need for soma luggage space. Church maybe? Why not get a van, or even the hated minivan?
Also, folding the third row to get more space invariably compromises the luggage space, as compared to a two row car of the same model.
Isn’t that just the “rich Corinthian leather” that Ricardo Montalban touted for Dodge and Plymouth back in the 1970s?
Yeah, I don’t get that either. I drive a Chevy Tahoe, and the first thing I did when I got my new car home was to remove the third-row seats. Now, I had room for three golf buddies and four sets of golf clubs, or a cooler and my gear for weekends away. Plus, my third-row seat mounts give me a few more tie-downs. Technically, I suppose that my Chevy can hold seven people—but only if they’re not bringing anything with them.
Oh boy. Give me a big fat knob that I don’t have to search for. It’s surely cheaper to put it on the whatever screen, but it’s dangerous.
My 2019 4Runner has three big fat knobs to control all the temperature in the car. No searching involved. I’m gonna mis that. But now I suppose you are talking to your car. No buttons involved at all.
Oddly, this kind of works. But it’s a duel one side against the other.
Let me guess - you do not regularly ride with one other person whose AC/heat preferences differ from yours? Dual climate control is probably the one feature my car lacks which I wish it had. IME, the vent controls are insufficient.
I recently got a loaner from the dealer. It was my wife’s exact car, just a couple of years newer. Boy, I disliked having all of the controls (except the radio volume/tuning knobs) represented by icons on one big screen. I’m sure I would get used to it eventually, but sure turned me off during my brief usage.
The dual climate control thing makes sense. My wife gets hot really easily, likes to turn up the AC. I get cold easily, don’t want the AC blasting. Depending on the direction of travel, she may be sitting in the sun and I’m not, which makes it worse. She can turn the temperature down on her side and have the vents blasting on her. I can turn my side up and move the vents so they are not blowing directly on me.
I totally agree with this. My SiL gets uncomfortable if the temp falls below 80, and I get uncomfortable if it rises about 75 or 80. If we ride in her car, the dual climate control solves that issue. In my car, I have to tell her to shut off all the vents on her side while mine are wide open.
That leather is nice? Sure. Alcantara, though. Again it’s polyester and polyurethane. There’s nothing luxurious about that.
I too hate to do everythingv on a screen. What I don’t get is the need to fiddle with the climate control all the time. Set the temperature and go. In past times, when it was just AC and not climate control, I get needing to adjust. BVut are you guys driving down the interstate with it set at 72F and suddenly feel the need to adjust that to 67F? And frequently enough to warrant “three big fat knobs?”
I mean, I’ve got mine set to 20C year around.
n.b. I’m not saying shut up and deal with it on a screen, what I’m asking is why there’s even a need to fiddle with it. If that’s a common thing, then I DO get why people hate having it on a screen.
Do you get little thunderstorms when the cold front and warm front collide? Because that would be really cool.
I’m not sure what there is to understand about three rows. When I had three kids in the house, if any of them had a friend over and we all wanted to go somewhere, the third row was great. Or, two kids in the way back with the dog and the third kid in the middle. I definitely had more use for a third row than I would have had for whatever extra storage I would have gotten.
Sometimes. At least in Colorado. The sun comes out of the clouds and all of a sudden your in a terrarium. And not all cars have ‘climate’ control. My 2019 4Runner needs to be adjusted by the big knobs.
My Wifes Subi has ‘climate’ control. But turn a corner and get in the Colorado sun and you start to bake if you don’t take ‘control’ back.
I took a road trip over the past weekend. Driving around noon, the temp was just over 70. I found myself making slight adjustments. I thought vent would be OK, but it seemed over warm, s I put on AC - but full cool seemed a tad cool - especially blowing on my bare legs. So I adjusted the direction.
I tend to be with you - set it and forget it. But just last week I found myself fiddling. (Coincidentally, on my way to a music camp where a great deal of fiddling occurred!)
Another vote that “climate control” is mostly set and forget, and that split zones for the two sides is hugely valuable for couples with different internal thermostats. GF and I often have a 7 degree delta between our settings. In a small coupe.
As to 3-row vans, they’re not for me, but the real target market is people with small kids. A vehicle able to carry 6 adults cozily turns into a 4-person max capacity car when three of them are in child seats.
I adjust the climate control all the time during my commute. I may also turn on/off the heated/cooled seats, or turn on/off the defrosters. Fortunately, most of that can be done through voice control.
We have a 2024 Santa Fe - primarily my husband’s vehicle. It’s got touch screen controls for way too many things - I think it’s unsafe when he’s driving alone. But when he’s alone, he has everything set to his satisfaction, so there’s that.
What we both hate is the ding-ding-ding reminder to take a break with the coffee cup visual. I kinda understand it for long road trips. But we’ve had it come up after 10 whole minutes of driving!! I’m pretty sure we can make it to Lowes without pulling over.
It also has an alarm that he hates. He likes to drive with his hand on the top of the wheel. When doing that, his arm blocks a camera or something designed to watch is face and make sure he’s awake and alert. Nag nag nag!! And there’s no way that we’ve found to disable either function. We even asked the dealer. I wish Hyundai would issue a software update allowing us to select which “safety” functions we want and which we don’t.
On one hand, I understand many of the safety features, but on the other hand, I foresee problems should someone become accustomed to them, then drives another vehicle that doesn’t have the alarms and monitors. Sometimes there’s too much reliance on technology and not enough personal awareness.
That one fascinates me. Mine only goes off late a night when I’m really tired. How is it so accurate?
Anyway, the one I can’t understand is a beep (loud) I get when approaching a stop light with a red light camera. What am I supposed to do with that information? It’s not like I was going to run a red light, but because of the warning, decided not to.
My little 2019 Kia Niro has real leather upholstery throughout, no need for a Lexus.
And I can also choose which safety features to activate. It’s interesting that a newer vehicle (@FairyChatMom ‘s 2024 Santa Fe) is more restrictive – Hyundai & Kia are the same manufacturer.
The car monitors small movements (lane departures, steering corrections, and some other factors) to match a pattern of sleepy drivers. Not all versions operate exactly the same way.
Some drivers like to push their relationship with stop lights to the edge, so when they see a yellow they’ll speed up, but they still sometimes will miss the yellow entirely and blast through on the red. No camera, usually no problem (in that they don’t get caught doing this). If they know there’s a camera, they are more likely to be fractionally more responsible. Red light tickets are expensive, and all those dings on your driving record drive up your insurance premium.
Modern alcantara feels good. I don’t know if it always did, but comparing the vinyl seats in my mom’s 74 Maverick to the “vegan leather” seats on my modern car, and synthetic fabrics have come a long way. My synthetic leather seats are comparable to the real leather on my dad’s Lexus.
I think the main “luxury” of it is having the suede-like alcantara on surfaces that would typically be hard plastic. The improved tactile feel is presented as more luxurious.
Sun roofs and moon roofs make no sense to me. I’ve had several cars with sun roofs and never used them. A moon roof that doesn’t even open makes even less sense. It’s just something that may develop a leak. I open the sun roof on my present car every once in a while just to make sure it still functions, but that’s it.