The Wall Street Journal
May 11, 2017
Photo Credit: Jaguar USA; New generation system in 2018 Jaguar XF.
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May 11, 2017
Photo Credit: Jaguar USA; New generation system in 2018 Jaguar XF.
Your New Car’s Best Tech Feature May Be the ‘System Off’ Button
Buggy software, touchy touch screens baffle drivers; ‘then the beeping started’
Jonna Miller, a Houston obstetrician, has delivered babies for 17 years, some births trickier than others. But getting from point A to point B using BMW’s navigation system, she said, is too complicated to bother with.
Dr. Miller, 48 years old, has been on the losing end of a technological tug of war with her 2015 640i coupe. The voice-activated cellphone-calling system refuses to recognize her husband’s name. Safety sensors needlessly beep every time she backs out of her garage or passes through the carwash.
A BMW spokesperson said sensors for the parking-assistance system “can be turned off simply by pressing one button.”
Even so, Dr. Miller’s complaints echo other drivers who long for the days when the only console controls were for the heater and radio. “This might be why I buy a used car in the future,” Dr. Miller said.
Auto makers have come to rely on car tech for a disproportionate amount of profit. As they load up their vehicles with gizmos and gadgets, however, they’re leaving some drivers dazed and confused—even driving them to attend twohour demonstration seminars.
Ron Iseman, a retired Air Force intelligence officer living in Ormond Beach, Fla., quit using his Acura RDX’s built-in navigation system after it told him to take a left turn at a red light—into a pond. Imagine, he said, “if it had been night and the light had been green.” He disabled the car’s lane-keep assistance feature, which beeps when drivers stray from their lanes, after the warning turned into a nag.
The new safety-infotainment industrial complex is intended to reduce risk and make drivers’ lives easier—a good idea when it all works.
T.G. “Terry” Barrett and his wife, Janet Nickles, of Pine Top, Ky., bought matching Honda Civics last year loaded with a full complement of digital features. Soon after, the touch screens on Mr. Barrett’s car went haywire, scrolling wildly and shutting on and off untouched, he said.
Then the beeping started. Constant beeping, he said, with no way to stop it. His wife’s car chimed in with its own beeping.
The local Honda dealership rebooted the system several times, updated the software and replaced the entire touch panel. Still, the beeping. “This has been going on for more than a year now,” Mr. Barrett said.
He was told another software upgrade wasn’t quite ready. Car makers, he said, are “moving too fast and want to sell things before the bugs are worked out.”
Honda said in a written statement: “The screen supplier has corrected the issue in new production, and there will soon be a software update” for existing vehicles.
AutoTrader.com, a car-buying website, polled more than 1,000 car owners recently about car tech and more than a third said they wanted only standard features.
A similar study by Deloitte found advanced dashboard apps to help find parking spaces or connect with other smartphones were among a vehicle’s least useful features.
Many American consumers believe the inability to deliver reliable dashboard features casts doubt on the auto industry being able to engineer self-driving cars that won’t crash, the Deloitte study found.
The learning curve for new models seems to steepen every year, along with driver complaints. Getting customers up to speed “is one of the biggest challenges we have,” said Bill Fay, the Toyota brand’s U.S. chief, whose work follows him home. His wife, he confessed, struggles with new features.
“I’ll show her and she says. ‘I still don’t know how to work this,’ ” he said. “Eventually, we make progress.”
On a rainy night in Topsham, Maine, a dozen new-car owners huddled in the service garage of Lee Toyota for a 90minute tutorial. Lured by free sandwiches, they heard about dashboard controls and crashprevention features.
“It’s not designed to drive the car for you,” service manager Eric Muchmore warned, though Toyota’s new lane-keep assistance feature in fact steers the car back into the lane when drivers stray. For backup sensors to work in the winter, he advised, you should brush snow off the tiny circular indentations on the bumper. Some jotted notes; one woman knitted.
“If you aren’t a person who uses technology at home, you are just lost,” said Mary Louise Seldenfleur, 80 years old, who bought a 2017 Toyota Camry.
At Mercedes-Benz of Fairfield, in Fairfield, Calif., product experts spend as much as two hours reviewing gadgetry with new buyers, said General Manager Mo Ayubyar. The dealership offers home visits from so-called product concierges.
Once upon a time, Mr. Ayubyar recalled, “I’d say, ‘Here are the keys. Call me if you have any questions.’” Now, tech specialists supplement the sales team.
Doug Cooper, a rancher north of Casper, Wyo., refuses to buy a new truck, training or not. He mostly uses his pickups on dirt roads and muddy fields, no place for finicky sensors or fancy electronics that balloon the sticker price.
Backup cameras are particularly vulnerable on the range, he said. Mr. Cooper once tried to help a friend load an elk into the truck bed, he said, and had trouble removing the tailgate because of all the camera wiring.
“One doesn’t paint the house in a little black dress,” he said. “Detroit is trying to make us work in a tuxedo.”
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