What Makes a Automobile Lovable? It is Not the Tech, It is the Cup Holders
Practically 100,000 automotive consumers of 2025 model-year autos had been requested what they considered their gleaming new rides. The outcomes are revealing, to say the least. Need to know who was the worst performer? That ignominy goes to Audi, with an embarrassing 269 issues reported per 100 autos.
Nonetheless, one of the crucial attention-grabbing discoveries of the J.D. Energy Preliminary High quality Research (labelled as a “key discovering”, no much less) involved not annoyance with the shortage of bodily buttons, nor, amazingly, intrusive bongs from speed-warning programs, however a marked improve in “cup-holder frustration”.
“Whereas it appeared like producers had cup holders found out … producers are struggling to maintain up with with the ability to accommodate all of the completely different sizes and styles [of containers] which might be more and more out there,” says the report.
So evidently regardless of the auto trade’s obsession with software-defined autos, many purchasers would forego any variety of digital doohickeys, as long as there was sufficient room of their new automobiles for a number of Huge Gulps. Paying by way of the nostril for a elaborate new automotive filled with tech—ADAS, ambient lighting, back-groping seats, canine modes—doesn’t cease auto consumers from complaining about insufficiently expandable beverage bays.
For a number of years, this long-running annual benchmarking report has suggested automotive manufacturers to pay nearer consideration to the cup-holder kvetching. The cylindrical voids of area—or, in some automobiles, flip-out trays, door areas, fancy holsters, or hinged pockets—are nonetheless too small, gripe a lot of these surveyed. Too small for what, although? More than likely gargantuan Stanley cups, big Yeti Gallon Ramblers and related such bladder-busters, the spilt contents of which may drench a desert into bloom.
Despite the fact that heart console actual property in at present’s automobiles is at a premium—particularly now that ever-bigger touchscreens have develop into seemingly important in each self-respecting digital cockpit—America’s (and more and more the Center East and Australia’s) big-drink tradition dictates that automakers not scrimp on cup storage.
It’s the Little Issues
Twenty years in the past, a PricewaterhouseCoopers report recommended that the variety of cup holders in a US car was one of the crucial crucial elements in clinching the acquisition determination for potential auto consumers. That it stays simply as very important at present should rankle with auto software program engineers, but it surely doesn’t shock Chris Fischer, Nissan’s go-to engineer for cup holders. “That cup holders work properly is essential to buyer satisfaction,” Fischer tells WIRED. “It’s a key decider when shopping for a automotive.”
Working from Nissan’s North American technical heart in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Fischer is the corporate’s senior supervisor of car efficiency improvement, and, together with a crew of “cabin utility” engineers, he has toiled to enhance in-car beverage storage since 2015, when poor cup holder efficiency adversely impacted Nissan’s J.D. Energy benchmarking scores.
Cup-holder design issues intensely to many shoppers, he says. “In the event that they’re mad a couple of touchpoint day by day, it’ll bitter their need to need this car once more.”
“Touchpoints are critically essential,” agrees Dick Powell, cofounder of London-headquartered design and innovation firm Seymourpowell. “Nice design is essentially about making issues higher, and while you go right into a automotive showroom, the touchpoints are the primary interactions you have got with the automotive. How does the [door] deal with really feel? What’s it like opening the door? The place are the cup holders?”