Almost 100,000 automobile patrons of 2025 model-year autos have 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 vital 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 lack of bodily buttons, nor, amazingly, intrusive bongs from speed-warning methods, however a marked enhance 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 shapes [of containers] which can be more and more obtainable,” says the report.
So evidently regardless of the auto business’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 the nostril for a elaborate new automobile full of tech—ADAS, ambient lighting, back-groping seats, canine modes—doesn’t cease auto patrons from complaining about insufficiently expandable beverage bays.
For a number of years, this long-running annual benchmarking report has suggested automobile 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? Almost certainly gargantuan Stanley cups, big Yeti Gallon Ramblers and related such bladder-busters, the spilt contents of which may drench a desert into bloom.
Though middle console actual property in as we speak’s automobiles is at a premium—particularly now that ever-bigger touchscreens have turn out to be 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 vital essential elements in clinching the acquisition choice for potential auto patrons. That it stays simply as important as we speak should rankle with auto software program engineers, however it doesn’t shock Chris Fischer, Nissan’s go-to engineer for cup holders. “That cup holders work effectively is vital to buyer satisfaction,” Fischer tells WIRED. “It’s a key decider when shopping for a automobile.”
Working from Nissan’s North American technical middle 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 customers, 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 vital,” agrees Dick Powell, cofounder of London-headquartered design and innovation firm Seymourpowell. “Nice design is essentially about making issues higher, and if you go right into a automobile showroom, the touchpoints are the primary interactions you’ve gotten with the automobile. How does the [door] deal with really feel? What’s it like opening the door? The place are the cup holders?”
