What Makes a Car Lovable? It’s Not the Tech, It’s the Cup Holders

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. Wish to know who was the worst performer? That ignominy goes to Audi, with an embarrassing 269 issues reported per 100 automobiles.

Nonetheless, certainly one of the most attention-grabbing discoveries of the J.D. Energy Preliminary High quality Examine (labelled as a “key discovering”, no much less) involved not annoyance with the lack of bodily buttons, nor, amazingly, intrusive bongs from speed-warning techniques, however a marked enhance in “cup-holder frustration”.

“Whereas it appeared like producers had cup holders discovered … producers are struggling to maintain up with having the ability to accommodate all the totally different sizes and styles [of containers] which might be more and more out there,” says the report.

So evidently regardless of the auto business’s obsession with software-defined automobiles, many purchasers would forego any variety of digital doohickeys, as long as there was sufficient room of their new vehicles for a number of Huge Gulps. Paying via the nostril for a fancy new automobile filled with 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 vehicles, 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? Most certainly gargantuan Stanley cups, big Yeti Gallon Ramblers and related such bladder-busters, the spilt contents of which might drench a desert into bloom.

Regardless that heart console actual property in right now’s vehicles 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 steered that the variety of cup holders in a US car was certainly one of the most important components in clinching the buy choice for potential auto patrons. That it stays simply as important right now should rankle with auto software program engineers, nevertheless it doesn’t shock Chris Fischer, Nissan’s go-to engineer for cup holders. “That cup holders work nicely is necessary to buyer satisfaction,” Fischer tells WIRED. “It’s a key decider when shopping for a automobile.”

Working from Nissan’s North American technical heart in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Fischer is the firm’s senior supervisor of car efficiency growth, and, together with a staff 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 about a touchpoint day by day, it’ll bitter their need to need this car once more.”

“Touchpoints are critically necessary,” agrees Dick Powell, cofounder of London-headquartered design and innovation firm Seymourpowell. “Nice design is essentially about making issues higher, and while you go into a automobile showroom, the touchpoints are the first interactions you’ve got with the automobile. How does the [door] deal with really feel? What’s it like opening the door? The place are the cup holders?”