What Makes a Automobile Lovable? It is Not the Tech, It is the Cup Holders

Almost 100,000 automobile 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.

Nevertheless, some of the fascinating 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 methods, however a marked improve 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 of the totally different styles and sizes [of containers] which can be more and more obtainable,” says the report.

So it appears that 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 Large Gulps. Paying via the nostril for a elaborate new automobile 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 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 lots of these surveyed. Too small for what, although? Most definitely gargantuan Stanley cups, big Yeti Gallon Ramblers and comparable such bladder-busters, the spilt contents of which may drench a desert into bloom.

Though middle console actual property in at this time’s automobiles is at a premium—particularly now that ever-bigger touchscreens have turn 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 advised that the variety of cup holders in a US automobile was some of the crucial elements in clinching the acquisition choice for potential auto consumers. That it stays simply as very important at this time 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 automobile.”

Working from Nissan’s North American technical middle in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Fischer is the corporate’s senior supervisor of car efficiency growth, 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 on daily basis, it’ll bitter their want to need this automobile 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 once you go right into a automobile showroom, the touchpoints are the primary 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?”