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Currently... the engine.
It's been 3 weeks since i last turned it on.
That’s quite useful, shirley? In newer cars the skid risk is actually a live warning from a car ahead which has triggered the ABS or traction control.
You what now? Since when has that been a thing & how does it work?
Surprised that no-one's mentioned the nut that holds the steering wheel 😉
Idiot lights (DRLs) are utterly pointless - all that was needed was a change in the lighting regulations that all motor vehicles must have dipped headlights lit when moving. DRLs have just reinforced idiot behaviour.
Had an interesting situation following a Tesla last year. Driving "sedately" we were on a straight bit of road when his "brake" lights came on. I couldn't see anything ahead. The lights went off, then on, then off, etc. I then realised that with it being a sunny day the light sensor was reacting to the light and shade of individual trees by the roadside!
LED headlights - blind every other ****er on the road just so you can drive at exactly the same speed as with Halogen lights.
@spooky_b329 - I regularly try and get back from the Lakes along the A65 without using the brakes (gear changes are allowed). Makes it a very relaxing drive, you just need to keep your distance from the vehicle in front to give yourself time, maybe a minute slower than "making progress" especially on a Sunday evening when the road is full of traffic.
The sat nav on my citroen is pretty crap. Going from the Erskine bridge to Falkirk it decided that the fastest way was up the Great western road into the middle of Glasgow (traffic lights every 250 metres) as opposed to an extra 5 miles of motorway (on a 40 mile journey)
The new van lights the dash up all the time, I’m definitely going to be one of those forgetters at some point.
This is the problem with DRL's and the fact that they are bright enough to light up the tarmac in front of you so there's no visual clues that you've not got your lights actually on. Ususally in my van it's fine because auto lights just take care of it, but if someone else has switched them off, MOT tester or the garage when servicing for example, there's little chance I'm going to realise until it's actually pitch black or someone is flashing me.
Also think the skid warning from the car ahead thing is bunk. Please explain to me I'm wrong.
Mine has a pull down convex mirror (between the rear view mirror and useless sunglasses holder) so that I can watch the kids beating the shit out of each other. However, as they are sat about 3ft behind me I am usually already aware when this is happening.
For those complaining about:
- Switches to turn ESC / Traction control off: Have you ever driven on snow, ice or wet grass?
- Flappy paddles / manual on an auto: Have you ever driven down a long or steep hill without riding the brakes?
What about the folks behind you in the dark when you have no lights on? At this time of year I see folk every day who clearly think their lights are on, as their dash is lit up.
That's an issue with automatically backlit dashboards rather than DRL's, plenty of folk still did it before DRL's came along. I did it on a borrowed car once, it's very easily done when you're used to an oldschool dash that only lights up when you tell it to.
given the number of people on here ignoring change gear lights, thus producing more emissions, it seems likely those days didn’t exist.
Depends on whether you are looking at economy and mechanical sympathy or not, a lot of gear change lights come on well before the car really gets into its power band, certain cars (VTEC or over specced VVT turbos) REALLY do not like this and you can end up seizing bits (vanes or actuators) when they don't get a regular workout.
It also has one of those japanese pop-up parking poles from Previous Owner In Japan, which is totally totally pointless but I still love it
That's actually a really neat feature, I'd have loved one of those! Really good for tight city parking (if you were taught to park properly).
Flappy paddles / manual on an auto: Have you ever driven down a long or steep hill without riding the brakes?
You've just opened a whole new can of worms now. (yes I'm aware that there are actually signs that tell you to engage a low gear on steep hills) Engine braking deniers to the front please. That also applies to your snow/mud example.
Had an interesting situation following a Tesla last year. Driving “sedately” we were on a straight bit of road when his “brake” lights came on. I couldn’t see anything ahead. The lights went off, then on, then off, etc. I then realised that with it being a sunny day the light sensor was reacting to the light and shade of individual trees by the roadside!
Either that or he was lifting off enough for regents braking to kick in. My i3 lights the brake lights without me touching the pedal, it is slowing down quicker than a car normally would.
@phil5556 - there was no actual braking, or at least none that was discernible, and they were maintaining a steady speed on flat terrain. Once I twigged what was going on I could see the car enter shade, rear lights on, leave shade, lights off.
Had an interesting situation following a Tesla last year. Driving “sedately” we were on a straight bit of road when his “brake” lights came on. I couldn’t see anything ahead. The lights went off, then on, then off, etc. I then realised that with it being a sunny day the light sensor was reacting to the light and shade of individual trees by the roadside!
my ten year old subaru has auto-mode for the lights that will do the same thing. pisses me off inside the car so i just leave them on all the time. its clever enough to turn them off when I turn it off though.
what it isn't clever enough to do is turn off the light by the mirror in the sunshade though. as I found out to my cost at bristol airport after a week away to a completely drained battery.
Glasses holder in the RS5 - you'd struggle to put a set of John Lennon specs in there. I really don't know what it's designed for
You what now? Since when has that been a thing & how does it work?
https://www.volvocars.com/uk/support/topics/use-your-car/car-functions/connected-safety
Audi / VW / Seat / Skoda / BMW have an equivalent system (don't know if the data is shared).
AM and MW bands on the radio.
Does anyone use these? Are there actually any AM/MW stations still broadcasting?
The hazards light button on my T5. If the steering wheel was on the left ,it would be in the perfect position. Instead on the rare occasions you want to use it, I'm left flapping around on the wrong side of the central dash (not really wanting to take my eyes off the road to find it).
Are there actually any AM/MW stations still broadcasting?
Radio Scotland for whatever other game is playing at the same time.
5 live
– Switches to turn ESC / Traction control off: Have you ever driven on snow, ice or wet grass?
– Flappy paddles / manual on an auto: Have you ever driven down a long or steep hill without riding the brakes?
In fairness my ESP handles ice / grass perfectly well, I think most modern cars do. It's been a long time since Traction Control said "nah mate" and just left you sat there.
Mine also use engine braking when appropriate.
The paddles in mine seem exclusively for when you need to play out your Jenson Hamilton fantasies, I admit, I do use mine now and again. It's fun.
I think I can win at this game 😆
About 3,000 buttons in Japanese that I have no idea what they do.
A flare.
A tiny little mirror that lets you see the nearside wheel of your car (if you have super human vision) even though you have a camera with a great big screen that covers the same area (which is genuinely useful).
A lady that talks to you about Japanese toll roads... in Japan.
Satnav/TV/Radio... that only works in Japan.
DVD plater... that only works with Japanese region DVDs.
And my personal favourite, a satellite clock that cannot be adjusted that tells the perfect time... you guess it... in Japan.
(Despite all the above the van is bloody brilliant and have a work around for most of them and Google Translate for the rest).
https://www.volvocars.com/uk/support/topics/use-your-car/car-functions/connected-safetyAudi / VW / Seat / Skoda / BMW have an equivalent system (don’t know if the data is shared).
Fair play Flaperon, I do actually stand corrected. Might actually be useful if the data is shared and there's a critical mass of vehicles with it.
CD player. I didn't realise it was in the glovebox for the first 2 years.
Haven't read every post sop may have been mentioned already.
Instantaneous fuel economy thingy, you know the one that goes from 1mpg when pressing the accelerator to 110mpg when freewheeling. Utterly pointless.
A flare.
You'll be thankful for that when a heatseeking missile has a lock on you!
CD player. I didn’t realise it was in the glovebox for the first 2 years.
I actually like that mine has a CD player, because we have loads of audio books for the kids on CD and borrow others from the library for long trips.
Granted I could probably do that with a USB stick, but it'd actually be more of a faff.
And streaming is great but chuff all use in large parts of the country.
Something to do with the turbo timer (also file under useless) but still can’t fathom what.
A mate of mine had a cool Evo 6 Rallye type thing, that had a turbo timer. She’d get ‘turn the car off’ and take out the key, and get out..but the engine would still keep running for a few minutes to cool the turbo slowly, then cut off.
It was a neat, specked up car, TBH. MOre of a show piece.
My ‘07 Octavia doesn’t have a turbo timer. ;-(
DrP
Cigarette Lighter .
Mine gets very excited when anything happens at all, temp drops below 3degs? Bing, door open? Bing! passenger taken off their seatbelt momentarily? Bing bing bing!!
shut up!!
My old Alfa had a screenwash bottle that held about 300ml which was annoying enough, but the sensor to let you know it was running out kicked in at about 95% full, so it was always telling you it was empty and then you would run out as it was difficult to believe it was actually nearly empty having topped up the week before.
My old car had a frost warning light. Completely useless, it's only measuring air temperature not the road and was illuminated for most of the winter.
My car is pretty utilitarian but the oone absolutley useless thing about it is the bluetooth connection to a mobile phone. There is no real facility for the car to connect to the phone address books o it's virtually impossible to make a call outwards withought using the handset and you have no way of knowing who is calling inwards without looking at the handset. They'd have been as well not bothering as it's functionally useless.
Really? My Mondeo Tit connection and functionality works pretty good (besides listing everyone by each number, email etc. rather than just name), thats on the fancy instrument cluster screen though so I'm guessing they still haven't got round to fitting those in Zetecs yet? (assuming you're talking about your Kuga).
Actually I thought of another pointless thing - voice control. Utterly useless. Only ever wants to turn on Radio 2. Commands are totally unintuitive and even when you use a script it still ends up on Steve ****ing Wright.
(assuming you’re talking about your Kuga).
Not me. Mitsubishi Outlander innit. Never had a Kuga.
you have no way of knowing who is calling inwards without looking at the handset
On a lot of phones you can set the phone itself to announce who is calling, that may help?
My car is pretty utilitarian but the oone absolutley useless thing about it is the bluetooth connection to a mobile phone. There is no real facility for the car to connect to the phone address books o it’s virtually impossible to make a call outwards withought using the handset and you have no way of knowing who is calling inwards without looking at the handset. They’d have been as well not bothering as it’s functionally useless.
Can't the bluetooth hands free function as a dumb headset, and give you access to Google/Siri etc? My 2006 Toyota has what must be the most useless voice recognition system ever but if you simply long press the call button as you would on an earpiece it kicks off Google Now and you can do whatever you can with a normal earpiece including asking it to call people from your contacts. The phone's own address book is unusuable, literally in most cases as it basically never synced with any of my phones.
I had a hire car last year - some SUV thingy. Despite spending half an hour with the manual and driving it for a week I still did not know what half the buttons did. It also had an 8 spd auto box with several modes. so on that car half the dash was pointless
Idle control's pretty useful at times- mostly as a car gets old and a little crankier. Pretty much all cars have it, it's just that you're not trusted to adjust it any more. my old mondeo started to idle too low and developed an annoying bump/hop as it'd fall low and then have a wee moment to itself, I could have fixed it in 2 seconds if it had an adjuster but instead it'd have been a "go to dealership, pay them 2 hours labour to plug in a laptop and change a number" job.
GlennQuagmire
Free MemberEach to their own, but I find these very useful. Love the auto, but been able to select a gear before a potential manoeuvre is great to have. That’s how I would drive a manual, so not sure why it would be a bad thing.
Yeah, I have an auto with a semi-auto mode, it doesn't have flappies (well it does, but they're in a box in the garage) but it does have stick control and it's way better than leaving the slightly outmoded 5EAT to work by itself. (Obviously autoboxes can never predict in the way humans can but this one's just a bit slow, too). Feels like playing a driving game in an arcade 🙂
I think gear shift suggestions have come on a bit in recent years. My Golf is smart enough to know when the engine is in 3rd under load going up hill rather than on the flat when 4th or 5th would be better. It's also pretty unobtrusive and can be turned off in the menu.
Similarly Start/Stop - you have to actually put the car in neutral and take your foot off the clutch for it to activate. Leave it in gear with your foot on the clutch (obvs) and the engine does not stop. Makes it great for err... start stop traffic as opposed to when you're just sat at the lights. Of course autos work differently and have different parameters for kicking in. Again there is a button just to turn it off if it annoys you.
The most pointless thing in my car is the cigarette lighter that doesn't have the lighter bit, just the 12v socket. A couple of USB charging ports would be far more useful...
On the subject of warnings, my Seat would bing gently for things like frost, or door open, or seatbelt off, but it had an earsplitting long BEEEP when the fuel was low. Low in this case meaning about 1/4 tank, which in that car was about 150 miles. Er yeah thanks for scaring the shit out of me with that not-very-urgent piece of information that I was aware of anyway.
Also - manual override in an auto - useful for towing occasionally and also for overtaking, you can force it into a low gear ready for overtaking.
Tricky one. I have a Honda so it's mostly billy basic from the ground up with no pointless features.
The one fancy feature (it's old) was Sat Nav.
Circa 2000 - a first gen car unit - it is currently rendered completely useless due to getting dust on the dvd laser (again) so the screen merely displays "read error" and doesn't even allow access to the clock or stereo.
It also has no volume control on the (loud) voice, which furthermore tells you 'navigation unit is open' when you open the door... Guess what you have to do in order to load or change a CD.
Predictably, as the unit ages, the switch on that door becomes worn. These days, a moderate bump in the road is sufficient to convince the unit that I have opened the door.
Definitely the various empty coffee cups and crisp wrappers... I really must get round to that.
The most pointless thing in my car is the cigarette lighter that doesn’t have the lighter bit, just the 12v socket. A couple of USB charging ports would be far more useful…
You'll struggle to pump a tyre up on USB.
My experience of flappy paddles is purely gearbox dependent.
On my old Golf GTI I rarely used them as the gearbox was so good. On my (the wifes mainly) Mini, the gearbox in comparison to DSG is awful - really slow and feels like its borderline stalling until it drops down up a hill etc. Mainly gets used for pootling around town so not a problem but on an open twisty road I find myself using the paddles all the time.
Similarly Start/Stop – you have to actually put the car in neutral and take your foot off the clutch for it to activate. Leave it in gear with your foot on the clutch (obvs) and the engine does not stop. Makes it great for err… start stop traffic as opposed to when you’re just sat at the lights. Of course autos work differently and have different parameters for kicking in. Again there is a button just to turn it off if it annoys you.
The stop start in my old manual Volvo was a pain in the arse and was rarely used, but in the new auto it works really well.