JD Power’s car owner survey: People are getting fed up with all the useless built-in tech in their cars

For the first time in 28 years of JD Power’s car owner survey, there is a consecutive year-over-year decline in satisfaction, with most of the ire directed toward in-car infotainment.

Unsurprisingly, more people are choosing not to use their car’s native infotainment controls. Only 56 percent of owners prefer to use their vehicle’s built-in system to play audio, down from 70 percent in 2020, JD Power found. Less than half of owners said they like using their car’s native controls for navigation, voice recognition, or to make phone calls.

Naturally, it seems like most people are preferring to use smartphone-mirroring systems like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which have proven to be incredibly popular over the years.

In fact, my last car purchase revolved heavily around the infotainment system. The Toyota I was looking at just did not even have one, whilst the Hyundai I did buy (after 25 years of driving Toyota’s) had an infotainment system that worked both with iOS and Android.

And for controls such as air-con etc I actually prefer buttons and knobs that can be felt without looking.

Car manufacturers are just hopeless when it comes to software. We’ve also seen they have also been a step or two behind with security around that software as well. Every time I take my car in for its service, I ask for the infotainment software to be checked for updates. I don’t think the dealer knows what I’m talking about, as the software has never received a single update in 3 years. How is that possible? Excellent forward-thinking software design, maybe…

See https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power