Use it or lose it: carmakers killing unused features

Tesla was the first to begin removing features while looking to save costs, such as the indicator stalks

Lumbar support for the passenger seat disappeared in 2021. “Logs showed almost no usage. Not worth cost/mass for everyone when almost never used,” CEO Elon Musk posted on X, then Twitter.

Gone too are ultrasonic parking sensors as well as rain sensors, both of which are replaced by Tesla’s ever-more hard-working cameras, dubbed Tesla Vision. Feedback from customers on the efficacy of the replacements has been poor.

However, as a result of this approach, the company said last year it  had taken 30% of the cost out of building the Model 3 since launching it in 2018, some of which goes into model price cuts. 

Anyone ordering cars in the dark days of Covid and its aftermath will remember that carmakers were having to delete features purely due to the lack of semiconductors available to control them. These days however, the motivation is almost 100% cost-saving.

Migrating buttons to the touchscreen to save on materials and assembly costs is almost a given on any model update no matter which car maker, even on upscale models such as Range Rovers. The latest versions for example lose controls for the heating and ventilation to the screen. 

JLR alluded to this in its most recent annual report, saying it had driven “material cost reduction” through “technical and feature optimisation”.

Other feature deletions are more minor, for example lights for the passenger sunshade vanity mirror, or the rear wiper. This penny pinching is mostly seen in mainstream, cost-sensitive cars where margins are slimmest.

The loss of physical controls is felt very differently by customers across the world. “It depends on the region,” said VW’s head of development Kai Grunitz. “In China, they want to do everything, and I really mean everything with the speech dialogue system [voice control]. But in the States, they want to have huge switches.”

China might love voice control and screens but carmakers dialling back some of the excessive early spend on the semi-autonomous ambitions. Makers there such as Xpeng are waving goodbye to lidar, the expensive sensors that many consider essential for hands-off, eyes-off autonomy.

Volkswagen learned the hard way that you can jump too soon to a screen-based ecosystem, and is repairing some of the damage with its new MIB4 infotainment system that now gives you fixed digital buttons on the extremities of the screen.

The advantage of course of a software-based control system is that you can add new features, update the ones you have and generally improve the useability throughout the life of the car. For example In Ford’s case, anyone who really loved Park Assist might in the future be able to pay to download it from the digital store.

This new ‘software-defined’ car is the holy grail of car makers who believe they can persuade drivers to subscribe to new features and so help pay for what’s an incredibly expensive shift from the current electronic architectures.

What these valuable features will be are still being thrashed out. BMW felt the sting of customer criticism recently after wanting to activate physical features such as heated seats via digital subscription. That backlash has cautioned others. “If I walk into the dealership and I buy a car with a heated seat, I expect it to work not be offered as a service,” Mamatha Chamarthi, head of business growth for software Stellantis, told a recent panel on the software-defined car hosted by the Financial Times. “I think that business model will get a lot of pushback from the customer, as we have seen in the case of BMW”

Stellantis, parent brand of car makers such as Vauxhall and Peugeot, is investigating selling more horsepower for future electric Dodge performance cars for track scenarios, or in-car off-road tutorials to Jeep owners, Chamarthi said. 

The wider point is that these features can be developed in a much faster timeframe than the car itself and therefore better react to customer needs.