Statement: ‘New car has too many useless extras’

Not so long ago you were completely the gentleman or lady with a middle class car with four electrically operated windows and air conditioning. With a bit of luck you even had cruise control, an extensive CD changer and electrically adjustable exterior mirrors. These days, car manufacturers are going all out, but not without reason.

In order to pass the high safety requirements of, for example, the Euro NCAP with flying colors, car manufacturers often stuff new models to the brim with passive and active safety systems. A car with 5 NCAP stars on its report naturally sells very well, but a 3 or 4 star score certainly does not mean that you are in an unsafe car. In fact, you can bet that a car that now scores four stars is ‘safer’ than a model that returned home with five stars X number of years ago after being smashed by the NCAP.

By no means all the extras that are increasingly present in cars today have to do with safety. For example, car manufacturers seem to believe that consumer expectations in the field of pampering are rising. Apparently we all want an inductive charger, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connections, mood lighting and even touch screens that only require attention instead of less than push buttons.

High standard equipment the standard?

We take you through the standard equipment of Kia Niro and the Peugeot 208 in a nutshell, successively through last year’s best-selling car and this year’s (so far). The Peugeot 208 with 75 hp 1.2 PureTech petrol engine has a leather-covered steering wheel, electric windows all around, electrically folding and heated exterior mirrors, a rear spoiler, air conditioning, central door locking, cruise control with speed limiter and a DAB + radio with 7- inch touch screen.

From the second trim level, the Niro overloads you with displays, screens and systems.

Then the Kia Niro. As an ‘entry-level’ ComfortLine, the Kia Niro is already quite spacious. Eight airbags, an emergency braking assistant with pedestrian and cyclist detection that also intervenes at oncoming traffic at intersections, an active lane assistant, automatic high beam, a semi-autonomous driving system for traffic jams, climate control divided into two zones, a reversing camera, 4 USB connections, Bluetooth, rear parking sensors, automatic lighting, 16-inch alloy wheels, power windows all around, a leather shift knob, a fatigue assistant and so on. Yes, this is an entry-level model in the compact middle class. Only one version higher you get a fully digital instrument panel, a 10.25-inch infotainment screen, extensive ambient lighting and even a system that allows you to drive semi-autonomously on the highway.

Beautiful pampering and convenience serve people, but are you waiting for all that beauty? Wouldn’t you rather have fewer systems and a lower starting price? Of course you can make it as crazy as you want and convenience serves man, but haven’t car manufacturers gone a bit too far? We are interested in your opinion! Time for a round of voting, in which we posit the following proposition:

“New car has too many useless extras”

Can you find yourself in that? Why or why not? To be clear: the statement does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the AutoWeek editors.

You can add explanations and arguments in the comments. As always, your opinion does not have to be someone else’s. We should all be on AutoWeek.nl because we have a thing for cars, so be kind to each other and try not to get too carried away.