Welcome to the era of the “smart” car, where engineers have successfully transformed the simple joy of driving into a high-stakes psychological thriller. We’re now shelling out six figures for the privilege of being lectured by a dashboard with the temperament of a caffeinated toddler and the social skills of a East German border guard.

The undisputed heavyweight champion of modern automotive misery is the relentless symphony of gongs, bongs, and bings. It’s an appalling, high-pitched auditory assault that treats every driver like a criminal. While some brands are more neurotic than others, you can thank some faceless bureaucrat in the EU for this one. EuroNCAP has dictated an ever-growing list of “assistants” masquerading as safety, effectively imposing their bureaucratic will on your Sunday drive. Every notification is just another electronic nail in the coffin of driving enjoyment. Then there are the “rented” features via OTA—what a total rort.

1: Lane Departure and Centering (The Wrestling Match) Electric steering has finally allowed computers to live out their dream of wrestling the wheel from your hands at the worst possible moment. On a straight motorway, it’s a lazy gimmick; in a spirited corner, it’s bloody perilous. We once had a Kia Carnival decide it knew a better line than the driver. Instead of a polite warning, the system simply spat the dummy and deactivated mid-corner. One second we were fighting the resistance, the next it vanished, leaving us to catch a massive, cliff-bound over-correction. It’s brilliant—the Korean people-mover almost sent us sideways into the scenery because its feelings were hurt. You haven’t lived until you’ve fought a two-tonne family bus for control of your own destiny.

2: Driver Attention Warning (The Hypocrisy Machine) Oh, spare me the lecture. Manufacturers have buried every vital control—from the mirrors to the glovebox—inside a laggy tablet that requires the dexterity of a brain surgeon to operate, then they have the audacity to beep at you for looking at it. If faffing about with a mobile phone is a crime, how is navigating five sub-menus just to turn down the fan any different? It’s a setup, plain and simple. The car demands your undivided attention while simultaneously forcing you to play a game of digital “Where’s Waldo” just to defrost the windscreen.

3: Glitching Infotainment OS’s (The $5,000 Paperweight) There is nothing quite like a $5,000 screen that develops the processing speed of a damp sponge. When the OS lags, your inputs register in a frantic, delayed cascade of screens you never wanted. You tap “Navigation,” nothing happens, you tap it again, and suddenly you’ve accidentally called your ex and set the cabin temperature to 30 degrees. Once the warranty expires, you’re looking at a replacement bill that would make a Mercedes-Benz dealer weep with joy—five grand just to see your own radio station again. It’s an expensive way to buy a digital headache.

4: Sensitive Climate Controls (PR Cobblers) The “Automatic” setting is the biggest load of PR cobblers in automotive history. One tap up and you’re being slow-roasted in the Sahara; one tap down and you’re in the Arctic Circle with no middle ground. We’ve been told for years that customers “set and forget.” It isn’t true now and it never was. We spend our entire lives chasing a temperature that doesn’t feel like a localized weather disaster because the sensors have the sensitivity of a MAGA supporter.

5: Speed Sign Recognition (An Ecosystem of Misery) This is a genuine ecosystem of misery. Between dodgy GPS data and cameras that can’t tell the difference between a school zone and a side street, it’s a total shambles. We recently drove a Chinese brand that “threw out the anchors” at 110kph on the freeway because it hallucinated a 40km/h sign on an adjacent service road. The poor blokes in the utes behind us had to stand on their brakes because our car’s “intelligence” decided we were suddenly in a car park. It’s not an assistant; it’s a saboteur.

Above: This Week’s VIDEO Review –2026 KIA TASMAN – Ugly or Genius?

#KiaTasman, #GayCarBoys, #UteLife, #Tasman, #BYDShark6, #KiaAustralia, #RangerKiller, #UteReview, #OffRoadAustralia, #PHEV, #DualCab #GayCarBoys

ABOVE: Just some of the culprits

6: FSD – Full Self Driving (The Death Wish) Tesla’s FSD is “supervised,” which is Silicon Valley speak for “sit there and wait for the car to try and kill you.” Our experience involved the car mistaking a red arrow for a green light and attempting to floor it directly into oncoming traffic. Stabbing the brakes is the only way to survive, but doing so deactivates the system and leaves you stranded mid-crossing like a sitting duck. It’s beta-testing with human lives in exchange for a $15k entry fee, and they won’t even let you use basic cruise control as a backup. It’s insistent on going where it wants to go, even if that’s straight into a legal deposition.

7: Flush Door Handles & Electric Releases (The High-Tech Coffin) We’ve replaced the “handle”—a technology perfected over centuries—with motorized, “flush” pop-out nonsense that requires power just to let you in. When the battery dies or the computer glitches, you’re essentially in a high-end coffin. We’ve seen Cybertrucks where the doors simply went on strike, leaving the owner locked out of their own polygon. In a fire, if the electronics fry and your passengers haven’t read the 400-page manual to find the hidden manual release, it’s game over. It’s progress for the sake of a YouTube thumbnail, and it’s genuinely terrifying.

8: Wireless Apple CarPlay & The BMW Subscription Rort Is there anything more soul-crushing than your navigation dropping out exactly three seconds before a complex motorway junction? Wireless CarPlay is a fickle beast, and BMW is the king of the rort here. They offer it as a subscription while refusing to provide a wired backup. It’s a pathetic way to double-dip on your wallet for software that should be standard. It makes those aftermarket dongles—which drop out like a bad radio signal from the outback—look like a bargain compared to paying a monthly fee for something that’s already in the dash.

9: Subscription Features (The Monthly Mugging) Following the BMW lead, more brands are sneaking in subscriptions for seat heating and steering wheel warmth. Mercedes isn’t much better, sneaking in yearly fees for 4-wheel steering. These features are already physically bolted into the car you supposedly “own,” but they’re held hostage by an OTA SIM card. It’s a corporate middle finger to the consumer. If you don’t pay the ransom, you sit in the cold. It’s a rort that makes the local used car salesman look like a saint.

10: Piano Black and Fake Finishes (The Glossy Lie) I mention it in every video because it’s a joke. Piano Black looks “premium” for the five seconds it sits on the showroom floor. After that, it’s a scratched, fingerprint-smudged mess that reflects the blinding afternoon sun directly into your retinas. And fake carbon fibre? It’s just cheap plastic wearing a tracksuit. Some argue it’s no worse than fake wood, fake metal, or fake leather. They’d be right—it is all crap. It’s a shiny finish over cheap plastic that can’t be fixed, only replaced, designed to look good in a brochure while making your daily life a dusty, blinding hell.

#CarReviews, #AutoTech, #Driving, #Tesla, #CarFails, #BMW, #Kia, #RoadSafety, #Automotive, #NewCars

Other GayCarBoys Mercedes-Benz Stories