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Hand brake. In both stick and auto, I can't recall ever using it, except in highly unusual situations. But there are times when they ere essential.
It's actually a mechanical (cable-linked) emergency brake for the rear wheels - in many cars. When my daughter's 1980-ish Toyota Supra had a catastrophic failure of the hydraulic brakes, that emergency brake came in very useful.
Tire pressure sensor. In both my Nissan and Toyota, the tire pressure sensor failed leaving the warning light permanently on. Replacing the bad sensor will cost $300 -- IF it's only bad on one tire. Expensive & worthless until the bugs are ironed out.
Cruise control. Last time I used it was driving across I 80 last summer. I never use it, honestly. For a very long stretch of hi way with limited merging traffic, it has its use. But how hard is it to maintain and pay attention to your speed?
I live in NJ and mostly don't use it. But it does make a difference when it is used as opposed to maintaining speed on your own. Those minor variations of where your foot is on the gas, although we often don't recognize we are either letting up or giving more gas, add up. Cruise Control can save gas over time (on longer trips when it can be used) so I'm happy to have it.
With practice using cruise control has become second nature to me. I use it all the time to help prevent me from getting a speeding ticket and help keep my fuel economy up.
I'm with you. Estimate that it is on at least half the time.
Hand brake. In both stick and auto, I can't recall ever using it, except in highly unusual situations. But there are times when they ere essential.
Always engage the hand brake before releasing the hydraulic brake when parking on a hill. Otherwise the parking pawl in an automatic transmission can get loaded, so that when you move out of park it can take some effort on many cars. Probably OK once or twice, but if you do that all the time, the parking pawl will wear - and in some cases can be really hard moving out of park.
Most useless is that eco light. I have them all turned off on my vehicles.
Yep. I have no way of disabling it on my car. The top of the LCD display on the panel behind the steering wheel gives up very valuable display square inches to some stupid fuel economy bar. I'd much rather have something useful there away from the glare. Outside air temp and the clock would be my choice.
I don't use much of the capability of the head unit. After going through the living hell of trying to cancel satellite radio service on a previous car, there's no way I'd ever subscribe again. I only use my NAV because it displays the speed limit if I'm not fully sure what it is. Less distracting than looking for it at the bottom left on the Waze app on my smartphone. There are a bunch of menus I looked at once when I first got the car and haven't used them since.
I have 8 buttons down by my left knee. I know the tailgate lift button and the traction control disable button. One of them sets tailgate lift height that I set when I have my ski box on the car but I always have to look at the manual. I pretty much never hit the other buttons.
I hate to admit it but I pretty much never use the oil dipstick. I've checked a couple of times as the car approached the oil change interval to look for unusual oil burn. I really need to check my oil level more often.
Because we almost always drive through neighborhoods with streetlights, or against oncoming traffic, we rarely use our bright lights. I can't remember the last time I had them on.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Powered adjustable pedals. I have them set all the way in and have no need to ever change them, since I am the only one driving it (F150) and they are just in the right place.
Auto-start/stop: great, a bunch of extra start/stop cycles just to save 1 mpg in city mileage. Don't care that they engineered the related components to be stronger; I have no interest in participating in so much additional wear and tear for such a minuscule gain.
Auto-start/stop: great, a bunch of extra start/stop cycles just to save 1 mpg in city mileage. Don't care that they engineered the related components to be stronger; I have no interest in participating in so much additional wear and tear for such a minuscule gain.
I'd agree with that, both my and my wife's Mercedes have it, but we can disable it. We have to push the button every time we start the car though, we can't "save" the off setting.
Really pointless in my wife's car, a 5.5 liter twin turbo engine that gets like 12mpg... Like anyone who purchases a car like that is going to care about the extra .5 mpg they might save by having the car shut off at stoplights.
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