Why Are Carmakers' Hyped-Up Voice-Controlled Features So Underwhelming?
Why Has Voice Control in Cars, Once Hyped to the Skies, Become the Most Useless Feature?
Last week, I accompanied my brother to a dealership to look at cars. The salesperson gestured excitedly at the center console screen: “Bro, check out this voice control system! Just say a word to open the windows or adjust the AC. No need to look down while driving—safe and convenient!” My brother was sold and placed an order on the spot. But yesterday over dinner, he ranted so fiercely he nearly slammed his chopsticks on the table: "That voice control is nothing but a gimmick! Last Sunday, I was driving to pick up my kid and wanted to lower the AC by two degrees. I said ‘lower the AC’ three times—it either ignored me or asked back, ‘Did you mean turn up the volume?’ In the end, I had to manually adjust it while waiting at a red light. I was so mad I wanted to rip the whole center console out!"
I've had my own frustrating experience. Borrowing a friend's car once, he specifically told me, “Try the voice control—it works great.” I took his word for it. On the highway, wanting to skip a song, I said, “Play the next track.” No response. Thinking I hadn't been loud enough, I raised my voice and repeated it. Suddenly, it blurted out, “Your window is now open”— —At 100 mph, wind roared into the cabin. I frantically closed the window, nearly losing my grip on the wheel. That scared me into never using that car's voice commands again.
Later, I asked over a dozen friends who own cars, and most complained about voice control systems. One SUV owner said his system was “shy”—it only recognized his wife's voice. For him, getting it to work once out of ten tries was pure luck. Another friend with an electric vehicle shared an even more frustrating experience. His car's voice control only worked for music and climate settings. To navigate to his office, he had to recite the address verbatim—adding a single character like “city” or omitting one like ‘road’ would fail. Once, when he said, “Navigate to XX Tower,” it directed him to a residential complex with the same name dozens of kilometers away, causing him to be late for work and lose his perfect attendance bonus.
Car companies hype voice control as “cutting-edge smart tech” that “enhances the driving experience,” but in practice, it's either inaccurate, limited in function, or sluggish. I once discussed this with a friend in automotive media. He revealed that many automakers implement voice control not for genuine driver convenience, but to add another “smart feature” to their brochures—making their cars seem more premium to command higher prices. It's like some vehicles rush to add “continuous dialogue” and “dialect recognition” before even mastering basic voice recognition accuracy. The result? They try to do everything but end up doing nothing well.
What's even more frustrating is that this feature isn't optional—whether you want it or not, it's bundled with the infotainment screen and included in the base price. My brother said he later checked the spec sheet and found the voice-controlled version cost five thousand yuan more than the base model. “If I'd known this feature was so useless, I'd have stuck with the base model. The money saved could've paid for half a year's worth of gas—wouldn't that have been better?”
Honestly, car owners don't ask for much. We don't want fancy features—just the ability to give a clear command while driving and have it accurately understood and swiftly executed. If automakers truly want to develop voice control systems, they should focus on improving basic recognition accuracy first. They need to test performance across multiple dialects and noisy environments, rather than treating it as a mere “marketing gimmick.” After all, we buy cars for practicality, not flashy “smart toys” that look good but don't deliver.
Does your car have voice control? Is it genuinely useful, or do you agree with my brother that it's useless? Share your thoughts in the comments—let's see if we're the only ones who got burned!
