Your phone is now your car key (and a tracking device). Your SUV comes with a “driver alertness” camera (that can’t recognize eyeglasses). Your steering-wheel buttons can tackle thousands of tasks (just not when you’re wearing winter gloves). There’s an enormous screen that expects you to talk to it (if only it understood sentences above a third-grade level). Oh, and there’s a gaming console in your car now, too. Because that’s what you use your vehicle for, right? Video games. Shopping. Composing lengthy business emails. Ordering food. Investing in NFTs. Hanging out with an AI chatbot. Snapping selfies with a camera that’s totally not spying on you built into the rearview mirror. Setting that selfie as your car’s “wallpaper.” Oh, I’m sorry, you have somewhere to be?

If there’s one constant over the past five years or so of automotive design, it’s the constant flood of features, gadgets, and gizmos no one asked for. The pivot to Silicon Valley cosplay has done serious damage to the driving experience in modern vehicles—to say nothing of the safety concerns that come with all these screens and apps—and it’s time for a stark reappraisal of what we’re actually doing here. I get rant-y on this topic for Inside Hook.