Car Customers Want Better Cupholders

Even though cars are becoming more and more advanced, people really just want their vehicles to have ample and diverse cupholder space.

Why It Holds: Other than your home, personal transportation is typically the most expensive item in your budget… and it’s only getting costlier. As people become more choosy about what to lease or buy, it’s often the simplest conveniences that become the deciding factor.

Between the Seats: Prospective car customers are telling their dealers, “Forget the top speed… how many cupholders does this thing have?”

• The 2025 J.D. Power Initial Quality Study, the most influential report in the auto industry, labeled “cupholder frustration” as a “key finding.”
• The report states that “manufacturers are struggling to keep up with being able to accommodate all the different shapes and sizes [of containers] that are increasingly available.”
• Specifically, customers complain that there aren’t enough holders in a vehicle and the ones that do exist are too small to accommodate the increasingly popular oversized tumblers from brands like YETI or Stanley.

Final Fit: While the focus on old-school innovations like cupholders may seem quaint in 2025, it turns out to be an evergreen issue. Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers claimed that “cup holders in a US vehicle were one of the most critical factors in clinching the purchase decision for potential auto buyers”… all the way back in 2007. That’s because cupholders are a primary “touchpoint” — the things drivers interact with every single time they drive, which affect their perception of the vehicle as a whole.

No wonder Subaru’s Ascent SUV boasts a whopping 19 cup and bottle holders — the car has become famous for all those beverage slots.

Prediction: If autonomous vehicles become mainstream, a car’s ability to make a beverage on the go may become just as important as being able to hold them.