People actually do need to shame needless tech.

The reason is that a lot of car engineering is designed around a useful 15-30 year lifespan. But now all this tech crap is being pushed on cars to make them become useless after 5 years instead of 15-30. And yet they still want us to spend the same money we did for something that used to last longer.

I say demand better. Keyless entry is great until Year 5, when you have to pull the key out anyway cuz the car loses awarebess of you walking away. Or pixels start burning out in the infotainment display and Toyota wants new retail price for a 5 year old technology replacement. And God help you once you become reliant on adaptive cruise control and it stops working.

So don't hate on the folks who want to call out the madness of making vehicle purchases based on tons of little convenience gimmicks instead of forcing Toyota to spend their R&D money on useful, long-lasting core features.

Like, get excited about something like Toyota adding direct and port injection to the 4.0L some day that bumps it to 25mpg, or a front locker, not because they added some passive safety tech or little screens or doodads that will be broken before you've paid off the car.

The only folks who should get excited for that stuff are serial leasers or trade-in addicts, who are Ok with losing $5,000+ in depreciation every 2-3 years because they're rich. And props to you, but that's $15,000+ in 3 trade in cycles that could've gotten an ROI if invested and bought you a turtleback trailer. So is it worth it?

The same exact value prop exists today for cars as 50 years ago.
4ish wheels that get you around without it being likely you'll get hurt, at around 75mph top speed, lasting at least 200,000 miles before you need replacement.

Everything else that's just a convenience item should be considered unnecessary if it can't either be very cheap to fix or last at least half the life of the car.