Skip to main content

Voice recognition still a top problem says report

Speaking in a presentation at the annual Management Briefing Seminars of the Center for Automotive Research, held in Traverse City, Michigan, Kristin Kolodge, J.D. Power’s executive director of driver interaction claimed that in-car voice recognition systems work so poorly that automakers should give up trying to add new features and go back to the basics. According to the consulting firm’s annual Initial Quality Study of vehicle models sold in the United States, voice activation was identified as the mo
August 12, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
Speaking in a presentation at the annual Management Briefing Seminars of the Center for Automotive Research, held in Traverse City, Michigan, Kristin Kolodge, J.D. Power’s executive director of driver interaction claimed that in-car voice recognition systems work so poorly that automakers should give up trying to add new features and go back to the basics.


According to the consulting firm’s annual Initial Quality Study of vehicle models sold in the United States, voice activation was identified as the most common type of malfunction.
Twenty-three percent of problems reported were related to audio, communication, entertainment or navigation. One-third of those infotainment complaints were caused by voice recognition, Kolodge said.

Kolodge noted that in-car systems often don’t work as well as voice recognition systems in smart phones. Part of the problem, she acknowledged, was that in-car systems are vulnerable to road noise, engine noise and passenger conversations.

Automakers should focus on the most basic functions, such as phone calls, navigation and audio and make sure those work well before adding other functions.

For other vehicle parts, a high defect rate would be unacceptable, she noted, "yet somehow it’s acceptable for voice recognition, and it’s been acceptable for years. We’ve got to get back to the basics.”

Related Content

  • Internet-connected cars their functionality and safety challenges
    February 27, 2013
    Internet-connected cars are poised to flood the market in the near future. Pete Goldin considers the functionality they offer, the technology they use and the challenge they represent in terms of driver safety. Many vehicles on the road today offer some sort of inter­net connectivity and experts agree that this capability will become a competi­tive differentiator in the automotive industry in the next few years. The era of the digital vehicle, it seems, has started. “We clearly see that cars in the near f
  • MaaS: 130,000 chances for a bad user experience
    May 4, 2020
    Johan Herrlin, CEO of transit data specialist Ito World, puts himself in the hotseat with ITS International to talk about, among other things, why a beautifully designed MaaS app with a perfect subscription model is still a failure if you get your customers lost along the way
  • NavFusion provides map updates via a smart phone app
    November 28, 2013
    A new app that connects a vehicle’s systems to the internet opens up a range of possibilities as Jon Masters discovers. Sometimes the most straightforward or simple of ideas can be the most significant. So it seems with the latest development from Hungarian navigation software supplier NNG. The company’s software features in-vehicle infotainment systems and has launched NavFusion – which connects a vehicles’ sat nav programs to smartphones. NavFusion is being incorporated into NNG’s iGO navigation s
  • Distraction dominated teen driver accident causes.
    June 3, 2015
    As a new report shows that distracted driving is a bigger cause of accidents than previously thought, Jon Masters asks what should be done to counter this problem. Research carried out by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has shed new light on the dangers of distraction for teen drivers. Six years of study using video analysis has shown that 58% of all crashes involving teen drivers are caused by the driver being distracted and proved that the influence of external factors is stronger than previously th