I am a reasonable person. I don’t usually get annoyed by small things in the cars I review. No car is ever perfect, after all, so it’s a bit silly to nitpick. However, I just finished up an 823-mile road trip in Lexus’ all-new 2024 TX500h six-seater crossover, and a design element annoyed me so much I needed to vent about it: the goddamn cup holders.
You see, cup holder technology has not changed very much since they were first introduced to cars in the 1950s. At their core, cup holders are a circular hole built right into your vehicle to make sure your Big Gulp doesn’t get everywhere. It’s a tried and true technology, but Lexus, in its infinite wisdom decided to reinvent the goddamn wheel.
Full Disclosure: Lexus lent me a 2024 TX500h and a full tank of gas for a road trip to Southern Maryland over Presidents’ Day weekend.
Both the first-row and second-row occupants of the TX (third-row passengers are spared) are fucking treated to these square, removable monuments to overthinking something that didn’t need to be thought about.
Let’s first talk about the shape of these cup holders. Did everyone else miss the square cup craze, or was it just me? I put multiple different cups and bottles in these things, and no matter what, the drink container flops back in forth because the holder is too big. If I didn’t have a cap on some of my drinks, this could have been a real issue. Nobody on God’s green earth has square cups. We are literally trying to put a round peg through a square hole.
Now, why don’t we chat about the fact they are removable? Yes. All four cup holders are removable. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s for ease of cleaning, but I feel like the old method of taking a Lysol wipe to my cup holders has worked just fine for a while now. A secondary effect of the cup holders being removable is the fact they aren’t totally secure. Sure, they stay in place for the most part, but there’s a tiny bit of unsteadiness to them that can wobble your ill-fitting drink back and forth. Oh, and when you do decide to remove them, you’re left with some hard, and not-exactly-pretty-looking plastic underneath. I don’t get it, amigo.
To top it all off from a design and aesthetic standpoint, it just, well, doesn’t look good. The cup holder situation looks tacked on, rather than well integrated into the rest of the car. That’s too bad because otherwise, the 2024 TX has a really attractive interior design that is simple and well laid out. I guess Lexus just decided it wanted to have a little bit of a laugh at my expense.
