Dear Subaru Product and Design Team: A 2023 Ascent Owner's UX Wishlist
I love this car. It's spacious, comfortable, and hauls my family + gear without complaint - well, many complaints... I keep running into the same handful of "how did this ship?" moments - stuff that feels like nobody on the development team actually lived with the vehicle for a week before signing off. Grouping them here because I bet a lot of you have run into the same things.
- Audio / Infotainment
- Android Auto drops/errors regularly, even on the latest firmware and app version.
- Infotainment center is generally slow - laggy touch response, slow app switching.
- Recently it appears that I cannot get weather unless I subscribe to SirusXM? I never had this issue until a few weeks ago.
- Subaru App
- The app itself is slow and clunky
- In-app climate control is missing options that exist in the physical dash controls
- Doors, Locks & Remote Access
- Opening the tailgate doesn't unlock the rest of the doors. So the "pop the trunk to load groceries while everyone else gets in" move doesn't work - you have to dig out a key or open the driver/passenger door first - incredibly frustrating when you have your hands full with bags or children. Just unlock!
- Remote-starting from the app often blocks tailgate access completely - even with the key on your person and the car unlocked in every way that should matter. It just won't recognize the tailgate open request until you've entered the cabin and turned the vehicle on.
- Physical Design / Hardware
- Panoramic roof can't finish closing once the car is off. Everything else - windows, stereo, etc. stays fully functional until a door opens, but the roof arbitrarily stops working early. If it can roll up windows post-shutoff, it should be able to close the roof and shade.
- No cargo area anchor points for a cargo net, despite a cargo area clearly designed for hauling loose items.
- None of the USB-C ports support fast charging - in 2023+, this is a miss.
- Ventilated seats are loud and weak - lots of noise, not much airflow.
- Front license plate bracket only has two mounting holes, and it's not enough to survive a standard car wash - plates get ripped off.
- Steering Wheel Button Cluster
- The steering wheel "info" button occupies a premium, easy-to-reach spot for a feature almost nobody uses regularly, while more commonly needed controls are relegated elsewhere. This might be the dumbest use for this space, 90% of the time it does nothing.
- Source button on the steering wheel gets bumped constantly and switches you to AM/FM/Satellite. I exclusively use Android Auto - there's no way to lock the source to phone-only or default to silence. The only workaround for silence on startup I've found is to select AUX.
- How is there not a pause/play or mute button?!?
- Other issues owners report (not mine, but worth flagging)
- Weak key fob / tailgate antenna range — several owners report needing to be nearly touching the vehicle for the fob to register, especially for the tailgate.
- 12V battery drain / unexpected dead batteries early in ownership, sometimes requiring dealer-replaced batteries under warranty.
- CarPlay/Bluetooth call audio issues — other party can't hear you even though you can hear them, reportedly tied to a known TSB.
- Apple CarPlay/phone pairing drops or fails to reconnect after periods of inactivity.
None of these are dealbreakers on their own, but together they add up to a car that nails the fundamentals (safety, space, AWD, comfort) and then trips over software polish and small hardware decisions that a week of real-world dogfooding would have caught. Subaru - if anyone from product/UX is lurking, please, an over-the-air fix for the source button, sunroof close and tailgate issues would make things so much better.
Curious what else people have run into.