From ADAS To Rear Seat Massage: Luxury Car Features That Are Now Surprisingly Common
Have Rs 20 lakh cars become as luxurious as Rs 1 crore cars?
- Write a comment
A decade ago, features like ADAS, panoramic sunroof and memory seats were exclusive to luxury sedans costing over Rs 1 crore. Today, many of them are available in SUVs priced around Rs 20-30 lakh, and some even lower.
The recent trends in the Indian automotive scene have seen major developments mainly in the budget segment of around Rs 20 lakh. The major aspiration of Indian buyers is for premium features to be available within the attainable budgets of the middle-class buyer. And car manufacturers in India have surely obliged.
Let’s explore the top luxury car features available in common cars of today.
Level-2 ADAS
Advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) is among the most polarising new features in India in recent times. Given the haphazard road conditions and the erratic driving nature of most Indian motorists, ADAS has often been hit or miss on Indian roads.
ADAS features include autonomous emergency braking (AEB), lane departure warning (LDW), blind-spot monitoring (BSM), lane-keep assist (LKA), adaptive cruise control and rear cross traffic alert (RCTA).
Some of these features, like lane keep assist, are helpful on long open highways, but on the contrary, automatic emergency braking has caused accidents in a few instances.
Most manufacturers, including Maruti Suzuki, Honda, Tata, and Mahindra, offer ADAS in their products.
Triple Screen Setup
Having 3 large screens on the dashboard was made popular by luxury brands like Mercedes-Benz and Audi. And like many luxury features which have trickled down to common cars, Indian manufacturers have found the fancy to add the bling into their new SUVs The triple-screen setup on the dashboard includes a digital driver’s display and the centre infotainment screen, which includes controls for music, climate control, and other vehicle settings and personalisation.
The third screen is the one directly in front of the co-driver, which includes extra features like games, YouTube compatibility, and more multimedia support to watch when the passenger is bored. This third screen often gets a built-in privacy screen on top to avoid distractions for the driver. Cars like the Tata Sierra, and the Mahindra XUV 7X0 get triple screen setup on the dashboard.
Dual-Zone Climate Control
This one needs to be upgraded to luxury. The driver and co-driver can have different temperature settings, depending on how cool they want to be. This is a feature which comes from the larger luxury cars, pampering their passengers by allowing them to set any temperature they so desire. We can be sure that we will soon see three- and four-zone climate control coming down to common cars next.
Cars like the Kia Seltos, Mahindra XEV 9S and Tata Harrier are offering these features in the larger SUV models costing around 20 lakhs or just above.
Rear Seat Ventilation
Seat ventilation in India is slowly becoming a need rather than a luxury. However, most manufacturers equip their cars only with front seat ventilation. But the outlier in the category are the Kia Syros and Syros EV. One of the most premium sub-4-metre cars stands out by providing seat ventilation for the rear passengers as well.
A feature which is usually reserved for flagship luxury cars. Among the larger SUVs, the Hyundai Alcazar, XUV 7XO and the Tata Safari in the 6-seater variants.,
Panoramic Sunroof
What started as a novel feature in luxury cars, usually enjoyed in the summers in Europe, ended up being the craze in the heat of India. Panoramic sunroofs are so much in demand that manufacturers like Hyundai and Kia are offering these features in as low as 2nd-to-base variants in their cars like the Creta and Seltos.
Almost every manufacturer selling cars in this segment needs the luxury of providing a panoramic sunroof in the feature list of the cars, while a single-pane sunroof is not good enough.
Please note: don’t stick your head out of a moving car, and this especially applies to children. This can turn out to be a fatal mistake before you realise it.
AR Heads-Up-Display
An augmented-reality-based head-up display was introduced in flagship luxury sedans to show dynamic directions and road signs on the windshield. Lately, Indian manufacturers have taken a fancy to including the AR-based heads-up display on cars like the Mahindra XEV 9S and the Tata Sierra.
This feature works along with the ADAS features to aid the driver in features like lane keep assist and adaptive cruise control.
Rear-Seat Massage
Another flagship luxury car feature available in the likes of the Mercedes-S Class. A truly unique feature has been made available in a common car, the Skoda Kushaq. The 2026 Kushaq facelift came with a surprise, which was a rear-seat massage and a decent one at that.
Though the massage function is only on the backrests of the Kushaq's rear seats, it truly makes it one of the unique selling points of the Skoda SUV.
Driver Seat Adjustment With Memory
It is common today for cars to get 6-way to 8-way adjustable driver seats. However, the memory feature is very useful when more than one person regularly drives the car. With the press of a button, the driver’s seat and outside rear view mirror (ORVM) change to the saved setting of the specific driver.
This was also made available by Indian manufacturers again, but is now also available in the Kia Seltos as well.
CarDekho Says…
The sign of a new piece of technology reaching maturity is when it reaches the budget car market. High-tech features being available in affordable cars. Case in point, companies like Mahindra and Tata in their recent cars have been actively trying to bring luxury car features and engineering to common cars which is evident as mentioned above.
