Whether your into sports cars or fuel efficient cars, both categories have meaningfully improved over the past few years.
For sports cars, there's a number of 500,600,700hp cars on the market. Corvettes went mid engine (2020), Miatas lost 400lbs of weight(2016), Mustangs/Camaros/Chargers are now 460+HP (2018ish), a VW Golf R will hit 60MPH in 4 seconds with a 2.0L motor, and that's not even getting into Teslas.
For economy cars, a Rav4 hybrid gets about as good of fuel economy as a 2014 Prius, while being substantially larger. There are good hybrid offerings from non-Toyota brands, such as KIA. Plug in hybrids are pretty widely available. Even non-hybrids such as the Civic improved substantially in fuel economy in the past few years. In 2016, Civic fuel economy improved about 8% across the lineup.
For many auto makers, the transition from early 2010s to late 2010s came with substantial improvements. Not just in measureable metrics either. Transmission performance has improved so much between 2010 and 2020. It's really insane to experience a 2010 6 speed automatic, then compare it to a car with a modern 8,9,10 speed. The difference is night and day for most cars.
But I think "meaningfully improved" is in the eye of the beholder.
Steve Jobs' one more thing for iPod gen five included the exclamation "calendars never looked better!"
You look at the slide he has behind him and it looks ridiculous. How useful was that calendar, how silly does that look now? What is the meaning of 0 to 60 in 4 seconds when there's traffic anyway? Isn't there a safer, less expensive way to get a rush than pushing a pedal with a foot?
I'm not arguing that these features you're describing viewed through the lens of today aren't meaningful. Breakout on iPod Video was cool too. But these improvements do not change the fundamental experience of personal transportation. They make it marginally better at best.
I take public transit and don't own a car ($500/m parking, insane insurance rates in SF, cars broken into within minutes in daylight), but drive rentals/carshare-by-hour periodically. Merging and accelerating onto a freeway from a rate limited entryway stopped to 60 is somewhat useful while keeping up with flow.
But to defend the analogy, iPod Video was iPod gen 5. Apple did two more generations on that format with the minimum additional feature set.
That might take a while. And there will be many a Zune sold in the meantime.