How much cheaper would an electric car like a tesla be if it didn't have autopilot, electronic keys, and LCDs everywhere? How much more secure would it be without an e-key to unlock it? I hope when I'm ready to buy an electric car I can find something like that.
It's probably also less engineering effort to put a set of controls on the screen than to design the corresponding physical controls.
All software is expensive up front but near zero cost to deploy to each additional car.
At some number of cars sold the software costs becomes a rounding error.
Meanwhile, software is costs at once so traditional car manufactures uses cheaper chip and force programmers to write efficient code.
My commute is 8 miles of which 6 is on a freeway. Doesn't feel like a burden. Unlike say a tech bro doing his 50 mile commute down 101. So I'm dubious an autopilot would be a big win from me.