Your argument was "Analog controls are superior for car user interfaces." Navigation these days is getting to be a pretty standard part of car user interfaces. Therefore, according to your argument, an analog navigation system is the superior user interface.
Even then I'd still argue a purely analog interface on your car isn't solely the best car user interface. There's literally over a thousand settings to be changed on my car; are you really suggesting that having a thousand switches, buttons, toggles, and sliders is the preferred way of configuring my car? I imagine not, in which case it makes sense to put those behind a screen. If I'm only going to then be making changes to those while parked, why would it matter to me if I'm then changing those settings on a physical control or a touch screen? Why don't you use your phone with a rotary dial to interface with it?
> Because the touch screen controls are not demonstrably safer than physical.
You're misquoting me, the first part of that sentence is extremely critical for that argument of safety. "And if I never have to take my hands off the wheel..." completely negates your argument of safety.
The touch controls aren't supposed to be interacted much when driving the vehicle. That's what the steering wheel and voice controls are for. Its safer to use the steering wheel controls than it is to take your hand off the wheel and mess with a control on the center console, so if your argument is about maximizing safety having no controls outside of the steering wheel is the best choice. The touchscreen isn't there to be used by the driver while the car is in motion.
> I don’t understand the false dichotomy analogies you are using when better analogies like voice control can justify a lack of analog controls.
I do like voice controls, they work well for me. In fact I do reference them in the above comment with the statement "Media controls happen by the buttons on the steering wheel or voice commands." When I want to change the playlist or switch to the podcast app or whatever, I use voice controls when the vehicle is in motion. I use voice commands for other things like placing a phone call as well.
I do understand some people's frustrations with them as they often have a harder time with hard accents or less common dialects. I'm mostly talking about touchscreens here because the topic at hand is complaining about how cars are getting bigger and bigger screens, which to me is a positive and not a negative. If anything, the increasing usefulness and reliability of voice controls further points to the reason why cars adopting touchscreens and shedding a few more buttons is less and less of a concern.
> Can’t I have a physical switch just as easily that enables automatic “AI” powered digitally masterful climate control?
But, why would you want that? It would be a button I'd press once when I first got the car, and that'd be it. Toggling it off is essentially choosing an uncomfortable car; why would you choose to make your car uncomfortable? And then, if you'd never press that button other than the first time to turn it on, why bother having the button at all? What benefit does a button never pressed actually give?
Why don't we have every single lightbulb in the car have its own toggle button and dimmer knob on the center console? Have several buttons for changing the colors of the accent lighting. Have a dedicated d-pad for controlling the headlight position. Have a set of dial clocks (so you can feel the hands), knobs, and various buttons to set the charging profiles on my EV. A physical button to toggle between HD radio and not. A number pad for phone calls and speed dial, along with a SEND and HANGUP button. A big TUNE knob in addition to SEEK up and down. Fade and balance knobs. Buttons to navigate folders for the MP3 files on a flash drive. Buttons to program the various settings of the MyKey system. Buttons to change between the one stage or two stage unlocking modes of the remotes. A toggle to enable/disable the passive key liftgate. A toggle button to control the liftgate motion control. A few buttons to control the easy entrance/exit. Buttons to control the several different features of the trip computer. Wouldn't that be the preferred way of doing things? Every setting, option, adjustment can be a manual physical control available on the center console. We'll have a center console with hundreds of buttons, dozens of knobs, a few sliders, and touch feedback displays. More buttons, more better, regardless of if they're actually useful or not!
Or maybe, we only bother with physical controls for safety critical features. Turn signals, gear selectors, windows, door locks, door latches, hazard lights, wipers, etc. Then put other commonly used controls as physical controls on the steering wheel, like media controls. Then, everything else that's not commonly used can be behind some kind of menu system on a screen. Hmm, what's been shown to be a popular and useful way to navigate menu systems? Trackballs? Pointer nubs? Wheels? Maybe...a touchscreen??
Why waste useful control space with buttons that never get pressed? Can you please answer that question?
Look, I'm not an anti-button touchscreen maximalist. There's definitely things that make sense as physical controls, I agree! Things that actually do get pressed often should be physical controls, I agree! I wouldn't like for my garage door opener to be buried behind a menu. On my many button car there's a button to turn on the 360 cameras when slowly rolling, I use that a ton when parking but on my touchscreen focused car its behind a menu so its a feature that rarely gets used now. I'm just against interfaces with a ton of buttons that really never need to get pressed. Which for cars with a lot of physical buttons, seems to be well over half the buttons. Hell, cars with a lot of physical buttons have so much space dedicated for buttons there's usually dead buttons, spaces where clearly the designer was expecting they'd need a button but in the end they made the car without it. Clearly that's more useful than having the screen be a bit bigger!