Have you driven a Tesla much? The general UX intent is that you're not supposed to need to interact with the screen while driving. Wipers are automatic, lights are automatic (both can be pulsed with the stalks of course). Virtually everything responds to voice commands ("Play Stairway to Heaven", "Navigate to Albertsons", "Set temperature to 72", etc...). All this stuff works really well.

I won't engage with "what people actually want" except to point to sales figures, I guess. Everyone likes different stuff. But the point is that Tesla is winning in this space because they're handing people an outside-the-box solution. Asking for "lots of buttons and knobs" is just demanding the older solution. That doesn't say the older solution is wrong, but it does argue that maybe you're failing to understand the new paradigm.