I wonder why they tried to move away from physical buttons to begin with ? Is it because they are cheaper to implement in software ?
Even when you glance to see where a button is or which button it is (temp or whatever), once you know where it is, your eyes can divert back to the road and you can feel around for the dial or button when you miss it.
It was objectively worse than physical buttons, without any advantage at all!
How does that get past any form of testing?
It’s not technology, it’s blatant cost cutting that provides a significantly reduced experience.
There are nothing but upsides for the auto maker, but it's mostly downsides for the end user. It's flashy, which helps initial sales, but consumers hate ever little inconvenience after having the car for a few months.
I wouldn't even say this. It just moves the design and testing out of hardware and into software (which, remember, is running on touchscreen hardware that still also needs to be designed and tested).