> This is reassuring for the simple fact that actual buttons just work. The touch sliders and whatnot in the Mk8 Golf and ID.4 are finicky, only operating like they should some of the time. They also aren't backlit, making them difficult to find and use in the dark.
I'd frame it differently. It's not that, under certain circumstances, buttons work better than touchscreens. It's that there are particular situations when touchscreens are superior to physical buttons (nav is one of them), and for every other use case, buttons provide a more intuitive, consistent, discoverable, pleasurable experience for users. Because I can do GPS nav on my phone anyway, if I have to choose one, I'd say it's reasonable to conclude that physical controls are superior in general as UI for cars.
The other problem with touchscreen interfaces is that, paradoxically, they can result in worse design. You'd think that an all-software interface would give designers more options. What it seems to do—and many designers will recognize this antipattern from the real world—is make it so that you don't get as much time to think about the right design, and you don't have to make the difficult decisions that result in a simple, opinionated design. Instead, the UI ends up being an afterthought because it's just software, and every VP with a dumb idea gets to have it crammed into the design. That's why touchscreen controls for cars still suck, 10 years into them being ubiquitous, while a dashboard from the 1970s can be controlled by a child.