This is a big issue with modern cars (particularly Teslas). People generally hate touch screens because you have to look at them to use them. For driving in particular, that's a real problem. Compare this to a more normal car where you can feel the AC button or the volume or whatever.
Companies like touch screens because it lets them punt on UI/UX design and selecting controls, which means they basically never get done. It's purely a cost issue.
Now with Macbooks, I did like that I could slide my finger for the volume. That's it. And that wasn't worth losing the Escape key for. Or function keys for that matter.
But that's so specific that I'd rather just have a volume control. A slider would be ideal but that takes up a lot of space. The best compromise is a "roller" (like on the Corsair K70 keyboard) as you can get precision and speed. You absolutely don't want to repeatedly hit a volume up or down button.