[RickS]

It's cost savings. I'm a UX designer, a friend of mine works at an electric vehicle startup. I asked and it was unambiguous. The kinds of buttons that go into a vehicle aren't like the raw components we buy on amazon for hobby projects. They go through much more rigorous testing to be resilient to hours of use, extreme temperatures, etc, and are commensurately more expensive. Those mediocre touchscreens are cheaper than the BOM for all those fancy buttons and dials, which might each have their own control board or group bus, etc.

I'm not sure whether this is also true for your induction range. Certainly on generic table lamps and such, the touch-activated buttons are the hobby slop we'd buy from amazon.

Anyway, I've never really heard anyone offer performance, likeability, or usability as a reason for touchscreens in cars. Glad to see the industry get rid of them, at the decadeslong speed you'd expect from a dinosaur industry with a regulatory forcefield.

[herbturbo]

It’s also a lot easier on the production line if you don’t need a new set of control knobs and blanks for each vehicle that comes by based on how it’s been spec’d.

But that’s the issue. Grey suits in boardrooms with no passion for driving making decisions based on cost and homogenizing manufacturing amongst the car lines.

For example someone at VWAG thought it was a good idea to replace the 911 key with a button, and dials with a screen. Why? Cost and stupid tech fantasies fueled by EV manufacturers and Apples next-gen CarPlay nonsense.