Re:Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles
by quakenul on Monday June 17, 2019 @05:46AM
(#20201316)
It gets tricky as soon as you need labels and/or more complicated visual feedback attached to "dumb" buttons.
The touchscreen is "lazy" in that it can defer thinking hard about your problem space and I can see why that alone would feel scary in a car.
On the other hand, there is only so much foresight you can have when you are innovating. Developing a Tesla might simply not be feasible without the flexibility a touchscreen gives you.
You can see it a bit as a Playstation controller (or whatever platform you like), it has multiple programmable buttons. A car could basically have the same. A touch screen is not required.