I find them particularly strange from a design perspective. If anyone here does design on car interfaces, please let me know why this is the direction you're taking, because I'm stumped.

Car interfaces seem like something you would want to optimize for being able to be easily controlled without taking neither eyes nor focus off the road. This, to me, means physical interface elements with good built-in feedback (clicky buttons, notched knobs etc.). Instead, we appear to be going down a dangerous path of having everything be in a screen.

How come?

Sidenote: I'm generally not a big fan of voice-interfaces due to their general inferiority to 'hand-interfaces' (no muscle memory, large latency, high rate of error etc.), but as an interface in a car I think they do make some sense, given the obvious design constraint that you want the driver to focus on the road. They can't replace all functions though due to the aforementioned constraints, but other than that, this is a very fitting niche for the technology.

Touchscreens in cars were seen as luxury so once they became super cheap they threw them in every car with few no-screen options whatsoever. This was cemented in 2018 with a mandate for backup cameras[0] and, when you already have a screen, it makes little sense to only put a screen for the camera unless that's the market segment you're targeting (which, in itself, is small since most people are fine with touchscreens). Unless mandated, profit and sales will trump safety systems every day.

Tesla-esque huge touchscreens are taking off because other infotainment systems have been the absolute worst UX of all mass-market software since forever. Tesla fixed this and is gaining market-share fast, so traditional automakers are trying to prevent more people from switching to Tesla by emulating these selling points (and some recent Mach-E footage shows that the infotainment isn't on the same level, although it is faster than SYNC 3[1]).

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_camera#Mandates

1: https://youtu.be/kqHmbrE11eg?t=40

Interesting - that backup camera mandate does explain it a bit. I wonder if the EU has something similar.

It still doesn't excuse the lack of care with regards to design, but I now have a bit more understanding on the matter. Thanks!

I'd imagine those are designed with keeping your focus on the road in mind, by doing things like limiting notifications to only incoming phone calls while you're driving

Unfortunately your imagination doesn't correspond well with reality.

They also display texts, have tons of different entertainment integrations, display maps etc. All with crazy high input latency, zero tactile feedback, and a completely homegrown UI to leave you constantly guessing and reading whenever you do simple things like change the radio station.

Having to navigate menu systems to change basic climate controls would say otherwise

Then the problem is the car, not the console UI.