I'm sorry, but this has got to be the most ridiculous UI idea I've ever heard suggested as an improvement.
Yes, one day soon we'll have self-driving cars. But until then, the steering wheel is damn good UI. You turn right, you go right. You turn left you go left. You turn more left you go more left. It just works.
I agree the other parts of a car UI suck as of yet. Bit the steering wheel, brake and gas pedal are examples of good design, they do whT they are supposed to and get out of the way.
There are a lot of positive things to be said about the car's UI.
[Edit: grammar]
Windows are again usually pretty good. However, in my mini cooper, the window switches are located in the center console, unbelievably bad design in an otherwise pretty well designed car.
I mentioned steering, gas and brakes primarily because they are the same for almost all cars.
The ideal car user interface (for car-as-a-tool, not car-as-a-toy) is "set destination, go." Or some sort of browse mode where you just tell it when you want to make a turn.
There are similar advances available for some of those other tools: consider the table saw/router/jigsaw/etc. If you just want to get something built, do you want to learn the finer points of using and controlling all those separate tools, or would you rather just be able to say "cut it to look like this" and let a computer do the driving? (I'd love to have a nice CNC setup in a workshop someday...)