How is it future proof? Knobs work fine on 30 year old cars and can be 3d printed or ordered. I've never had a daily driver touch screen last longer than 5 years, personally.
It's planned obsolescence. Every part of the car should be good for 20 years. 20 years ago, we were using Moto Razrs and it would be 4 more years until iPhone changed how we think of touchscreens. These junk touchscreen cars from this era will not make it without extremely expensive repair
If you’re doing a model refresh and want to add a button, you change a few lines of code instead of redesigning the dashboard and sourcing parts and adjusting the assembly process and updating the engineering documents and maintenance and repair manuals and…
I suspect it's also a lot cheaper during model development. UI changes with physical buttons mean changing molds, screen-printed text, electrical connections, etc.
With a touchscreen, you plan "touchscreen here" and the UI can be modified in software basically up to the point the first production car rolls off the line (and even after that, too).
This is insanity, you still have a long and arduous process to design and test your changes. Software isn't a shortcut that bypasses the processes that lead to "legal and safe"
You can just push a software update and completely change the functionality/looks of it. With the physical buttons, they have to be linked to a certain functionality at the manufacturing stage.
Pushing a software update is a big process, it's not some simple thing. There's a lot of process behind updating the software of a car where a bug could kill the occupants.
For what it's worth: the physical buttons being linked to certain functionality from the beginning is the whole point, and is the defining characteristic of "good usability".
When your buttons change arbitrarily, you will always require eyesight to identify the buttons, which is radically unsafe and creates a horrifying UX since regulators have not yet banned all touchscreen use while a vehicle is moving
It's planned obsolescence. Every part of the car should be good for 20 years. 20 years ago, we were using Moto Razrs and it would be 4 more years until iPhone changed how we think of touchscreens. These junk touchscreen cars from this era will not make it without extremely expensive repair