> One hand is fine in most situations

Sure, but purely asking, which is safer? One hand or two? If a key point of having a ton of physical controls is safety while driving, clearly we're trying to optimize for driving safety. So we should ask ourselves, which is safer? One hand on the wheel, or two? If having a lot of physical controls encourages you to only have one hand on the wheel more versus automating things away, is having the physical control actually making you safer, or less safe as it encourages you to take your hand off the wheel and engage with some activity other than driving the car down the road? Shouldn't we then do what we can to encourage drivers to have both hands on the wheel and their attention straight ahead, instead of facilitating workflows which encourage them to take their attention off the wheel and on the center console, regardless of if the center console is a bunch of buttons and knobs or a screen?

> THERE ARE MORE USES FOR HEATING AND COOLING THAN JUST CLIMATE CONTROL

Like...what exactly? If you're relying on your heater core for additional cooling of your ICE, you've got some serious problems and I wouldn't say that's any kind of normal operation of your car.

> almost impossible to automate well in all conditions

Its entirely possible to automate it well in practically all conditions. In my cars with auto defrost I've never had to manually intervene. Its incredibly basic logic on the conditions of a window fogging up. I'm just saying, its entirely possible a sensor would fail and windows can terribly fog up in minutes so it makes sense for a control like this to have a manual override.

> most sane implementations are keep them on automatically, with the option to force them on

Most implementations let you keep them off as much as you want without any complaints. Letting people even have the option to turn off their lights on average makes us less safe.

> And, flip side, there are numerous situations where you want to keep your lights off not on

These are incredibly rare circumstances and practically never when the vehicle is in motion. Maybe if you're operating your car in a warzone or smuggling drugs across a border, but most of us aren't. Please do share incredibly common reasons why you'd want the vehicle in motion and the headlights off and tell me why that's more safe. My motorcycle always has its headlight on when the key is turned to ON, and its never been an issue for me. Likewise, my car's headlights never leave the AUTO mode. I'd leave them to ON, but then they stay on longer when the car turns off and that's just a bit more strain on the ICE's battery than I'd care for.

> heat/cooling override controls

How is this a safety critical control? If you're on auto climate control, its not like the car is going to rapidly become uncomfortable. That's the whole point of auto climate! You're less safe having to manually intervene to change the climate controls versus letting the system keep the car comfortable.

> a bluetooth pair button would be nice

A bluetooth pairing button is a safety critical control to use while driving your car? You're going to be pairing your phone while you drive your car?

You're arguing people should be able to work on pairing their phones with their headlights off while driving their cars, and that car makers should work on making the car's interface facilitate such activity. I'm arguing all of that stuff should be stripped away, we shouldn't facilitate people turning off their headlights or work on bluetooth pairing their phones while driving. And yet you think its me who doesn't have much realworld experience...

I do not and have never owned a Tesla. I've regularly driven about a dozen different cars over the years trending more towards touchscreens. These changes really haven't negatively affected me much at all, and has come with several benefits. Other than the 360 camera engage button missing I greatly prefer the user experience of my more touchscreen focused car. Not necessarily because its more touchscreen, but often because even more of the system is automated and is less I need to worry about coupled with far better navigation experience enabled by the larger screen. I don't need to turn on the steering wheel heater, its on automatically. I don't need to turn on the defrost, its on automatically. I don't need to turn on the heated seat, its on automatically. Please answer me, why would I want to have to manually control all of these things when they can be otherwise be entirely automated?

I haven't had a single screen fail in any of the cars I've owned. I have had buttons break. I've had knobs fall off and be loose. I've had pots burn out. I've had button backlights burn out. I've had buttons jam. I've had the ink on the buttons and knobs wear away. I've had significantly more physical controls fail over the years than I've had screens fail. IME moving parts are more likely to break during their usage than non-moving parts. And its not just that all the cars with screens are new while all the failing buttons are old, the oldest screen on a car I drive every now and then is about a decade old.