Many are tempted to say "then don't operate the touchscreen when driving". But if e.g. air conditioning is controlled via touchscreen, you have little choice in case the windscreen becomes fogged while in traffic.
That touchscreen disabling is annoying. But luckily, it's pretty easy to hack into the system and disable it, so you can use the touchscreen any time.
Much of the time, though, the "commander" knob works well for controlling the system while driving. But once in a while, there's stuff that's just too annoying to do that way, like when trying to select an artist out of your large music library on the USB drive. If there's 100+ artists, and you're trying to pick one that doesn't start with 'A', it's much faster to use the touchscreen to select the first letter on the right side alphabet bar, then select the artist from there.
Also, entering in addresses on the nav system is impossible without using the touchscreen (you can only select favorites with the commander knob). So if you want to set an address while you're driving, you can't, without doing my hack above. Of course, it's probably not a good idea for you to enter an address or GPS coordinates while you're driving, but there's a second seat in the front row, next to you, which may have something called a "passenger" sitting in it, who can also easily reach the touchscreen. Preventing them from using the touchscreen when they're not even driving, and forcing the driver to find a place to pull over, is just asinine.
The Mazda3's HVAC system doesn't just have "good tactile buttons", it's entirely separate from the infotainment system. On the cheaper models, it's all mechanical, and on the more expensive models it's automatic, but either way it has no connection to the infotainment at all, it's all knobs and buttons just like it should be.
Temperature can be controlled using steering wheel controls. You do need to use the touchscreen to activate the defroster, though. I don't personally find it to be a problem, as the controls are right at the bottom (removing a dimension) and I never used the defroster often enough in other cars to be able to activate it without looking either.
That is just plain dangerous. There have been times that I needed the defroster, couldn't safely stop, and had to keep looking out of my rapidly-fogging window.
This probably doesn't happen where Tesla's engineering is located. The typical conditions are probably 100% humidity, then suddenly getting cold rain on the windshield.
Many are tempted to say "then don't operate the touchscreen when driving". But if e.g. air conditioning is controlled via touchscreen, you have little choice in case the windscreen becomes fogged while in traffic.