Years ago when I was working in IT at FoMoCo I recall seeing a piece of paper on an office bulletin board outlining how they had managed to save like $40 on the production cost of a Taurus, a vehicle that at the time was about $20,000. Those savings were the result of multiple sub-$1 to several dollar cost savings tweaks made between production years.
Ford has built something like 8 million Tauri, save a few dollars on each of them and it adds up to real money, like enough to redecorate the executive cafeteria.
I guess its the installation. One touch screen is one process. 15 buttons require 15 operations to finish the dashboard.
You have to save everywhere, else costs will run up. Small savings become huge at scale.
104 key mechanical keyboards have 104 buttons and may go for $30. Maybe it is the knobs? But you can get a midi keyboard with 8 knobs, 49 keys, 12 pressure sensitive pads for ~$100 (but maybe it wouldn't last in car cabin heat).
Those keyboards don't have the same environmental requirements. Automotive environmental is hard. Temperature extremes, high and low, plus humidity extremes.
There are also reliability expectations. If I need defrost because the windshield just fogged over, it better activate when I turn that knob on my sixteen year old car. And so far, it always has.
Every little counts when it comes to exec bonus time.
My favourite feature of touchscreens in cars is when you try to click a button but go over a bump[1] so your finger misses and you press something else. Genius.
I do get that touchscreens allow manufactures to add and remove controls though.
Rolling out UI changes for self-driving cars, like getting rid of the, knob behind the wheel, will help with safety no end.
1. Not sure what the bump was, probably the neighbour's kid or dog or something. Too busy trying to get the latest Smartless. That Will Arnet, what a card, etc, etc...
The reason cars are as insanely cheap as they are for the level of manufacturing and design sophistication within them is because of many, many such cost reductions across the whole vehicle (which is made possible by the large scale on which they are manufactured).
