I specifically bought a Mazda because it's the only car that feels safe to actually use. HVAC, audio, maps, calling, absolutely everything can be done with physical controls that minimize eyes-off-road time. There's no situation where you're sticking your arm out trying to tap some tiny on-screen button to get directions. Taking rides with other people in Teslas, subarus, fords, etc, is just wild. Having to go into a menu to change from vents to defrost is crazy, I don't understand how that's even legal.
I love that my Ford Focus' HVAC system is entirely disconnected from the rest, and fully button/dial controlled. I can turn off the infotainment screen radio thing and the HVAC unit still does its job. I love knowing that some software or hardware fault in the clumsy infotainment mess that every car maker ends up with won't get in the way of temperature control. We had a Citroen before, and "make it warmer" was multiple menus deep down the terrible touch screen swamp. It was obscene.
I actually wanted that Mazda, which takes the same idea to the max, but I couldn't justify the cost difference just for the buttons (it also looks way cooler than the Ford of course, but ok). The Ford strikes a decent balance IMO - besides the 100% buttonized HVAC, it has a touch screen for all the touchy navigationy carplay-y stuff, but eg volume control and map zoom have physical dials and play/pause/skip all have physical buttons too.
My wife and me disqualified most other brands purely for this reason. We'd open marketing sites and skip through the promo photos until we saw a picture of the dashboard. No buttons? Close tab. I love that apparently more brands are now figuring out that "ipad on wheels" designs drive people away.
I agree, I love the Mazda approach to this in my CX-50. I'm not even sure if the display is touchscreen or not, because I always use the wheel-clicker thingie in the console to control it.
This was an intentional design choice from Mazda, of course, that goes hand-in-hand with their philosophy of giving such control to the driver that they "[feel] oneness with the car, as if it is an extension of their body." [1]
When searching around for a quote like that, I found a HN discussion from 2019 about the Mazda decision to eliminate touchscreens. [2]
Mazda only enabled the touch on the LCD when the car was stopped. It seems that with the Gen4 models (2019 onward) they just cost-reduced the sensing circuit out of the design and nobody has really complained. Taking that layer out also reduces the spidering issue when the OCA fill rewets.
Same here, I went out with a sizeable budget and tried out many cars and ended up with a 2024 Mazda 3 Premium last November because it was the only vehicle that had every control available in a tactile way. I love the car still a year later, and this is something every passenger has commented on. The center screen is a touch screen but it gets disabled once you go over 10mph.
My Honda Fit 2015 is fond of displaying temporary banners on the touchscreen, declaring "This feature is not available while the vehicle is in motion.". But it never tells me _what_ feature is not available. I can't even remember the last time something was actually unavailable while in motion. Of course, I've gotten used to ignoring the message, except to sometimes wonder why it doesn't tell my which feature is unavailable.
Newer Subarus are more full touchscreen. Either 2020+ Outbacks, or 2024+ Foresters. And they have pretty ugly UIs and poor usage of the screen real-estate as well. It looks like the backup camera or Google Maps only use 7" of screen.
