Cost is a big thing, but also configurability. While you can assign different functionality to different buttons, it's easier to add features after the fact to a touch screen. While this can be both a blessing and a curse, I own a new model vehicle from a startup car company, and the interface has improved significantly in the past 2 years with OTA updates.
Sure but there’s a handful of things people actually want physical controls for (shockingly all of the exact same things cars from 20 years ago have physical controls for) and I think having Eg AC controls and basic music controls with hard buttons and the rest with a screen is the logical result here.
