That's a reasonable point. Too bad an auto mode for my music and podcasts (of varying volume; also varying with whether I have a passenger) is probably not a thing...
On the other hand, my sense with how I use temperature control in my car is that most of my interactions are (a) set mode at start of driving (b) incrementally turn the temperature dial a notch or two without looking at it.
My current daily vehicle does a pretty fine job of figuring out what mode I want for HVAC.
Sometimes, I do mash the defroster button when weather commands warm/dry air on the windshield and it's easy enough to find that with muscle memory.
Otherwise, in normal seasonal weather, it works well and I don't change modes or temperature. Windows up, down, hot, cold, sunny, cloudy, dark, whatever -- it all works about the same.
Previously, I drove an older version of the same vehicle. It also worked well until it forgot how to figure out what day it was due to a software issue. After that, it kind of had a mind of its own.
(Now, a sane person would ask why that would have to do anything to do with HVAC performance.
It gathered the current date, time, and position from GPS, the bearing from the nav's compass, and the solar intensity from a sensor on th dashboard.
A bit of math and/or an almanac lookup later, and it also knows the position and angle of the sun relative to the car.
So it knows when sunlight is streaming on through the driver's window, and adjusts automatically to compensate by providing relatively cool air from the dash vents only on that side. It also knows not to do this on a cloudy day as well as other things that seem obvious once a person starts thinking about them.
Which is a magical kind of automation -- until the calendar is off by both years and months because Honda broke the clock and its understanding of the sun broke with it: https://didhondafixtheclocks.com/ )
Ok, that's pretty neat sounding. I'm behind the times with a 15 year old Saturn that's fully manual controls (except headlights turning on).
My temperature adjustments are the old fashioned "what temperature air to blow" and not "I want this end result temperature", so my previous comment is a whole different paradigm. Thinking about it, with more recent rentals, I haven't messed with temperature controls much either.
The older one was a 2007 Honda van -- the newer one is from 2012. I think that system was introduced in MY 2005.
Either way, it's almost certainly old enough that the patents are expired.
And I was surprised by it myself. It would have seemed like absolute wizardry to me if I knew of it back in '05.
You raise an interesting point about more-recent rentals: People don't talk much about how stuff like this works, because if it is working well then they don't need to think about it at all. They don't even need to notice it.
And it's not perfect, but it's still Really, Really Good at accomplishing that task of being out of mind.
I was complaining about lack of physical buttons in my VW compared to my BMW before it, but then I thought about it - what do I actually use? Climate control is set to 20C and stays there. Carplay starts when I board the car and resumes what it was doing the last ride. Seat and wheel heating start dependent on temperature. There is actually nothing to set besides window heating (dedicated buttons) and volume (slider and wheel buttons). I was a bit angry at capacitive wheel buttons, but since I've discovered that I can set speed by 10 steps with a swipe I have to say that I don't care that much.
I still think that Skoda has much better controls, though. They also look and work quite similar to the control in OP.
On the other hand, my sense with how I use temperature control in my car is that most of my interactions are (a) set mode at start of driving (b) incrementally turn the temperature dial a notch or two without looking at it.