Where do you live? Everything you said could be a mental exercise in this third world country: It makes sense, but it is not reality.
New cars in here (at least chevrolet, isuzu and toyotas) are being shipped with a touchscreen. As you say, it covers the camera display, the infotaiment and map navigation. Everything else still has manual controls, THANK GOD. For instance AC, lights, wipers.
I currently have a 2017 Mazda Bt50
it didnt have the touchscreen. It does have a rearview camera, and the image is displayed in a little square screen in the central rearview mirror. It also has a frontal camera and both of them can record video continuosly. You can have Features without a "general purpose computer"
The most common transmission is manual, automatic costs around $1000 more. Why? Market preference. We do have some poorly maintained roads, and some dirt roads, mind you.
The only reason to ship all controls in a touchscreen is because it is fancy, and since it is already there, they want to save some money by not including physical buttons.
Well I _live_ in New Zealand, but the area I'm most familiar with is the pacific islands. The cars there are mostly used exports from Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
That's also true in New Zealand, half of the vehicles registered here every year are used imports from Japan, normally 5-10 years old. We don't get the low-cost models though as our safety standards are higher, though you do see Kei cars and trucks. When they can't be sold here anymore they get re-exported to the islands, and generally they make it back here as scrap.
There _are_ brand new cars of course, with the full suite of touch screens, but they're out of reach for most people. Even here in NZ we get feature-cut models to keep the price down.
As for 2017, the cost of large touchscreens was much higher then, and the general purpose computer that was definitely running it behind the scenes was much slower.
And as I said in my post, it's certainly for cost saving. Manufacturers realised they could save a few cents on controls and dollars in labour per car by using the touchscreen they were going to add anyway and there was enough compute power to make it responsive enough to sell. Plus a touchscreen look shiny and most people won't realise the problems until it's sold...
New cars in here (at least chevrolet, isuzu and toyotas) are being shipped with a touchscreen. As you say, it covers the camera display, the infotaiment and map navigation. Everything else still has manual controls, THANK GOD. For instance AC, lights, wipers.
I currently have a 2017 Mazda Bt50 it didnt have the touchscreen. It does have a rearview camera, and the image is displayed in a little square screen in the central rearview mirror. It also has a frontal camera and both of them can record video continuosly. You can have Features without a "general purpose computer"
The most common transmission is manual, automatic costs around $1000 more. Why? Market preference. We do have some poorly maintained roads, and some dirt roads, mind you.
The only reason to ship all controls in a touchscreen is because it is fancy, and since it is already there, they want to save some money by not including physical buttons.